NONIE AND BRETT’S BELATED HONEYMOON- Episode 6

 VOLCANO NATIONAL PARK, PART ONE AND GREEN BEACH, PART DEUX

We broke all records today as we left the condo at 6:55 AM Kona time.  It was going to be a full day visiting the Volcano National Park so I wanted an early start.  I had hoped to find a coffee place open along the way but no luck.  

As we approached the turn off for the green beach, Nonie suggested that since it was so early, we should make a quick detour back to the beach to pick up my sunglasses. I had been squinting into the sun as we drove and after short consideration and some rationale from Nonie, I opted to make the detour.   

The hike was a totally different one from the previous day.  We knew where we were going so that sped up the process.  We tried to drive the Jeep in as far as we could but chickened out after only a few hundred metres.  We speed walked into the beach in under 40 minutes.  It took me a few tries to find the exact spot where I had laid my glasses. If I had not found them, they would probably still be there hundreds of years from now. Some tourist would find them and be in awe of this ancient Hawaiian technology.  A power walk back to the Jeep and we were back to the main highway and on our way to the park with a delay of under 2 ½ hours. So much for the quick detour!

We arrived at the park and immediately went to the Visitor Centre to orient ourselves, catch a twenty minute introductory video, check on the access to a restricted hiking trail that will bring us within 3 miles of the active vent Pu’u O’o.  The vent is part of the Kiluaea volcano and has been venting uninterrupted since 1983.  You must register and sign a disclaimer to hike this trail.  Nonie and I will hike the trail on a return trip to the park later in the week.  Today is just an esploring day.

Due to our later arrival, the park was full of those pesky tourists and a number of buses.

One of the main reasons that I wanted to arrive early was to avoid some of the tourist congestion. We did discover that the bus tourist did not seem to want to get off or were not given time to get off the bus. They just did a quick drive up and stop at most of the attractions. Even a short walk to a view point seemed out of the question.  This certainly reinforced our desire never, ever to be a bus tourist.  I can see if your health precluded you from enjoying these short hikes but most of the bus tourists did not look so unhealthy as not to be able to walk a hundred metres or so.

There is an 11 mile drive around the volcano called the Crater Rim Drive.  We headed counter clockwise.  

Our first stop was the steam vents. Rain water has filtered down into the ground where it heated enough to boil and generate steam.  A short walk from this stop and we got our first look at the Kilauea Caldera. It is about 2 miles across at its widest. 

Every once in a while we caught whiffs of sulfur from nearby steam vents. I sucked up a lot of sulfur at a natural gas plant during my Fort Nelson days so we did not feel the need to visit.  It can also be very dangerous. H2S gas is a basic component of sulfur and it can kill you if enough is present.  Signs warning of the dangers of the gas are every where.  

We got back on the Rim Drive for a short trip to the Thomas A. Jaggar Museum for a quick lesson on the birth of a volcano. 

Volcanoes are created by hot spots in the earth’s shell where the magma has come close to the outer shell of the earth and then found ways to vent through cracks in the outer surface. The hot spot never moves but due to the natural continental drift (About 4” per year) the location on the outer layer of the earth moves. That is how the islands of Hawaii were created.

 K’auai, the northern most island is the oldest island and the big island of Hawaii is the youngest.  The youngness of the big island is why there are still active volcanoes here as it is still partially located over the hot spot. 

There is a new volcano vent called Lo ihi located in the ocean about 20 miles off the south coast.  In about 10,000 years it will be a new island but right now it is still a mile under the sea but already over 10,000 feet high.  Nonie and I plan to visit this new island when that occurs. This way we are sure to beat the tourist buses.  If you were to include the mass that is located below the ocean surface, Mauna Kea would be the tallest mountain in the world, taller than Everest.  Mauna Kea is estimated at over 30,000 feet. That is a whole lot of lava.  Kilauea has added over 600 acres to the big island since it started erupting.  

Photo: Wikipedia 

Next stop was the south rift zone.  Due to the volcanic activity, Hawaii is constantly subjected to different levels of tremors and earthquakes.  One of the signs of an impending eruption is an increase in the tremors and sudden upheavals in the volcano, with giant cracks appearing.  The cracks that we saw occurred during the 1974 eruption. The cracks started in the caldera and formed all the way down to and out into the ocean over 30 miles away.  

The cracks were so large that you can actually walk down inside them. In fact, you could drive a sub-compact car into it. Not as large as the Grand Canyon but still very impressive.  The force and power needed to create them must be huge. 

