Snorkels up!

While we have been snorkeling twice before in Hawaii today we decided to find a good spot to spend the morning. After causing our hosts some 'inconvenience' we followed their advice and headed down to a bay nick-named 'Two-Step.' Upon arriving it was clear where the nickname came from; after walking across some lava formations there are two natural lava steps that provide access right into the bay. From the second you enter the water and throughout the bay it feels like you are in an aquarium. The bottom is typically 15-25 feet deep and filled with seemingly healthy coral which in turn host numerous fish of every color. With our limited knowledge we were able to identifuly: eel, green turtle (not that hard), clown fish (damn Nemo, you are small), parrot fish, yellow tang and probably about 10 others that probably are not yet named.

Afterwards we returned briefly to White Sands Beach, popped into a natural foods market we had been meaning to check out and put a wrap on our stay here in Kona. Tomorrow we get up early to begin our trip back to CT, but we do have 12 hours in Honolulu so we will see what we can find...hopefully a good bar are two.

A day in town

With a limited number of days in town we decided to spend the day in Kailua Village (the big town of the Kona area). We happen to choose the day of the week when the cruise ship visits, however its impact is negligible which was nice. Masking our burns from Mauna Kea we visited Island Lava Java for Kona coffee and lunch (it was solid) and then went for happy hour. We followed our wallets to one of the cheaper bars in town (maybe Rositas Cantina, or something like that) for $2.25 drafts and $3 bottles. The environment was what you'd expect for the price, sticky and pretty cheesy (for example a typical sign may read 'Beer, not just a breakfast drink) but it was open to the ocean which is cool. To end the night we saw the new Batman movie which is about the best entertainment you can get for $10.

Volcanoes National Park

We devoted about 4.5 hours of driving to visit Volcanoes National Park and after some initial concerns it was definitely worth it.

To get the negative out of the way we were surprised to find that nearly every 'must-see' site is on a 20 mile nicely paved road within the park. The result is hordes of people delivered to the doorstep of major sites via coach bus and being tailgated by speeding drivers within the park which seems the antithesis of the experience you would expect at a National Park (and UNESCO site).

After our initial concerns we were still able to appreciate some of the sites that were on the road: 1) Kilauea Culdera; 2) Thurston Lava Tube; 3) Kealakomo Overlook, and; 4) Holei Sea Arch.

In addition we also really enjoyed some of the others that required walking (and thus had much smaller crowds) such as the 2003 lava flows that closed parts of the Crater Rim Road and the 4.5 mile Kilauea Iki Crater trail which is a hike through a prior lava lake that erupted in 1959  subsequently leaving a crater that still conceals magma below the surface and releases sulphur dioxide. Unfortunately we did not have the required 4.5 hours to hike over the 2003 lava to see the current flows - a disappointment to which we owe our poor planning, again.

Let's try another beach

We made a second trip back to South Kohalo to visit a beach, this time visiting 'Beach 69' so named after the telephone pole number marking the entrance (which has recently been changed to 71). This beach was pretty much exactly what you would picture on a tropical island: crescent shape, white sand, a backwall of trees, and clear warm water.

The only negative to the beach was the lack of marine life. We went snorkeling and saw but a handful of fish, very small coral growth and for the first time no turtles. But otherwise the beach is awesome.

Mauna Kea has been summited

All 13,796 feet of her. It is hard to describe how difficult this was. Imagine a 4600 foot ascent straight up the mountain, no switchbacks, variously straight into the sun or through cold damp clouds, at altitude with 60% less oxygen...oh and the side of the mountain was effectively as lose as beach sand. At various times the following phrases were uttered by one or both of us:

- "I never want to hike another mountain;"
- "This is the worst hike I have ever been on;
- "I hate this;"
- "I can't make it;"
- "OK we'll walk these thirty steps then take a break, walk thirty more and sit down."

And on and on. What is incredible is that the Visitors Center only warned that 'severely' obese people should not hike and Lonely Planet said it was a five hour hike up, which it was, but we essentially crawled up so they must have too - it would have been nice to mention that. By our count there were about three other people who hiked up today and two of them refused to walk the last 1.5 miles up the summit road (you can drive due to the telescope employees and the last bit of hike is actually on the road) and instead were hitch-hiking. But we made it, straight up with no help!

The summit itself was very nice, but unfortunately we could not stay for sunset and to see the stars due to lack of a car. Fortunately after about three miles descending on the road rather than the trail we were offered a ride by a father and son from Montreal, reason #42 to love that city.

So we are now home, burnt, exhausted and trying to figure out how little we can do tomorrow.

Another beach day

Yesterday we tried to mix up our beach selections by choosing a local beach in South Kona. The beach itself was nice, however the weather at this beach (weather is different every mile on the Big Island) was overcast and its visitors were a sort of gypsie/carnie mix. After about two hours we opted to go back to the White Sands Beach in Kona itself. This is definitely the tourist beach, but if we are honest with ourselves it was a fun beach. Waves were consistent and got up to eight feet at times and there were green turtles despite the crowds, both of which kept us occupied right up until sunset.

Big Island road trip

For our third (and final?) roadtrip of this vacation we headed north then east, first stopping at the Waipi'o Valley which we naively thought we could hike throughout but learned that it was a minimum three day hike to 'check-out'. So we took some pictures with the stop-and-click tourists and moved on eastward with the next stop being Onomea Bay. The area was beautiful and we wished we could have stayed longer than the 30 or so minutes we were there but the BUGS!

Our final stop was Hilo which is not pictured because it is a pretty boring town. After a nice lunch on the bay we paid a brief visit to the rainbow falls and then returned to Kona via the Saddle Road which runs right through the middle of the island, splitting Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa.

In consumer product news we are driving a Chevy Impala (which is apparently classified as a 'compact' car here) and it is an oversized, gas guzzling car that is going to cost us a few bucks before we leave the Big Island.

Beaches

The past two days we have spent recuperating from our travels with trips to two local beaches. The first was a deserted, black sand beach known as Keawaiki Beach. The beach was a perfect retreat from peolple but had some rough access to the water so today we travelled a bit further north to Anaeho'omalu Bay ('A' Bay) which had nice salt-n-pepper sand, some reasonable snorkeling around coral, and some friendly green turtle visitors.

We think we are now recharged and are planning a more adventurous day tomorrow.

And some fine Kona-Kailua businesses we have found thus far:

- Kona Bay Books: an awesome used book store to rival any bookstore;

- Killer Tacos: a small, cheap and fantastic taco place that has already provided two meals.

Kona digs

We thought this deserved its own post - we finally found a place that is both cheap ($50 per night) and nice. We are staying in this stand-alone cottage just outside Kona for the next 11 nights and couldn't be happier with it.

Also, we have cheap food, beer and wine in this country - even in the middle of he Pacific - so that has us in great spirits as well! L

Finally!!

I think it will just make us sad if we think about how much effort and time it took to travel from Martinborough to Wellington to Auckland to Tokyo to Honolulu to Kona but we are finally here. And it was not all bad, Brian is still maintaining platinum status with United from his working days so we had showers and drinks in Tokyo and flew on the second floor of a 747 in business class. All told we must have had about 30 'free' drinks on the way over (including Air New Zealand which we flew coach and still got mamosas and two glasses of wine).