Hawai’i

Day Four (continued): On To The Big Island

We flew over the East­ern side of the big island, see­ing a water­fall in almost every gulch along the way. We land­ed at Hilo air­port just as the fog rolled in. Hilo Air­port is sort of a cross between an air­port ter­mi­nal and a pic­nic shel­ter with very nice appoint­ments. It is prob­a­bly the coolest air­port I’ve ever seen; com­plete­ly open air. We picked up our rental at the Thrifty counter: a 2005 Jeep Grand Chero­kee. Travis had the fore­sight to get a large four-wheel dri­ve SUV for our stay on the big island, which proved to be a great decision.

Our dri­ve up to the rental house in Waip­i’o was part­ly through the rain and most­ly at night. We arrived at our place and were very impressed to find a charm­ing two bed­room bun­ga­low up on piers with every pos­si­ble con­ve­nience we could have wished for. We decid­ed that before got too com­fort­able, we should get some gro­ceries and din­ner, as things tend to not stay open late in the coun­try. Grab­bing a cool­er on the way out, we drove back into the neigh­bor­ing town on Honaka’a and stopped by the gro­cery store (which closed at 8:00 pm, which I found odd) and stocked up. We then walked across the street to a lit­tle place called Cafe Il Mon­do, which From­mer’s had rec­om­mend­ed. It seemed a lit­tle pedes­tri­an to be get­ting piz­za for din­ner while in Hawai’i, but we all agreed it seemed appe­tiz­ing based on the descrip­tion and the place seemed very cozy. There was a nice cou­ple play­ing some folk music on gui­tar and upright bass. We arrived just around clos­ing time, but were ush­ered on in and sat right next to the musi­cal enter­tain­ment. We had an order of cheese-bread, a cou­ple of piz­zas, and some sun­daes for dessert; and all I can say is that this place would be suc­cess­ful any place you dropped in the world. The food was ter­rif­ic. Who knew such a great Ital­ian place would be in a small town in the mid­dle of the Pacific?

Day Five: The Big Island Loop

We decid­ed we do the longest dri­ving on the first day of our stay, since we like­ly would­n’t feel like after sev­er­al days of hik­ing. The des­ti­na­tion: the South­ern-most point in the 50 Unit­ed States. Yeah, I though it was Key West, too. How­ev­er, South Point, or Ka Lae as it’s known to the locals, is at 18° 55′ com­pared to Key West­’s 24° 32′ North of the equa­tor¹. Any­way, we drove around the Lee­ward side of the island to take in the cities of Kailua-Kona and hope­ful­ly sam­ple some cof­fee. Kona has a lot more tourists that Hilo, and is known as the hip­per part of the island (ver­sus Hilo, a much more work-a-day city). It is also host to the Iron­man World Cham­pi­onship each year. We were there a cou­ple of weeks before the race, and things were start­ing to get pret­ty busy. We bought a cou­ple of t‑shirts and stopped at the gro­cery store, but did­n’t stay long. We were on to find some more remote places.

Along the road head­ed south, Angela found us a nice lit­tle cof­fee mill and store to stop in at, Bay View Farm. While they grow some of their own cof­fee, they also buy from many of the locals, who seem to sim­ply grow cof­fee in their yard. They have, as you might guess, most­ly the Kona vari­ety of cof­fee. I also tried some peaber­ry, which is some­what rare and unique to the Kona cof­fee plants. (I was impressed enough to buy a half-pound and have been enjoy­ing it for most of the month of Octo­ber.) I also grabbed a few of the red beans, or cher­ries, which were ready for har­vest for us to sam­ple at the gra­cious direc­tion of the store clerk. They quite sweet and choclatey, but also a lit­tle too fleshy and firm to make much of a snack of. I real­ly enjoyed get­ting to see the cof­fee farm, and had they had some oper­a­tions going on, I would have liked to have hung around even longer.

We drove on through too many lava fields to keep count towards South Point, stop­ping off to eat our packed lunch. Travis and I walked around on what from a dis­tance looked just like mounds of dirt, but upon walk­ing over, was essen­tial­ly piles of loose, jagged brown rocks. Pho­tos don’t do lava fields jus­tice, since there is no way to judge scale, let alone the sen­sa­tion of walk­ing over large, loose cin­der. Even­tu­al­ly, the lava fields gave way to green fields and we turned off on the nar­row, wind­ing side road that wove it’s way through cow pas­tures and wind­mill farms to the rocky cliffs of South Point. We came up on a num­ber of locals fish­ing and cliff jump­ing. Upon see­ing the lat­ter, Travis took what seemed like all of about ten sec­onds to decide he, too, was going to jump off of the edge of the cliff. He, in the end, actu­al­ly jumped off twice. I think if they climb up a very rick­ety, rust­ed lad­der was­n’t so long, he’d have done it sev­er­al more times. Travis lat­er described it as one of the high­lights of the trip, so I’m glad he took the time to do it.

Next, we decid­ed to make the most of our Jeep and take it the six miles or so to the only green sand beach in the entire world, known as Puu Mahana. This was some pret­ty bumpy dri­ving, since all the ground is noth­ing but sharp lava rocks cov­ered with a thin lay­er of sand and silt. I think Angela and Meg felt like their heads were about to fall right off their necks from being shak­en around so much, but we final­ly got a cin­der cone angled down into the ocean’s edge. At it’s base is a coarse sand beach with a def­i­nite olive hue. It is very strange, and also very beau­ti­ful. We watched a fel­low swim­ming with his dogs and walked around a bit before climb­ing back up the cliff and dri­ving back over the rough ter­rain to the paved road. (This web site has much more about South Point and the Green Sand Beach.)

After see­ing a green sand beach, well you imme­di­ate­ly think, what oth­er col­ors of beach­es can I see today? Nat­u­ral­ly, on Hawai’i, there are black sand beach­es, due to all that black lava rock. We drove North­east up to Punalu’u Black Sand Beach Park, where many sea tur­tles like to come to nest. There weren’t any while we were roam­ing around at dusk, but appar­ent­ly this was at least one of the times of year that they choose to make nests. The black sand beach had much of the same coarse feel to it as the green sand beach (think: rock salt). As it began to get dark­er, we head­ed back up North, through Vol­ca­noes Nation­al Park to Hilo in search of din­ner. Din­ner end­ed up being at Nori’s Saimin & Snacks (via From­mer’s), a Hawai’in take on the old greasy spoon din­er. We all had var­i­ous local dished, includ­ing fish sand­wich­es, teri­a­ki, and bowls of saimin noo­dles, but Ange­la’s Lau Lau was the most unique to Hilo. A Lau Lau is a Taro leaf which has been boiled for a cou­ple of hours, then wrapped around meat(s), and then steamed for sev­er­al more hours. The result is a gigan­tic, wet mess of leaf and meat which is served with gar­lic oil. It makes col­lard greens and oil look like a snack. After all fill­ing our­selves even more on desserts, we drove the hour from Hilo back up to Waip­i’o, com­plet­ing our jour­ney around the cir­cum­fer­ence of the big island.

↑ Back to Trav­el | ← Back to Oahu | More Hawai’i→

¹Accord­ing the U.S. Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey, who know about such things. Although both the U.S. Vir­gin Islands, Amer­i­can Samoa, and Guam all beat Hawai’i; espe­cial­ly Amer­i­can Samoa, since it’s 14° 23’south of the equa­tor. How­ev­er, to my knowl­edge, Hawai’i is the only one that is still grow­ing, so let’s give this a few mil­lion years and re-mea­sure. Of course, if the Pacif­ic plate is just mov­ing North, then don’t expect much.