Halema’uma’u crater view point was our next stop.  This is actually a smaller crater within the larger Kilauea Caldera. It is considered the birth place of the Goddess Pele. When we arrived, a large group of indigenous Hawaiians were just leaving.  The men were wearing just a loin cloth and carrying wooden spears.  

The women were wearing the most startling yellow dresses. They had just completed a ceremony over the crater honoring their ancestors. Like Mauna Kea, Kilauea is very sacred to them.  Imagine having thousands of tourists tramping through your church every day?

 

Devastation Trail was our next stop. We used the parking lot for a bit of lunch. The trail is a half mile out and back that takes you into the area of the 1974 eruption. The history of the park is captured by the years of the different eruptions. 

As you near the crater the land goes from tropical rain forest to arid desert. The eruption completely denuded the area around this part of the crater and 30 years later nothing grows here yet. It can take hundreds of years for the flora to return. 

 

In some lava flows, the outer layer of the lava cools and forms a hard shell around the molten lava. (2100 F)  The molten lava inside the hard shell continues to flow.  When the lava stops flowing, a hard shell is left behind creating a hollow tube that we can now visit. 

Photo:stanford.edu

The Thurston Lava Tube is our next stop.  

The tube entrance is located in a very dense tropical grotto. I expected Tarzan to pop out of the trees at any moment.  As it was late in the day, there were no buses and we pretty well had the place to our selves.  The tunnel was cool and had lots of water dripping from the ceiling.  At the end of the tunnel was a gate where you were invited to continue to explore the tunnel in its more natural state. You needed flashlights.  Nonie and I will stop here on our next visit and do a little esploring with our newly purchased headlamps that were bought specifically for this. 

Our last stop of the day was the Kilauea Iki lookout. The Kilauea Iki crater is a smaller crater located adjacent to the larger Kilauea Caldera. 

This is the trail head for our 4 mile walk along the rim of the Kilauea Iki caldera, down into the crater, across the caldera and back up the other side.  This hike will go down as one of our top five hikes if not second best. 

Our hike up Villarica volcano will probably be our #1 hike. There we actually climbed in to the caldera of a live volcano and had hot magma blowing over our heads. 

The crater rim trail starts through a tropical rainforest climate with little peek-a-boo views of the crater. After a mile we headed down a steep and narrow trail (lots of steps) and as we reached the last few 100 feet, we were confronted by the floor of the crater. 

 

The crater floor was very surreal. It was like we had walked out into a place where time had stopped.  There were very few living things growing on the floor of the crater. Here and there, in cracks of broken lava, small bunches of grass and flowers grew. 

In a few instances small trees called Apapane took hold in cracks no bigger than a saucer. The tree has small red feathery flower that seems to bloom all the time.  The red of the flower is in stark contrast to the desolated look of the crater floor. Steam was rising from vents scattered over the floor of the crater creating a prehistoric atmosphere.  What the earth would have looked like at the beginning of time.  It certainly seemed the kind of place a hobbit would need to get rid of a certain ring. 

There are two types of lava.  ‘a’a (aaaahhhh) This type of lava is rough and jagged like the clinkers you get from coal fired boilers and is almost impossible to hike on. When it vented, it had less gas and a much lower temperature than the other type of lava and was created by more explosive activity.  

Pahoehoe (Pahoehoe) is a soft billowy type of lava.  It is flatter and is formed much hotter than the ‘a’a.  It moves very slowly, kind of bubbling out of the vents.  It moves slowly over the surface.  This is the type of lava you see in pictures that people stand in front of and poke sticks into.  Exactly the picture I would love to get.   A partially solidified skin will form over the flow, sort of like the skin you get over the surface of boiled milk.  This skin protects the lava from cooling to fast and allows it to travel great distances over the surface.  

The floor of the crater was made mostly of Pahoehoe lava so it was very easy to walk on.  In some areas, the Pahoehoe had bubbled up like a hot spot on a pizza, and then fractured into flat chunks that looking like huge paving stones. Trails had been built over the few areas of the rough ‘a’a lava to protect clutzy tourists.  Falling on this stuff would hurt.

 

The hike took us just under two hours with the final section a climb up a narrow switch backed trail.  Thankfully, there were no stairs.  With trail weary legs we climbed back into the Jeep and the two hour return trip to Kailua Kona. 

 Tired we opted for dinner from our neighborhood MacDonald’s.

