Day 7 - staying put

Today, we were total and absolute beach bums.  In an attempt not to spend a ton of $ on resort food, we've found ways to eat small meals like breakfast at the coffee shop or from the little grocery down the road.  We have also been able to spend the previous days either on the road or in places were you can eat more authentic Hawaii food ( mmmm....poke!).   Anyway, all that to say we avoided the $35/ person giant breakfast buffet and headed straight to the pool.   I grabbed my snorkel gear and headed to the lagoon and bay next to the hotel.  

Lagoon on the right is man made but open so fish and turtles can swim in.  The water on the right is Waikoloa bay.  The lagoon was kind of murky with just a few fish.  Head to the left and it was a whole different experience.  I was the only person out there.  Just me and the fish. 

We spend until early afternoon by the pool or just lounging around.  I actually bought my very first pair of....don't laugh...flipflops.   At the moment, I'm wearing flipflops AND a Hawaiian shirt.  You will just have to use your imagination.  Maybe island life suits me better than I thought.

While walking around the lagoon, I did run into a friend.  He and I hung out for a while. 

There was also this on the beach someone made in black lava rock.   Now, I know it's not for us, but I thought it was a cool coincidence.  

Another cool part of the resort is the dolphin lagoon right below us.  

About 6-8 dolphins live there for dolphin experiences you can buy.  We can just sit on the balcony and watch them play.  

That's about it for the day.   I will leave you with one parting thought,  we had tried a lot of authentic Hawaiian food.  One food that we just may not get to is Spam....Spam is big here, people.   So big, it is a classic flavor of macadamia nuts....behold!

Goodnight and aloha. 

Day 6 - a lot of travel.

This is going to be a short post...sorry.  We set out today from Volcano in the morning.  It was a chilly clear day and gave some good farewell views of Kilauea.  

Bye Volcano House!  You were aweome in the most national park lodge way. 

Kilauea was also churning away.  We went out to take one final look of the crater.  Standing on the edge of one of the world most active volcanos and seeing it spit gas, steam, and lava is an experience not to miss.  It really puts you in your place on this planet.  

We headed down Hwy 11 which is a two lane rural highway through the southern part of the big island.  A friend had told us of a beach park ( Hawaii is full of them) where the snorkeling is good and the sea turtles are abundant.  It didn't disappoint 

we decended 4000 ft from Volcano back down to the coast to Punalu'u Beach.  It's one of the really accessible black sand beaches in Hawaii.  When a lava flow hit the water, the obsidian rock cooled so fast it burst into tiny particles to create the black sand.  

It's quite striking.

You want to just fill your pockets with it and bring it home...the black pebbles too.  It's not only illegal, but highly bad luck...like cursed luck, to take black sand.  Hawaiians are smart that way.  It keeps their sand where it should be.   

You can try and try to take photos of the beach but I think it's close to impossible to really capture it.  

Then...you see these....

Green sea turtles.   Now, I have a little history with sea turtles going back to the Loggerhead Hilton on Pritchards Island in SC.  I combed the beach to catch sea turtles laying eggs so we could put them in a safer place.   I haven't seen a wild sea turtle since until today.  

There were just a couple on the beach this morning.   Then we talked to a guy who was out snorkeling in the bay.   He showed us where the turtles were feeding off to the side.  There were at least a dozen surfing the waves and bobbing with the surf.  

Hard to see but one in the photo is up for air. 

We decided to break for the snorkel gear and within a few minutes, we were out in the bay and swimming around the turtles.  

Not my image, but it felt kind of like this.  Several times I was face to face with a 3 ft long sea turtle.  Absolutely one of the coolest experiences here on the island for us.  We have had a few high-five moments on this trip...this one definitely one of the big ones.  

A quick word abort snorkeling we learned from a friend.   When you get here, go buy some cheap snorkel gear.  Walmart or target both sell them.  They run $25-$40 a set.  Keep it in the car at all times.  There are public beaches everywhere.  Most of the beaches have bathrooms or changing rooms and showers.  You can be in the water in minutes.  While tour bus people were gawking at the two turtles on teh beach, Kim and I were swimming with a dozen of them.   Best advice we were given, hands down.

There was another cool part to Punalu'u beach....the forest.  This edge of the beach was a crazy looking forest with a lily pond. 

It was a magical morning. 

Down the road a bit, we stopped into Punalu'u Bake Shop - the southern most bakery in the US. 

We had a couple of malasadas which is kind of like a cross between a dinner roll and a donut.  Very tasty.

A few more miles down the road, we hit the mother load of lunches....Da Poke Shack.  honestly, this could be my last meal on earth and I would die happy.  The flavors are sweet, and savory, and buttery. It's like the best sushi you've ever had 10x. Maybe an exaggeration, but there is no denying that poke has become one of our favorite altime foods.  I'm gonna miss it...big time. 

It comes with rice and a delicious dried seaweed sprinkle, a veggie side ( mine is kimchee cucumbers...Kim's is pineapple with Li hing powder (sweet and salty).  The poke today was albacore tuna because the ahi were not biting this morning...that's how fresh.  By the way, they won #1 best pick for Yelp in 2014.  #1 for EVErYtHiNG!  

And it comes from a place like this.  let me just say how much I love the roadside food here on teh big island.  Aside from the places like Da Poke Shack, there were numerous roadside Kona coffee shops, and my favorite, the roadside fruit stands.   Today, I stopped at an unmanned stand to pick up what will probably be my last bunch of apple bananas ( about 1/2 the size of normal bananas). You just grab what you want and put the money in a lock box - honor system of course.  oMG!  I wanted to grab one of all the things!

