NONIE AND BRETT’S BELATED HONEYMOON- Episode 4

NOT A SNOWBALL’S CHANCE IN PARADISE

We had another lazy start to the day. I am certainly starting to sound repetitious so I will no longer mention these lazy starts.  I will only mention it if our start hasn’t been lazy.  Another pot of Kona Gold and with cup in hand, watched yet another cruise ship parallel park in the bay.  Same cruise line, different ship. I would not have been able to tell the difference except for the different names on the ships.  Even the view is getting repetitious.

I did manage to get out of the condo by 10:00 AM Kona time, 1:00 PM BC time.  I had to return the snorkel stuff to Snorkel Bob’s before noon.  I decided to avoid all the traffic fuss and walk down to Bob’s.  Bob is located next to the Royal Kona Hotel which is where we have booked our Honeymoon luau. I thought I could take a moment to check out their grounds since I was down that way anyway.  The lanai had her hooks into Nonie and she decided to stay at the Condo.  I had booked the luau over the net to get the cheaper rate but needed to print off a web confirmation to give to the luau people.  I dropped off the snorkel stuff’ finished checking out the hotel then went off in search of an internet café where I could print out the coupon. 

 As I wandered around the downtown, I played a little game Nonie and I call, “Spot the Cruise Ship Passenger”.  We invented it on trip to Alaska when were staying in Skagway.  A couple of cruise ships docked while we were enjoying downtown Skagway and dropped about 4,000 people into the downtown. The total population of Skagway is about 700 people so it has quite an impact.  It was a balmy 25 degrees Celsius.  Nonie and I were in tee shirts and shorts.  All the silly cruise ship passengers were wearing arctic parkas and touques. It was Alaska after all!   It was really quite simple to Spot the Cruise Ship Passenger. 

Passengers return to the Pride Of America Wednesday at Kailua Pier, Kona. (laura Ruminski/West Hawaii Today)

It is a little tougher to spot them here in paradise as everyone here, including the locals looks like a tourist. There did not seem to be many around but it was early yet, so most of them were probably still in the breakfast buffet line on the ship. 

I found this little Shaved Ice / Internet place deep in the heart of tourist country.  This really cool surfer dude was doing a booming business in ice cones with lots of exotic flavors like mango, guava and a bunch I have never heard before.  He was very busy, so he just yelled a password to me to log on to one of the three computers he had in the back of his store.  Three minutes and three bucks later, I had my coupon. The three bucks I had to spend blew my internet luau saving all to hell. It’s not cheap to be a tourist in paradise. 

As I am leaving the store, I spot these neat baskets stacked up near the computers.  The weaving is very fine and they look a lot like a pine needle basket that Nonie had made at a course she took a few years ago.  The baskets were woven from the bark of the fern tree and then finished with an oil and honey. As I looked them over, I found one with a wooden lid that had a cool little frog motif.  I just had to buy it. I think Nonie likes it. I am never sure as she is getting very picky about our frog purchases.

Back to the condo for a little lunch for after lunch we head to Mauna Kea, the highest point in the Hawaiian Islands.  Mauna Kea reaches a height of 13,700 feet above sea level.  Mauna Kea is an extinct  volcano and much of the mass is located below sea level.  If you included this mass, Mauna Kea would be higher than Everest.  The mountain is very sacred to the indigenous Hawaiians. It is also the location of an ancient adze quarry used by the Hawaiians to make tools for cutting and shaping Koa wood.  Koa wood could only by used by royalty.

 

The road to Mauna Kea is off limits to rental cars but one company, Harper Truck and Car Rentals, will rent you a four wheel drive and allow you to take it up to the top of Mauna Kea.  My little fender bender took some of the wind out of my confidence, so I opted to book with a tour company that specialized in taking people to the summit.  Very pricey, and this has made a serious dent in our tour cash. 

We were to be picked up in a mall just a few minutes away from our condo.  We arrived with plenty of time to spare so we dropped in to the local Longrens Drug Store and picked up a few supplies for the trip.  The pickup spot was a small Bakery / Deli where we bought a small coffee (Kona, of course) , tea and a blueberry turnover thingy. As we sat, people started to arrive.  We could tell by the way they were dressed that they were going to be fellow passengers.  We had been told to wear long pants and make sure to bring plenty of water. It was over 80 degrees at that moment and nobody except those people headed up Mauna Kea would be wearing long pants,. We counted ten potential passengers and they of course, guessed that Nonie and I were fellow passengers.

The bus/ van arrived on time and it was a beauty.  It was big, new and four wheel drive. The seating was comfortable seating and included excellent lumbar support, individual shoulder seat belts.  The bus/van had a powerful air conditioner and as were to find out later an equally powerful heater. The guide was a huge, friendly guy named Chas. or Charles.  He got us quickly loaded and on the road. It was to be a two hour drive to the visitor centre which is located at the 9500 foot level of Mauna Kea.  Along the way he kept up a pleasant banter on local history, flora, fauna and lava.  At just under an hour we turned off the main highway and got onto Saddle Road. It is billed as a dangerous and narrow highway.  This is the section that is forbidden to rental cars. HOHUM.  It was just a narrow paved highway that you would see anywhere in BC, bumpy with lots of potholes and crazy drivers going way to fast. We traveled on this section for about 45 minutes making one stop to enjoy the stark beauty of the lava.  It was very harsh looking. 