NONIE AND BRETT’S BELATED HONEYMOON- Episode 5

 EVEN A LUAU CAN BE TACKY IN PARADISE

We broke our record today.  We were actually on the road by 10:30 AM today and are headed south to check out a place called Kula Kai caverns. The caverns are located about thirty miles from Kailua Kona.  Tonight is luau night and it starts at 5:00 PM so I did not want to travel to far from home.

We arrived to where I thought we should be but the road had a locked gate with lots of Private Property signs posted everywhere.  We drove down to a small market, gas station, restaurant complex and in true Amazing Race style asked for directions. A nice couple in the local flower/gift shop found the phone number for us and I called.  It seems that we were at the right place, but you need to have reservations to visit the site.  AW CRAP!

Upon reading our guidebook a little closer, it did say that reservations were required.  The nice folks in the flower/gift shop recommended that we go down another 20 miles and visit Punalu’u Beach.  The beach is famous for its black sand and turtles that hang out in the bay.

 Being constrained by time, I wasn’t sure I wanted to drive any further but what the hell, let’s esplore.

I was again pretty sure that the turtles were a tourist hoax.  No problem finding the beach.  Nonie and I are becoming very savvy with the ways of Hawaiian directional signage. The parking lot contained a few cars and two large tour buses.  Damn tourists have probably chased off any chance of seeing a turtle.  As it turned out one bus was full of what looked to be teenage high school students on an informative class outing.  They were all having lunch when we arrived. 

 

 

 As we walked over to the beach, a white rental car drove up with 4 young Japanese girls. The parked in front of the sign for the beach and one jumped out and took a picture of the sign, then two more jumped out and posed in front of the sign with the beach in the background and took a few more pictures.  They then all jumped back in the car and roared off.  We had just witnessed a “Drive by Tourist”.  To be fair, Nonie and I have been guilty of the odd offense. 

The beach was black as advertised.  Black sand is formed by the gradual wearing down of the lava into small particles.  The particles are still quite large compared to the white sand beaches. We wandered down to the beach where we found lots of signs saying do not bother or touch the turtles (Japanese translation as well) but I had little hope that we would see any turtles. The beach was too busy and any turtle in his right mind would be gone. Wrong again.  After just a short stroll, we came across a large one just lazing in a protected tide pool.  The waves would roll in and gently toss him around. He / she was a big one and we were standing only 5 feet away. 

Before long we were surrounded by other tourists, so we continued our stroll up the beach. We found a little tourist shop and bought a postcard of a turtle, just in case mine did not turn out.

 We returned to the Jeep and headed back towards Kailua Kona. I did not want to get caught up in any traffic jams and be late for our Luau.  I had planned to stop and enjoy a hike through the Manuka Natural Area Reserve.  We arrived in the parking lot at 1:30 PM.  The trail was about 2 miles but sad to say we would only have about ½ an hour to esplore.  The trail was definitely rough.  The area is over a very old lava field and over hundreds of years flora and fauna have made a come back and created a very jungle like place but the lava underneath is very rough.  It just dawns on me as I write this, that all of Hawaii is on lava as it is a volcanic island. We walked up the path for about 20 minutes reached the ½ mile point and returned.  The reserve is supposed to be home to wild pigs, and I was disappointed as we did not see any wild pigs.  We did however stumble across a large bird of some type. I have taken a picture and some day when time allows, I will try and identify it.

 A short bathroom break and we are back on the road to Kailua Kona.  On our way out, we had spotted a bakery which advertised fresh banana bread, baked daily and both of us agreed that we should stop on our return trip and get some, which we did. Back on the road and it happened. The traffic jam that I had feared materialized shortly after we left the bakery.  Thankfully it was over quickly and we were not delayed for to long.  It is now about 3:30 PM and the outbound lane from Kailua Kona is jammed bumper to bumper.  

It is 5:00 PM and we are standing in a line-up outside the luau grounds of the Royal Kona Resort. The grounds are located right on the water and look very nice.  

Photo:Royal Kona Hotel

After a short wait in line we traded our voucher for some tickets. Inside, we were greeted by a young good looking kid who placed shell leis around our necks.  Next the obligatory picture and on to the open bar. 300 guests and they had one guy mixing drinks. You could move on to a self serve punch bowl that supposedly had Mai Tai ready to drink. Nonie and I opted for the Mai Tai bowl.  One sip and it quickly became apparent that there was little or no rum.  With a small tip we could get someone to wave a rum bottle over our plastic cup.  Even this was too little. 