We also stopped at a Kona coffe shop to fuel up for the rest of the ride. All the coffee here is Kona because that's the region.  It's the only state in the us to grow coffee and it's all on the big island.  

All along the way were small coffee farms like this one.  

We have made it to our final destination at the Waikoloa Beach resort.  our next 3 days will be sitting by the pool and sipping fruity drinks.  Thanks for reading and being interested in our adventure.  it's been fun to recount the trip each night.   Not sure if I will write much more just due to the lack of travel on the island at this point.  If something interstesing happens, I'll post. 

Aloha!  

Day 5 - LAVA!!!

The day here is not over - it's only 2:30 for us - be we are DONE!  We got up at 5:30am and drove to the end of Chain of Craters Road in the park that goes from the visitors center all the way down to the coast (about 4000 ft in elevation change).  We prepared the night before the have food to munch on and had all of our gear ready.  Why - to hike in to see the current and only lava flow.  It just broke through and is now pouring into the ocean.  

The hike is about 10 miles round trip.  We started the trail around 7am.

The white stuff on us is sunscreen by the way.  It's wide open and there is no shade on this trip.  We came prepared with about 2.5 liters of water each.  We needed almost all of it.  We had about a 15 MPH wind ion our faces the whole way in.  We averaged about 3.4 MPH on the trail.  Gaia GPS is an awesome app for the iPhone BTW.

The walk in was mostly a gravel road.  It is flat by our mountain standards, but 4 miles of rolling hills is still a trek.  You can see in the upper left above the black lava what looks like clouds...that's the Pu'u O'o' flow coming down the mountain.  

Most of the trail really looks the same, but there is some awesome lava formations along the way.  This one is considered 'ropey' and is called Pahoehoe.  

There's some nasty sh*t that comes out of the vents.  Sulphur dioxide is one.  You can smell it as you approach the flow.  

 

You could feel the heat about 100 yards before you got to the flow.  It was HOT.  I mean HOT.  It was like standing in an oven.  You could see the air disturbance around you it was so hot.  

Since the hottest lava stays underneath, the lava on the crust has 'cooled' to a black color.  Ever naw and then, you could spot some red peaking out.  

See it under there? 

We made some obligatory selfles to prove we were there.  

Make no mistake, where we are standing is HOT.  You begin to feel the hot air burn after just a few seconds.  

Also one more thing.  We saw most people being respectful, but in Hawaii, poking at lava is considered very disrepectful.  Lava rock is also illegal to take and is considered bad luck (like catastrophic bad luck).  

We headed back and enjoyed the walk along the coast.  

OH! And before we started the hike, a group of Hawaiian geese walked by.  Very endangered and sacred.  They're called NeNe (like watch me NeNe).  

As we got back towards the car, the landscape turned back into a grassy, shrubby look.  There was a grove a coconut trees planted along the road from a family in the 1960s.  

Beat, tired, blistered, but happy.  It was a good day.  We came back to the lodge and ate a well earned lunch.  Kim napped, and I wrote this.   Aloha!

Day 4 - on to Volcano NP

This morning was our last in Hilo.  We had a special breakfast at Paul's Cafe.  If you read about his restaurant, he has only 3 tables.  You have to get reservations for breakfast or lunch.  We got in for 7am....we had been up for and hour and a half at that point anyway thanks to the 6 hour time change. I don't normally post food pics, but this was amazing.  A smoked salmon poached eggs Benedict with asparagus and fresh tomatoes. 

After breakfast, we packed up and said good bye to Hilo.  We felt very at home there.

Bye old Japanese kitty mural.  

It takes about 45 minutes to drive from Hilo to Volcano National Park.  Over 30 miles, we climbed 4000 ft. 

The rest of the day was exploring Volcano NP.   First we visited the Visitor Center and then the Jaggar Museum on the edge of the kilauea crater.

That's Kimmie in front of Mauna Loa...the tallest Mtn on earth measured from the sea floor. From sea level, it is over 13,000 ft.  It's also a shield volcano...she can tell you more about that.

Kilauea is a very active volcano.  The lava lake is about 1.5 miles away from teh viewing area.  You could barely make out lava spattering up from the lake...mostly steam and smoke.  

At night however......

You can really see the glow from the lava lake reflection off the smoke.  This is the view from the lodge, and even from our hotel room.  

On to the hikes.  We saw the Mauna ULu eruption site from the 1970s.  Crazy lava formations.  You're feet tell you it's just rock, but your brain says" this used to be liquid...right here". It's a crazy feeling.  You can see the lava where it was flowing and then cooled.

You can see where it ran into the road and cooled...crazy.

After we went to the Tomlinson Lava Tube...a natural tunnel made though lava by lava. 

That was all warm up for the next 4 mile hike into Kilauea Iki.  A crater that blew in the 1950s.  We hiked down the crater edge and through the middle of it.

A few from the crater wall...400 ft down is the crater floor.  Luckily the first 1/3 was all downhill.

Once at the bottom, it was like being on the moon.

The rest of the day was ckecking in to teh Volcano House - a lodge that has been around for a century in some form. 

We cleaned up, cooled off, and enjoyed hanging out.   National Park Lodges are the best.  There is nothing like them, anywhere.

Tomorrow we are heading out very early for a 10 mile hike (round trip) to see the lava flow that broke out this year.  It hit the ocean.  We can't miss it.