Hawaii, The Big Island

Thursday, 4/17 Hilo, Hawaii

We arose early, at 6:00 A.M., to watch the Dawn Princess arrive in Hilo harbor on the “big island” of Hawaii. It was cloudy and warm, with the promise of rain, something that happens often on this side of the island. The Hilo side gets over 126 in. of rain annually. It features tropical rainforests. On the "Kona side" only 10 in. falls during the year. It is semi-arid. It makes for some interesting contrasts in flora over short distances.

The island is also much bigger than the others, at 4,000 sq. miles, some 2/3 of the landmass of the island chain. It also has three volcanoes, two of them active. We were scheduled to visit Mt. Kilauea today.

We breakfasted in the deck 14 Horizons court, watching with interest the rain pregnant clouds circle the high peaks on the mountain. It is always hard for me to imagine how big these islands really are. The seamount upon which the island is perched, extends over 18,000 feet to the seabed below. The highest volcano, Kilauea reaches another 13,000 feet above the sea line. This is one tall hummer of a mountain. When you think of lava exploding all the way up through 31,000 feet of mountain, that makes for a degree of physical force that is hard for me to grasp.

Our group assembled in the deck 7 Vista Lounge and was duly led ashore and into a warehouse to await our huge land cruisers for the 7-hour tour. The heavens opened and the rain poured like a Spring torrent. We scurried, laughing, for the bus like kids in a schoolyard. Derek, our driver was both young and obviously highly educated. He looked like a younger version of Wayne Newton. His grasp of plate tectonics, the mechanics of volcanic eruption and a score of other disciplines, involving agriculture, local flora and fauna and marine biology were not just superficially acquired. The man had been a student some place and paid attention to what he had read.

The land cruiser lumbered up the ascending roads of Mt. Kilauea. It was raining intermittently. We could see the dense, lush foliage everywhere around us. Our destination was the Volcanoes National Park, atop Mt. Kilauea. We arrived soon enough and stopped in a small lot adjacent to the Thomas A. Jagger observation station. Inside are displays explaining measurement of earthquakes, pre volcanic expansion and scores of other details relating to volcanoes. A few colorful murals depict the Goddess Pele and her minions. The Hawaiians have a rich mythology about everything. We were tongue in cheek cautioned about removing lava samples, because Pele would bring us bad luck. However sophisticated or urbane we thought ourselves, no one removed any lava samples.

It was misting lightly, as we stood outside the center and looked across the Caldera, or Volcano's mouth. The distance was a staggering 2 miles. The actual volcano mouth was surrounded by succeedingly larger depressions that extended out further. It was fascinating for me to look at this cone and realize that enough volcanic material had erupted from this aperture to create 4,000 sq. miles of land mass and extend some 13,000 feet into the air.

All around the caldera, you could see the searing marks from tremendous temperatures. Great white swaths of dried calcium and super heated sulphur remained from the flows of heated magma.(magma below ground, lava above) As the mist and rain seeped into the ground, steam rose as the water hit heated rock below. The aura was medieval and menacing. Off to the Southeast, visitors were warned from walking because the sulphur fumes could be toxic. It looked like Dante's version of the nether regions. It held us spell bound at the raw power and energy contained in the process. Super heated Lava was currently seeping from the side of Mt. Kilauea, about 11 miles from and below us. It was too difficult to get us safely near enough to view the phenomenon.

It was only 12 years ago that an enormous lava flow had slid down the mountain and destroyed 189 homes and virtually the entire town of Kalapena. The fiery lava seeped into the ocean and created super heated mists that exploded the rocks and created the black sand beaches that we were to see in a few hours.

We traversed the volcano on a ring road, watching the lunar landscape created by the sulphur and old lava flows. The driver stopped for a time and let us walk out among an old flow from 15 years back. The lava had the consistency of brittle tar that had frozen in wildly flowing waves of super heated rock. The top layer of the flow had that crystalline diamond effect as the molten surface rock cooled and crystallized. Just down the road we drove by a flow from the 1950's. Grasses and scrub trees had already started to cover the rock, attesting to its rich mineral content. Everything grows well in the rich volcanic soil.

Down the road, the arid scenery changed quickly to that of a tropical rain forest with dense vegetation. We were stopping at the “Thurston Lava Tube.” The 360 yard, ten foot high tunnel had been carved out by heated lava. When the surface of a lava flow starts to cool, the molten lava often is still flowing beneath the surface. It does so and created a tunnel to flow hrough. The super heated gases, just above the molten rock, further molded and carved the area until a fairly smooth rock tunnel is created through which the lava can flow like tooth paste through a tube. We walked the damp tunnel and were mindful of the heat and energy that had created this natural wonder. At the other end of the tunnel, we ascended a few sets of stairs and the hiked through the dense tropical rain forest to our bus, admiring the many varieties of plants and flowers everywhere around us. This had been an interesting stop. Luckily for us, the rains had stopped for a few minutes to allow us this walk through the lava.