We then move into the luau ground and present our tickets to the waiter / luau guy and he takes us to our table. It seem that the company who sold us our tickets are in with this luau as we were taken to primo seats in the first row of tables directly in front of the show stage. No tip required.

 At the table we sat across a lovely couple from Nashville, Tennessee, whose names I have already forgotten.  They are on a two week trip to three Hawaiian Islands.  They started in Oahu, flew here to the big island, and then flying on to Maui where their trip will end.  We made small talk for about an hour while sipping on weak Mai Tai.  Nonie drank three and did not feel a thing.  I drank four with extra rum and was more sober than Nonie. The nice Nashville couple had spent the previous day on a 12 hour bus tour around the entire island. You can actually get a guided “Drive by Tourist” outing here in paradise. They did in 12 hours what is going to take us 2 weeks.

The traditional way to cook for a luau is to first dig a big hole, light a huge fire in the hole and heat several rocks.  When the fire has died down and the rocks are nice and hot, you bring on the pig. The pig is gutted and placed in a wire basket. I don’t think the wire basket is traditional but I wasn’t about to argue with the two big Hawaiians cooks.  The hot rocks are then removed from the fire and placed inside the pig.  The coals of the fire are then covered in sand.  

The sand is covered with Ti fronds and the pig in a basket is laid on to the palm fronds.  More Ti fronds are used to cover the pig.  

The fronds are then covered with a number of traditional white table clothes (Traditional?) and then the whole thing is covered with more sand and allowed to sit and cook for at least 6 hours.  I remember doing similar cooking at a number of scout camps. 

The luau officially starts when they uncover the pig and place it on the serving table.  I thought it started when you got your first Mai Tai. 

 

From there the buffet was opened.  Our table was one of the first to go up to enjoy a traditional Hawaiian feast. The buffet offered such traditional items as poi, mahi-mahi, pulikai and of course teriyaki chicken, teriyaki beef, bean salad, tossed salad, steamed rice, white buns and coconut cake for dessert. . It was all very tasty not with standing very traditional. 

Our emcee for the nights festivities introduce himself and Nonie coined a new term. She called him a Luau Lizard. The guy is a direct descendant of Don Ho. The show was very colourful with lots of great coconut brassieres and hips gyrating to the groovy sounds of the Kula Mai trio.  

The show culminated in a fire dance, which involved flaming batons with a lot of spinning and juggling with a bit of fire eating.  Very colourful.  The show was over by 8:30.  I took lots of pictures and hopefully at least one with a coconut bra will turn out.  Despite all, we did truly enjoy the evening as it lived up to all our expectations.  It pays not to have high expectations. 

 

After a short walk we headed home for banana bread and bed.

 

PARADISE HAS TOO MANY TURTLES

 Woke up today at 7:00 AM Kona time, 10:00 AM BC time.  I think I am getting a handle on this time change thing.  On the lanai by 7:05 and at 7:15, I had a cup of Kona coffee in my hand.  Happiness is a good cup of coffee and a lanai. Today I had fully intended to get off early but no luck. We didn’t leave the condo till 11:00.  

We are headed to Pu’uhonua O Nonaunau National Historical Park.  It is also known as the City of Refuge. It is a beautiful site located on a finger of lava jutting out into the ocean on another beautiful bay.  The site is surrounded by a huge rock wall measuring 10’ high and 17’ wide which dates back over 500 years.  There are older ruins on the site but there is no written history on what was here before. 

Photo: National Park Service 

The resort for kings was located on the land side of a great wall.  It also served as a temple and a burial ground for the kahuna (royalty) of the island.  The Place of Refuge is located on the ocean side of the wall.  If you broke kapu and were being hunted by warriors, you could make for this site and if you made it safely, the local kahuna would have to grant you refuge on pain of death. After a cleansing ceremony, you could return to your home. 

The place is very scenic with its own protected little bay where the king would arrive for ceremonies, blessings or to bury a family member.  It is one of the best maintained indigenous native sites in all of Hawaii.  

The bay was filled with sea turtles.  We even found one who had come up on shore and was basking in the sun.  Very cool!  King Kemahameha 1 visited this site on many occasions.  The last burial was carried out in the early part of the 19 century.  We had a wonderful chat with a young Hawaiian who was reconstructing a wooden handle for an adze stone. The adze was actually from the museum collection.

