There's a lot to do from the Kona coast to Hilo on HWY 11 on the Big Island - checkout what we did and why we chose it! This is one of Mike's posts - didn't notice Nathan was logged in :)
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| Swimming with sea turtles at Punalu'u - read on! |
Green Sand Beach
Want white sand - the make believe super-fine stuff you find in travel mags? - Hawaii has that... but it also has black sand, salt-and-pepper mixes of the two, and, apparently,
green sand too!
Cheryl and I went to checkout a relatively secluded green beach and to jump off a 40' cliff (hopefully none of you are secretly relishing the idea of me doing that) :)
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| South Point |
We're pretty wary of crowds, so we got up early to drive down to South Point - the southern most tip of the United State.
By the time we arrived there (it's 12miles off the main highway), it was 9:20am. We pulled into the sand parking lot at the end of the road to be "greeted" by one of the illegal shuttle drivers - a sketchy looking character (a darting-eyes, strange-look-on-my-face kinda guy).
The parking lot is strewn with rusted-out vehicles - mostly 4x4s - pickups and jeeps. They're derelict-looking jalopies whose remaining service life will be spent illegally shuttling walk-weary beach goers down the 2.5mile lava shoreline to the green beach bay.
Now, it should be said, the 4x4 "roads" look like a lot of fun to drive - crazy rough terrain - from jutting lava spikes to paths dug 3' deep into sand dunes - it's something to behold.
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| Rugged a'a' lava shoreline - spiky and treacherous... I'm standing on a piece of scant shoreline greenery :) |
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| Rugged beauty |
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| 3' deep 4x4 roads in sand dunes - cray, cray! |
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| Sand dune desert-scapes! |
Cheryl and I, in the spirit of 40-yrs-old-seeing-to-kids'-needs-and-just-want-some-exercise, decided to run the paths on foot - a great decision! The path is 100% sun-exposed and long - 2.5miles each way with myriad non-sand paths - perfect for a run!
On a hot, sunny day, anyone would be gassed walking the 2.5 miles back after a day at the beach - running it got us out of the sun in 1/2 the time (or less), and felt really good. We were justly rewarded by being the first to the beach for the day!
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| Arriving at the beach |
Wait for it...
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| Stunning view - yowzah! |
Were you expecting emerald green? It's Olivine - which is more grey-green!
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| Green-ish sand - pretty unique! |
There were 2 ways to descend to this beach - both a little dodgy. We chose route through a natural break in the lava rock cliffs and clambered over lava boulders and under lava archways to get down. The other way was a rickety staircase and a "stride down a steep sandstone cliff/mega dune".
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| Prepping for a well-earned swim |
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| All to ourselves... for a while anyway |
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| One last view before the run back... |
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| More Olivine shoreline |
All said, we're glad we went! It'd make sense, for anyone considering a visit to this beach, to give you fair warning about the rip tide here - it's a whopper. We visited on a very nice, low wind, calm-sea day... and the rip was significant - and I find rip tide exciting, not off-putting.
Cheryl and I were body-boarding waves and we both got tossed pretty hard -
adult hard. Neither of us would recommend anyone bring kids to swim at this beach.
Cliff Jumping At South Point
It needs be said straight-out that there are signs at the South Point Cliffs "parking lot" that clearly say "don't jump off cliffs"... but alas, they were far too tempting... and many other people were doing it... and it's even in the guide books... and it was super-safe... and
VERY FUN.
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| Jumpers at your mark - ready, set, gulp! See - LOTS of people do it :) |
So - there are these weird bolted-in contraptions on the cliff edge that give you a jumping runway and support a 3-wobbly-rusty-steel-extension-ladder-sections-chained-together-ladder (not sure they sell this one at the Home Depot :) so you can climb back up and do it again.
They say the cliff is about 40ft tall. The water below is surreal - crystal clear turquoise with at least 20ft of water when we were there... and fish everywhere!
If you ever plan to do this - expect some delay climbing the ladder - queues can form - nobody is in a big rush to climb the slippery exit ladder :)
Swimming with Turtles - Punalu'u Beach
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| Rough volcanic sand/pebble beach |
There's something about big turtles that's awe-inspiring. Maybe it's their reclusive nature - or maybe it's the way they shun people by tucking their heads into their armour - or maybe it's their up to 150yr lifespan! In any case, they're very cool.