The Park has a functioning lodge and restaurant that over looks the volcano mouth. It is named appropriately, Volcano House. Our bus rolled up and we got off to stand in line for the buffet. The house had that CCC, open-beamed, timbered look that you find in many American Parks. Its broad picture windows overlook the Volcano mouth some miles in the distance. The lunch was middling to poor, “slop the hogs” variety. The place was crowded to the gunnels with tourists from everywhere. We finished quickly, browsed the cheap souvenir shops and then did a “Chevy Chase” outside looking at the scenery, before boarding the land cruiser to continue the tour.

From the Volcano house, we rode a brief way to the “Akatsuka Orchid Gardens” to admire the many gorgeous varieties of colorful orchids that the island produces. It was visually pleasing to see so many orchids in an attractive display. The rains came with a vengeance as we traversed the mountain roads to our next destination, the Mona Loa Macadamia Nut grove and factory. It sounds inconsequential, but these nuts are big business here abouts. The nut trees are densely planted on 225 acres of scarce land. The trees take over seven years to mature before dropping their nuts to the ground, from where they are harvested and processed into all manner of candied and dressed macadamia nuts. They retail for $25 per pound. The bus stopped at the gift and sales shop for everyone to browse and sample. Mary and I made for the ice cream stand behind the place. For $6, we ate some wonderful chocolate macadamia nut ice cream. It was delicious.

The rain was still pouring on us, so we passed on seeing “Mac the nut” the company's mascot. We elbowed our way through the crowded shop and tasted some of the samples. They are delicious in all forms. Our fellow park bears were munching at the sample “buffet line” like people who hadn't just consumed 1200 calories at the Volcano House.

From the Mona Loa Nut factory, Derek drove us to the ocean shore, at the afore mentioned site of the unfortunate town of Kalapena. The bus parked and we then ventured across the lava flow. It extended back some 11 miles, is over 15' high, and is 1/3 of a mile across, to the black sand beach at the ocean shore. The flow had destroyed 189 homes in its trek to the ocean. It was surreal walking across the huge, cooled mass of lava. Great swirls of cooled rock made walking difficult. We literally had to jump from one smoothed pile of lava to another. The fissure here were more brittle, like shattered pottery in a huge black piles of hardened tar. A sign stood out on the flow. It had a walker, with a red line though it, apparently warning people from walking across lava that had not yet cooled.They then risked being burned alive.

The black sand beach itself was weirdly beautiful. As the super heated lava met the cool ocean, the rock literally exploded into thousands of tons of black powdered rock. This created the black sand that we now trod upon. Here and there in the fissures, locals had planted palm trees that were now inching up through the lava fissures. In a few hundred years, this newest portion of Hawaii will be a tropical beach and palm grove. Maybe we should take out land options now for our descendants?

As an interesting aside, the housing lots below the huge mass of cooled lava still belonged to the residents whose homes had been destroyed. An enterprising local mayor had wanted to tax the owners for their buried lots. He was near run off the island. The idea has not resurfaced again. We enjoyed the sea, sky and harsh lava for a time and then set off back across the fractured flow for our bus. The day was getting long.

Our last stop on the tour was modest though interesting. The rain was falling on us as we left the bus to look at Rainbow Falls. It is a pretty setting surrounded by African Tulip “flame” trees, towering Banyans, with exposed roots and huge monkey-pod tress with their large, leafy canopies. We took some pictures and admired the flow. In that Niagara Falls is virtually down the road from us,in New York, we wondered at all the fuss. But, whatever does it for the tourists, works for everyone, I guess.

The rains had come in earnest as we returned to the harbor area. We espied a small grocery and stopped by to buy a bottle of Merlot for shipboard. Then we scurried back across the ways, fielded the array of security cordons and entered the Dawn Princess, grateful for the dry and clean surroundings. We had a glass of the Merlot in the cabin as, I wrote up my notes. We settled in to relax for a bit. This vacationing stuff was getting to be hard work.

At 6:00 P.M., we walked up to the deck 14 Windjammers Bar, to have a drink and watch the Dawn Princess weigh anchor. She was sailing for Christmas Island, in the Gilbert Islands chain, some 2,000 miles South of here. As we watched the big island settle into the Horizon, we met and talked again with Tom Bleckstein. He was a developer. In that I worked for an association of builders, we shared municipal war stories and enjoyed the ritual of leaving port.

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Joseph Xavier Martin