Up at the visitor information centre we enjoyed a conversation with one of the park rangers who was packing a really big gun.  When he found out we were from BC he mentioned a cruise holiday from Vancouver to Skagway.  We got started on the similarities of the Tilingit and Haida people with the people of Hawaii and Polynesia.

  

We all agreed that there were many similarities and there had to be some connection in the past.  The Hawaiians have held a number of Polynesian conventions inviting representatives from all over Polynesia.  During the last two conventions, they invited native representatives from the west coast of BC and Alaska to attend as they feel that there is a bond between the two cultures.  Nonie and I have traveled up the coast and can really agree that there are a lot of similarities.  Totem poles, dug out canoes, artwork, carvings and potlatch.  But we have also seen similarities in Asia. The Tlingit and Inuit look more Asian while the Haida look more Polynesian. 

The Hawaiians wanted to build an outrigger big enough to sail the Pacific.  There were no trees big enough on the island so Alaska sent over a large Sitka Spruce for the dug out to be carved from.  The most southern tip of the big island is the centre for a large number of currents and the ranger explained that many things washed ashore here including trees from as far away as the west coast of North America and it was thought that this was where the large trees came from for the large outrigger canoes.  He called them a gift from the sea gods. Best conversation I have had with someone carrying a gun.

We hit the highway for our next stop, the green beach.  Since we had seen a black beach yesterday, it seemed only fair we visit a green beach today.  Getting to the beach involved a 12 mile trip down a narrow road to the southern most point in the United States.  Along the way we passed a wind farm.  There were at least 30 huge generating windmills. They looked quite impressive from a distance, but close up, I realized that they were abandoned and not used anymore. What a waste.

 

Near the end of the road we came to a fork, we took the right fork and arrived at a little parking lot that was already close to being filled and was mostly filled with locals.  There was a lot of fishing going on.  The parking lot was located at the base of a cliff.  The locals were casting their fishing lines of the cliff and into the sea.  Some were tying plastic green garbage bags blown up with air to their fishing lines.  The bags floated on the surface and pulled the fishing line quite far out into the bay.  Didn’t see anyone land a fish but there were dozens of people trying.  

We loaded the backpack with lunch and headed out on a three mile hike along the ocean to the green beach.  The area was flat grass land with nary a tree in site. Luckily it was partly cloudy so we were not parboiled.  It was still hot any muggy though.  Along the way we found several huge logs washed up on the shore. Definitely dug out material! Could not tell what type of tree, but they were definitely not from any Hawaiian island.

The coast line is very dry and sparse. The wind is always blowing. As we hiked we kept seeing piles of full, green garbage bags, every couple of hundred feet. Today is Earth Day and volunteers were out cleaning up all this flotsam and jetsam.  We were told that they would probably have over 1,000 bags of garbage when they were done for the day.  Note: I read in the paper that they collected over 8,000 bags over the whole island.

The green beach is located in a bay that was formed by a huge cinder cone.  A cinder cone is formed when the hot lava is vented and erupts from a hole or crack. The lava can shoot hundreds if not thousands of feet into the air.  It falls back to the ground and forms a hill of cooling lava.  This cinder cone is thousands of years old and on the ocean side of the cone; the walls have eroded into the sea thus forming the bay. 

This particular cinder cone had lava that contained a huge amount of green olivine which in bigger sizes is a semi-precious stone.  The sides of the cone are slowly eroding into the ocean and have turned the beach into a dull green colour. It is very stunning. 

We had to climb down a very narrow and rocky trail to get to the beach.  We found a comfortable spot to enjoy the view and have lunch. Lunch done, a little exploring, we found our way back along the trail to the top of the cider cone and headed back to our car. It was after four but we ran into a number of other tourists just heading out to the beach. One couple was wearing sandals and carried no water. Hope they got back before dark. Silly tourists! 

Some of the trail passed through lava fields and the footing could be very tricky in the dark.  I had stopped along the trail as we left the beach to set up our camera on a tripod, to get a picture of Nonie and I with the beach in the background. I took of my sunglasses and set them down to work the camera.  I laid them down on a rock. They are still sitting there.  We will drive back out on Monday to see if I can find them.

 

Back to Kailua Kona, with a stop at Safeway for dinner and lunch stuff for tomorrow.  We picked up frozen pizza for dinner. YUCK.  We are spoiled by Nonie’s homemade crust and fresh ingredients.

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.