The water at Punalu'u, is very cold, thanks to offshore fresh water springs that liven things up :) Sea turtles apparently love this environment - they hang out here all day. The shoreline is kind of scrappy - alternating between rocky a'a' lava flows and pebbly jet-black sand. Nathan ripped-up his foot on some a'a's that he couldn't see poking up through the sand - the life guards supplied better band-aids than the ones we had... they also told us where to find the turtles swimming!
We donned our goggles and brave Canuk cold-water tolerance... and boy are we glad we did! We frolicked in the water, literally, with a 1/2doz turtles until we got too cold. They were playful and not very wary of us.
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| 4 in this shot! |
The mixing of salt and fresh water makes visibility in this water a challenge... but we still got a few interesting photos under the surface.
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| The rear view - how embarrassing! |
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| Top view - righteous dude! See the cloudiness in the UL corner - that's fresh water mixing with salt water?! |
We also saw a few on shore (though we much preferred experiencing them in the water).
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| A hearty climber |
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| Baking in the sun |
Punalu'u wasn't our favourite beach, per se, but we seriously enjoyed the turtles that call it home - a must see, in our humble opinion :)
Volcanoes National Park - Kilauea Entrance
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| The nearby-ish town of Hilo is circled in blue |
We would have loved to have spent more time in Volcanoes National Park... but... something really important was missing... RED, FLOWING LAVA, for instance :).
For 35years, the volcanoes on the Big Island spewed red lava for all to see - during that period, it took out 200 houses. Then there was a break... and then you may remember an eruption that started ~2yrs ago and lasted for ~6mo - it made headlines because it took out 300 houses in a very short period of time... then, as luck would have it, all is relatively quiet on the lava front when we were there.
We thought we'd drive up to the 14,000ft peak of Mauna Kea (yup, 14,000ft - look it up - if you include the volcano's sub-sea base, the whole thing is 30,000ft - taller than Everest!). There is a thriving astronomy observatory at the peak with a 30ft telescope you can checkout during normal business hours... but alas, we had no luck there either - protesters had their knickers in a knot about a planned new telescope installation... so the access road was closed - argh!
Having recently been to Yellowstone, we have seen a ton of geothermal activity - indeed, Yellowstone was very up-close-and-personal (you can (re)read our blog post on it here:
Yellowstone-national-park). Our kids had recently experienced geysers and steam vents and the like.
I wanted to walk in a lava tube... but the
Thurston tube was closed - you may be sensing a theme here. I found some DIY tubes just outside the park... but we ran out of daylight and so we had to skip 'em.
Despite the 'challenges', we paid the area a short visit anyway, and what we saw did not disappoint.
The Kilauea caldera is very, very hot - there's steam pouring out of holes all along the rim trail.
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| A Panorama of the Kilauea caldera - zoom in for detail - checkout the surface textures and steam vents! |
The crater is sinking - collapsing under its own weight due to a lack of magma supporting it - hence the recessed part at the back of this photo.
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| Steamy! |
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| Stinky - Sulphur - the kids exchanged many a fart joke - H2S (Hydrogen Sulphide) smells like rotten eggs | | |
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The local flora was beautiful too...
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| Orchids |
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| Lehua - all over the place |
We'd love to go back and spend more time when things at the National Park return to 'normal' (if ever) :)
Hilo
We popped into Hilo briefly to stock up on some fresh produce at the big farmer's market there. It didn't disappoint - from local bananas to pineapples... passion fruit, papaya, citrus, veggies - all at decent prices.
Parker had been yearning to drink from a coconut - a vendor at the market was slicing them up/open and so we bought one - he loved it!
We were far from home, so we stopped for dinner at a Thai place in town near the waterfront -
Bangkok Thai Villa - a link to our review of the meal we had.
We saw a whopper Princess Cruise Lines cruise ship in the harbour - Hilo's waterfront felt tourist-ready for sure. We only spent a few hours in town, but it felt interesting - wish we could have seen more.
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