Day Six: Waipi’o Valley and Mauna Kea
After rousing from deep sleep Angela, Meg, and I went for a morning run. Since Hilo is the rainiest city in the entire United States, you can imagine that the humidity is pretty high there. However, it felt good to run and any suffering due to the moist air was nothing a shower and breakfast couldn’t cure. Afterwards, we decided to walk down to the end of our block and explore Waipi’o Valley. A few years ago, Backpacker magazine ran an article showing one of the hikes up through this incredible valley. This inspired Travis to suggest this trip in the first place, and is to where we owe many thanks in the end for such a great time. Now getting down into this valley means driving a four-wheel drive or walking down a very steep and narrow road. One of the people who was renting us the Cliff House had kind of scared us off from driving down so we walked it. All things being said, I’m glad we did, not because the Jeep wouldn’t have made it (Travis drove down to the beach later), but because we were able to see so much more of the view on the way down.
Within the valley are several waterfalls, including Hiilawe Falls (1,100 feet) and Nanaue Falls, both of which we were able to see from a distance. We walked down the tar and gravel road, picking up many strange fruits along the way. A few tour busses passed us heading off for horse riding tours and sightseeing. After crossing the stream(s) several times, we reached what looked like the end of any road that led to anything other than someone’s house. I asked one of the tour guides if we could proceed across the property up to Nanaue Falls and he kindly told us to just follow the gravel drive beside his property. Now, as to what consitituted “his” property, we couldn’t determine after he left, so we asked some of the neighbors we passed a little while later. They were pleasent enough, and politely explained to us that no, we couldn’t go through there, but we were welcome to turn around and make our way down to the beach. From there we could pick up the King’s Trail that went to the falls. Well, we knew we were going to have one heck of a climb back out of the valley, so we just decided to head back for lunch.
After lunch and some ice cream at the Waipi’o Art Gallery (who was also the management of our rental house), we headed out to reach the top of a volcano. Travis and I had origionally though that hiking six miles up to the summit of Mauna Loa might be fun. However, there isn’t really much to see up on Mauna Loa and we really didn’t have the time for a twelve mile round-trip hike (and at altitudes none of us Virginians were accustomed to). Angela decided that the dormant volcano, Mauna Kea, might have more to see and do, plus we could drive right up to the top. Sure, that’s cheating to the mountaineering crowd, but when you’re limited in time, you take what you can get. We drove up Saddle road, across the central part of the island, which creeps ever upward through mining areas and military installations into endless lava fields which were covered in fog. We stopped at the turn to the access road which leads up to the summit to spend at least a couple of moments getting aclimated to the altitude2. After all agreeing that we felt fine, we headed on up. We drove up past the Astronaut Ellison S. Onizuka Space Center, stopping for one road-side photo, and on up to the observatories near the summit. The view from there is absolutely spectacular.
Travis and I realized that the true summit was a small peak away from the observatories, so we hiked across the small saddle between to take in an incredible view of Mauna Loa above the clouds. Sadly, this is where the batteries in my camera died, but fortunately, Travis’ trusty 35mm kept going. He was able to get some photos of a simply unbelievable sunset before we headed back down. However, before heading all the way to the bottom, we decided to do some more exploring. Mauna Kea is also home to one of the highest glacial lakes in the world, Lake Waiau (more). We parked near where we though the trailhead should be and, at about dusk, Travis, Angela and I set off with our trusty headlamps to try and find it (Meg stayed behind to ensure the Park Rangers would have someone to chew out). After much shuffling over sharp rocks, Travis made the discovery for the three of us: a perfect 300 yard-wide glass mirror sitting under the moonlight. Travis made many attempts to take a photo of it, but this is likely to be one of those moments when amatuer photographers simply cannot capture what they’ve seen with their eyes.
Upon returning to the vehcile, Meg informed us that the Ranger had instructed us to drive down the 6+ miles to the visitor’s center with only our parking lights, as not to disturb the stargazers below us. Fortunately, years of driving like this as a teenager in the country prepared me for this (thanks, Dave!). We stopped off at the visitor’s center, where Travis and I decided to talk to some of the folks with telescopes what they could see and had seen earlier in the evening. Before the cloud cover came in, apparently it had been a very clear night for seeing things above. I was impressed at the equipment, although I’d have loved to have checked out one of the large telescopes at the top of the volcano. However, it was late, so we headed back down to Waipi’o, stopping for some late night fast food along the way. It had been a long day and we were in some desparate need of sleep.
Day Seven: Volcanoes National Park
We slept in for quite a while the next morning, taking a break between naps for a pancake breakfast. We eventually made our way down to Volcano and the Volcano Winery. We sampled the fare, which consists of many sweet wines, which usually aren’t my taste. However, their “Symphony Dry” was very good. Many of the wines are sweet because they’re not from grapes at all or have other fruits blended in, since grapes aren’t really native at all to Hawai’i (but then again, many plants there are native, like coffee and pineapples). One of interest was the sugary “Volcano Red,” which was made party from locally grown jaboticaba berries. It was mainly interesting because jaboticaba was so fun for Angela to say and also because the Brazillian jaboticaba berries grow on their trees bark, rather than from the ends of limbs. We all loaded up on wine and then drove to the Volcanoes National Park Visitor Center. Here we found a nice picnic table and had our lunch.
We went from there to the see some of the steam vents (which reminded me of Yellowstone) and to the Jagger Museum and Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. Next was the Kiluea Iki Crater overlook and the Thurston Lava Tubes, which are really incredible. These tubes are like subway tunnels beneath the rainforest. The next part of our tour of the park took us down the aptly-named Chain of Craters Road, where we actually saw both ends of the same rainbow (a first for me). Hawai’i is known for it’s rainbows, because where else do you have that much sun and rain in the same place? We stopped a little ways down the road and actually found the end of the rainbow. Sadly, it seems to end in thin air just below the rim of a volcanic crater.
Now, for I keep mentioning lava-rock-this and volcano-that. Where’s all the action at, you ask me? Well, that was exactly what was on our minds as we headed down the Chain of Craters. We wanted to see some flowing lava. If you’re in the youngest place on the planet, wouldn’t it be great to see some of it forming right before your eyes? We finally made it to the end of the road, where lava overtook the pavement just a few years ago. This could just as accurately be called Chain of Cars road, since there were hundreds of cars parked along the side of the road, with people walking across the lava fields like this was Disneyland or something. This was right at dusk, so we again broke out the headlamps and flashlights. Meg and Travis got a good head start, but Angela and I did our best to catch up and get a good glimpse at Pele herself. The “trail” is nothing more than plastic reflectors attached to the lava rock in something of a zig-zag pattern. Although people walk this anytime, during the night is when you can really see the light from the lava. We were fortunate in that the steam and gas plumes were visible on the drive down and the orange and red glow of the molten rock was visible in the dark. My photography skills just aren’t good enough to have taken any meaningfull pictures, but I did my best to try and capture what we could see while there.
Day Eight: Waterfalls and Going Home
Honaka’a
Akaka Falls
Rainbow Falls
Flight Home
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2Altitude sickness sets in at around 8,000 to 9,000 feet for most people. Generally speaking, altitude sickness doesn’t happen all at once, so a day trip is usually okay. However, we did climb every foot of the summit’s height of 13,796 feet from sea level that morning, so we wanted to be carefull and at least give our bodies a chance to react. I can honestly say that I began to feel very short of breath, had an intense headache, was very dehydrated, and had lost all appetite by the end of the day. That could have been exhaustion, but I can’t help but think that the altitutde had at least something to do with it.