We turned off this road on to the Mauna Kea access road which would lead us to the Onizuka Centre for International Astronomy; where the visitor centre is located.  We would spend at least 40 minutes her acclimatizing to the altitude before continuing the ascent to the summit. The road to the Centre was a paved dream, with wide paved shoulders and no pot holes.   We had to ascend about 3,000 feet from this point to the visitor centre which was located at 9,500 feet in about 10 miles. 

The weather at the centre was partly cloudy and about 6 degrees C.  We were provided a nice box dinner of teriyaki chicken, rice and veggies.  We were joined by another bus group from the same company.  There were another 6 vans from other companies with the predominant tourist in these groups being Japanese. 

I sensed a bit of business rivalry between the tour companies.  Chas.  was constantly making little jokes about the Japanese. Nothing outrageous but always little digs. There was a nice newly wed couple from Singapore on our bus and I sensed they were a little uncomfortable with some of the comments even though they were not Japanese.  We had a little pep talk about the mountain and how sacred it is to the Hawaiians. After a talk on the dangers of altitude sickness we loaded up into the vans and headed to the summit.

The top of Mauna Kea is covered with celestial observatories. There are 13 in all with Canada being represented as well.  They are partners with France and Hawaii in one of the oldest facilities built in 1979.  During a trip to the White Lake Observatory with James last year, I remember a scientist mentioning a stint he did at this observatory.  It is dwarfed by some of the newer ones.  One has a camera the size of a Volkswagen Beetle with an aperture of over 400 inches. It is quite awe inspiring to see them all.  

The money and work it  cost to get them here, must have been staggering.  The climate and location are perfect for observatories. .  Above the clouds most of the time, very dry and no ambient light to interfere with the light gathering telescopes.  They use low pressure sodium fixtures for street lights all over the island.  They are expensive to use but produce very little glare and have been installed to reduce any affect on the telescopes.

The 8 mile road to the summit turned to a gravel (lava) road shortly after we left the visitor centre and continued till we were 3 miles from the summit.  Here it turned into a beautifully paved road once again.  I would not have wanted to be the paving crew that worked on this road.  We stopped just below the summit to first take in all the observatories. I cannot over state how awe inspiring they were.  

The temperature had dropped to below zero at this point.   We were given these nice parkas when we arrived at the centre and truly appreciated them now.  

We moved to the summit with just 15 minutes to spare to watch the sun set.  There was quite a bit of low level cloud, so we did not actually see the sun, but we did see the sky lit up with the most incredible red hues. I took a dozen pictures at various settings and hopefully one of them will do the colours justice. 

The one picture I truly wanted was me standing in the middle of a snow field in Hawaii.  We had to walk a short way down the road to get on to the snow. The snow was actually hard frozen ice.  I tried to warm some up enough in my hand to make a snowball to throw at Nonie. I would have suffered severe frost bite to pull that off so I just threw a chunk of ice at her.  

It is not easy to make snowballs in Paradise.  I was made quickly aware of effects that high altitude can have on your body.  After just a few steps up the hill, I was breathing like I had just run a 5 K.  My heart pumping a mile a minute.  Other than that, I did not experience any other usual affects from the altitude, like headache, nausea and heart palpitations, at least none that I do not normally have.   

We stayed and milked the sunset right to the end. It does not take long to get dark after the sun sets and we had to be off the summit no later than ½ hour after sun had set.  The cost to use the telescopes is huge and the scientists want every minute available to them with out any problems from the tourists.  Our guide only used his four way flashers to light his way down the first mile or two of the road.  Headlights were kapu as they would interfere with the telescopes. 

  

We stopped at the visitor centre for a quick potty break and then a short drive to a secluded spot for the second part of our adventure.  The guides quickly set up two very powerful telescopes for us.  There was quite a bit of thin cloud cover at this time, so star gazing was not optimum, but as the night progressed the clouds cleared away and we were rewarded with an awesome celestial display.  Nonie and I finally were able to see the Southern Cross.  While Hawaii is in the Northern Hemisphere and you can see almost 100% of the northern sky, it is close enough to the equator that you can see over 60% of the southern sky. Hence the Southern Cross.  We spent three weeks in South America and witnessed the same clarity of the sky during our stay in Patagonia.  We were similarly awed by the stars during the first night of our stay in the Torres del Paine Park in Chile but we were never able to find anyone there who could show us the Southern Star. 

After an hour or so of star gazing and some hot chocolate, we started the descent back to Kailua Kona. Those comfortable seats with lumbar support and shoulder seat belts really came in handy as I was able to doze most of the way despite being tossed around almost non stop till we got off the Saddle Road.

Home by 11:00 PM Kona time, 2:00 AM BC time to hopefully watch a recording of Survivor.  SUCCESS.  To bad about Bruce but he was going to get the boot in the next few weeks anyway.  Bottom line, I could have easily made the trip in the rental.  Next time, we drive ourselves.