Sept 7 - Sept 9: Volcano Village on The Big Island
Our flight from Honolulu to Hilo was fairly early on Sept 7, and it was a short flight, so we basically had a full day on the Big Island. The view as we left Honolulu was spectacular!
Once we landed on the Big Island, we picked up our rental car and headed into Hilo proper. Our first destination was Liliuokalani Gardens, a pretty little Asian-themed park. We wandered through and took pictures before going to downtown Hilo, which is a line of weathered shops lining one road - it looked very Wild West. We bought some papaya and a pineapple at the farmer's market - the papaya were 3 for $1!
Then went to the Lyman House and Mission Museum and took a tour. The Lymans were a family of missionaries who came to the island in the 1800s. Then we had lunch at Cafe 100, because the tour book said a trip to Hilo isn't complete without a loco moco at Cafe 100. We split a Kilauea Loco, which has chili instead of a hamburger patty, and it had a few sausage links and a piece of fried Spam. That may be the first time I've ever tasted Spam - it wasn't bad!
After lunch, we made a couple quick stops at famous waterfalls outside of Hilo. There was no hiking involved - the waterfalls were just roadside lookouts. But they were beautiful.
We drove down to Volcano Village to check into our bed and breakfast. It was a long drive from Hilo to Volcano - about an hour. On Oahu, that much driving would have put us clear on the other side of the island, but on Hawaii, we didn't even go a quarter of the way around. It's a huge island!
When we pulled into the bed and breakfast's driveway, the owner, Garret, came out to greet us. He was a TALKER - he called it the aloha spirit - he welcomed us warmly and seemed happy to take all the time in the world to get to know us and show us around. We talked with him for about an hour, and he gave us a tour of the grounds and showed us our house. We had a whole house to ourselves, the Artist's House. It was awesome, so cozy and quaint and comfortable. The grounds were gorgeous too, Garret is a zealous gardener and his hard work on his gardens shows.
One thing that surprised us about Volcano was that it was chilly! Garret told us we were about a mile in elevation, and what a difference it made from sea level. So as soon as Garret released us, drove straight into Volcanoes National Park to go to the visitor's center before it closed - we had forgotten to pack James a sweatshirt and we needed to get him something so he wouldn't freeze the whole time we were there. Luckily our B&B is only 15 minutes from the park, because we got there with just a few minutes to spare before the gift shop closed. We ended up getting matching pullover windbreakers even though I had my zip-up hoodie, because a hoodie wouldn't protect me from the wind.
Now that we were more or less properly dressed, we went to see the steam vents on the edge of Kilauea's crater. The ground was steaming all along this stretch of cliff overlooking the enormous crater - it was an amazing view. Then we drove over to a museum on the rim of the crater, where we could get a good view of the column of steam rising from the spot in the crater where magma was boiling right at the surface. The magma was at the bottom of deep hole in a smaller crater within the massive Kilauea crater, which meant that the angle was wrong for us to be able to see any of the actual lava, but it was cool to see the huge column of steam. I think the only way to see the lava at the bottom of that deep hole is to fly over it.
We went back to Volcano Village for dinner at the Thai restaurant next door to our B&B, and had a delicious meal. After dark, we drove back into the national park (it's open 24 hours a day) to go back to the museum lookout area to see the volcano at night. The way Garret told it, the whole column of steam would be bright red. It was less spectacular than that, but still awesome. The steam was red only very close to the vent opening, but it was incredible to see. And the stars out there were amazing - we could see the Milky Way clearly, and the sky was just packed with stars.
The next morning, I woke up super early as usual, since I was having a hard time adjusting to Hawaii time. But for the first time on our trip, I was able to get up and go to another room so James could keep sleeping. I made myself a mug of hot chocolate and curled up on the couch in the terry robe that I found in the closet, and read for a long while before I work up James. We had breakfast, which Garret and his wife Sandy had left for us - fresh pineapple, papaya and little tropical bananas, a small loaf of a homemade quick bread with macadama nuts, I fried up a couple of eggs, and milk and OJ. It was all delicous! We got sandwiches from the deli nearby and stowed them in a cooler that G&S provided, and grabbed the flashlights and extra batteries that they also had available for us, and went into the park for a day of adventuring.
