Kim and I flew into Hilo October 17th and immediately picked up our rental car which is essential for getting around in Hawaii. The earthquake of October 15th really didn’t affect us at all since most of the damage was on the west side of island near Kona where we weren’t until late in the week.
We camped the first night at Arnott’s Lodge which is a pretty cool hostel just outside of Hilo. Hilo is a pretty quiet town, so we got some ice cream and groceries and that was about it for night life.
We drove down to the southeast corner of the island where we saw a macadamia nut factory, a black sand beach that cut me up a little in the waves, where the road ends at a lava flow, and stayed at Kalani. Kalani was a very cool retreat. We lounged by the pool for quite a while and enjoyed some frickin good vegetarian food. There was an evening meditation program that we did too.
Next we headed for Volcanoes National Park. When we got there we hiked the Kilauea Iki trail through the bottom of a crater. We also saw the Thurston Lava Tube, but didn’t think it was nearly as impressive as Ape Caves near Mt Rainier. It started to pour as we were in the lava tube, so we opted for a hostel that night, which was good because we had internet access to book our flights to and from Kauai and schedule rental cars. Our new Black Diamond Betamid tent has worked great, even in rain, we just didn’t want to setup in rain.
Even though we got a late start, we hiked 11 miles into Halape across lava fields. There’s a shorter way in, but we hiked the coastal trail to avoid the steep elevation gain on the other route. The ‘trail’ is really just a series of rock piles that guides you through the lava fields. Halape is a gorgeous section of palm trees and beach in the middle of giant fields of lava flows. There’s even a small fresh water pool near the campsite with endangered shrimp that look like crawdads. The water sources along the trail were water catchments that had been collected from rainwater. The hike out the next day of 11 miles was pretty hard since we were already sore from the first day. Upon leaving the park we decided it was time to pamper ourselves a little and got a king bed and nice room at a place with a hot tub at Volcano Country Cottages Bed and Breakfast.
After a little recovery we headed 13,796 feet up to the summit of Mauna Kea, which may have been my favorite part of the vacation. From the visitors center you need a 4 wheel drive vehicle to get to the top, so fortunately we caught a ride up with some other people. Getting close to 14K feet above sea level without any real acclimatization period can really mess you up. With only about 60% of the normal oxygen level I felt a little goofy and kinda dumb for a while. We got to go in one of the most powerful telescopes on the planet, the Keck, and a girl fainted while we were there. Fortunately there was a park ranger on the tour with oxygen masks to revive people. Two more people required oxygen while we were climbing the stairs of the Gemini Observatory. Kim had to go very slowly up the three flights and my heart rate got up there even for such a small bit of work.
After the official tour was over they left us up at the summit to wait for sunset. Our ride went back down early, but f ornately a British couple offered to take us down after sunset. As the sun dipped it got cold, so Kim waited in the car while I went on a small hike to the ‘real’ summit, which is a small peak that’s probably only 10 ft higher than where we were standing. Moving around in the new atmosphere really helped me to adjust, so by the time I got done with the hike, I turned around and did it again. The sunset was very nice, even if loads and loads of tour vans all show up for it.
We got back down to the visitors center where we stayed for a while and listened to the stargazing information. It was really cool to see constellations that clearly, and to see parts of the sky you can’t normally see up north. The guys presenting used laser pointers that made the night sky look like a big presentation screen, and they knew a LOT about constellations.
We decided to take Saddle Road, which is a narrow, kinda one lane, poorly paved strip of road toward the west side of the island and either find a park to camp in or sleep in the car. Neither worked out. The first park we got to didn’t allow camping, and we though about camping anyway until we got out of the car and first thing we saw was a wild pig. Then we tried to sleep in the car but there were weird lights from the military base down the road and some weird car traffic kept pulling into the parking lot. We ended up in a hotel for the night.
The next day we saw the Waipio Valley from above. We didn’t hike it since we were a little tired. Instead we drove down and spent about an hour in Kona. It felt too touristy and busy, so we got out of there quickly after stopping to try Kava, a root based drink that chillaxes you and makes your mouth numb. Tastes bad, but feels good. We ended the day at Kealakekua snorkeling, and then camping at a county park. Kealakekua was cool, but part of it was off limits for snorkeling because the recent earthquake had caused some land to slide into the bay.
We woke up to complete our drive around the south end of the island. We stopped at the south tip to enjoy body surfing at a green sand beach. Very cool beach, even if it’s a bit of a hike. A local Hawaiian man gave us a ride back in his truck. The roads definitely require a 4×4, and even then you’d better know what you’re doing since there’s a lot of routes and some are impassable even with a 4×4.
We finally saw some Honu (sea turtles) at another beach farther along. They’re bigger than I expected. We drove back through Volcano and had a wonderful dinner in Hilo before driving north to camp. The next day we saw the scenic drives north of Hilo including a few waterfalls, and finally returned our rental car and flew to Kauai! Phew. What a week and a few days. It’s a good thing I didn’t even go into much detail, or this would be longer than anyone would read. Probably already is longer…