Our first stop was the Thurston Lava Tube, a cave-like tunnel where the lava poured through and left this almost perfectly round tube through solid rock. It's apparently a huge attraction and Garret had us worried that it would be overrun with tourists (if there's a tourist bus parked in the parking lot, he told us, just keep driving). We were excited when we got there and there were only a few cars. We didn't see anyone else on our walk into the tube, but on the way out we saw more and more people. Because we had the flashlights, we were able to go beyond the main lighted part of the tube, and into the unlit portion, all the way to the very back, where we turned off our lights and were in complete darkness. It was an awesome experience.
Next, we hiked across the Kilauea Iki crater, which is a smaller crater next to the massive main crater. We hiked around the rim of the crater a bit, then down a lot of switchbacks to the bottom. It was surreal walking across the interior of the crater, it was like walking on Mars. Then we had to climb back out of the crater and hike around the rim for a while before we made it back to our car. It was a longer hike than we expected, it probably took about three hours, and we were starving and exhausted by the end of it. For a good portion of the hike, we were totally exposed to the intense sunshine as we crossed the crater, and even though the gusty wind kept us cool, I think all that bright sunshine wore us out. We drove back to our cabin for a late lunch, a nap, and some quiet time.
After our relaxing little break in adventuring, we drove over to Volcanoes Winery for some tasting. It's the southern-most winery in the US, and their wines are flavored with tasty tropical fruits like papaya.
Next, we drove down the chain of craters road to the shore. The drive took us from about a mile in elevation to sea level, and our goal was to try to see the lava that was pouring down into the ocean down past the end of the road. There were lots of things to stop and see along the way, craters and lava fields. We got out a bunch of times to take pictures and explore, so it took a long time to work our way down to the end of the road. We parked and walked down the road until it was obliterated by an enormous lava flow that had completely wiped out the road (and a village a few miles away) several years ago.
We scrabbled over the lava to a point where we'd get a view of the fresh lava pouring into the ocean, and were disappointed to discover that the fresh lava was still a few miles away - too far to see anything but the plume of steam. The sun sets quickly in Hawaii, so we hustled back to our car when it got dark. We had a long drive back to our cabin, where we had leftover Thai food for dinner and then promptly fell asleep.
The next day, we felt like we'd seen enough of the national park, so we drove west to the Puna coast, which is known for being a hippy area. We stopped at the Hilo Coffee Mill along the way, a coffee shop where the grow and roast their own beans. We sampled their coffees and then sat down with mugs of their pineapple coffee (it was surprisingly tasty!) and the cat that lives there. The drive was beautiful, and we loved getting the chance to see more of the island. We drove down some gorgeous tree tunnels.
We took a driving tour of Puna, stopping off at the major sights: some awesome tide pools that were big enough to swim in, where we had lunch, a hot water spring in a beautiful park, a black sand nude beach (the only nudists there were a couple of old hippy men).
The black sand was incredible. We had to hike down a bit to the nudist beach, and just sat at one end and marvelled at the jet black sand.
Actually we stopped at several beaches along the way. Then we reached the end of the road from the other side (the other side of the lava flow that we'd visited the night before), and there was a little touristy outpost there where we got Hawaiian flavored ice cream and slices of white pineapple - both were incredibly delicious. We walked out to a new black sand beach to try to see the lava flow into the ocean from that side, but again we were way too far away. We did get to see the steam plume grow into a huge mushroom cloud, though!
On our way home, we stopped at the Lava Tree State Park to see some lava trees. These stone pillars were created when lava swept through the area, and collected around living trees. The trees burned up inside, but the lava turned to stone around them, and when the rest of the lava flow drained away, these were left behind.
After that, we went to dinner at a surprisingly good Mexican restaurant before heading back to Volcano for our last night in our favorite little bed and breakfast. The next day, we'd be heading to the Kona coast.
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