Final notes from Hawaii

Pu'u O'o/Napau crater hike

We started the day with a leisurely drive up the slopes of Mauna Loa to a lookout point above Halema'uma'u crater (the one that's simmering away inside Kilauea). The lookout is at 6600 feet (less than halfway up the mountain), so in theory, it should have been possible to look down on the crater, but in practice, the slope of the mountain is so gentle that you end up quite a distance (miles) away from the crater by the time you reach the lookout. So although you get a nice impression of the scope of the overall caldera, and a different view of the steam and sulfur emissions than what you can get from inside the park, there was no actual view down to the crater floor. The drive was a waste of time from that perspective, but was a nice drive through old-growth rainforest that had survived previous eruptions, including one that plowed right by it and could easily have erased it. There were many different successonal stages of younger forest along the way, in various stages of recovery after previous eruptions.

The other actively lava-generating site in the park is Pu'u O'o, down in the southeast, but it's a closed-off area (again, for safety reasons), and it's a long full-day hike across arid, very hot (sunbaked) old lava fields to get anywhere near the danger area. We weren't up to that much hiking, particularly without starting earlier in the day, and chose instead to hike only a mile or so past the Pu'u Huluhulu outlook, a large wooded hill that is close enough to Pu'u O'o to provide a distant look at the steam vents; you can't actually see the eruption, since that's mostly occurring in the form of underground lava flows in the direction of Kalapana.

I started the hike limping, since my old hockey injury to my right ankle was protesting my cavalier treatment of it (all this running about on uneven lava), but our hiking poles proved to be a really good investment. Because I had them, I could use them as makeshift crutches, with the straps around my wrists supporting my weight each time I put my right foot down. An hour or so of walking with less weight on my ankle made a huge difference, and by the time we hit level ground later in the hike, I was mostly able to walk without relying on them.

Shoshanna actually enjoyed this hike more than the crater hikes of the previous day, but it was similar in many ways: a wide range of lava formations and more of the infinite variety of rock forms. The hike starts alongside a relatively recent flow of 'a'a lava, heaped about 10 feet high along the edges of the older flows and having missed a stand of ohi'a trees that must have breathed a huge sigh of relief at their narrow escape. Of course, not all the trees were so lucky. One of the attractions of this early part of this hike is the large collection of "tree casts". When lava flows into a forest and hits trees, it often wraps around a tree, like a wave breaking around an obstacle. It then ignites the tree as it cools. Because thick wood is reluctant to burn, even at high temperatures, the tree survives long enough for the lava to cool and form a cast around the tree, even to the point of preserving the bark pattern. The tree then burns away, and lava continues to flow around the frozen cast, and eventually you're left with a tall rock outcropping with a central hole in the shape of a tree; sometimes there are even multiple connected holes where the tree had low branches that formed their own casts.

Another thing that happens is that methane and other flammable gases sometimes accumulate in the ground, presumably where a tree is knocked over, buried by lava, and cooked into a mix of hydrocarbons. When the gases get hot enough, they ignite, blowing apart the lava with an effect that resembles (according to the trail guide) a "landmine going off". Large plates of the solidified lava buckle upwards from the source of the explosion, and smaller fragments are thrown around like shrapnel.

In addition to the 'a'a lava, there are broad expanses of pahoehoe (pronounced "pa-hoy-hoy") lava, which is smoother. It tends to form broad pavements in level areas, making for easy walking, but where it pools or gets diverted around an obstacles, it can form thick, ropy strands. These sometimes resemble braided ropes large enough to moor a battleship, and sometimes resemble the kind of structure you'd get if you drew an omega or U-shaped symbol with toothpaste, then drew additional swoopy lines on top of that, gradually building up a structure of layered ropes. Along with this, there are a few areas that have the shapes of the bottom halves of lava tubes—to give them a name, call them lava canals. This occurs where lava is thrown up to form bulwarks or banks, and successive lava flows, insulated by these banks, flow between them and spill out elsewhere. The series of flows, some of which spill over the edges of the channel, build a smooth-bottomed pathway with ledges along the sides at the approxomate heights of each subsequent lava flow.

Our goal on this hike was to reach the lookout, then go beyond it into an area where you require a pass from the rangers to proceed. (They do this to keep track of how many people are traveling this far from the visitor center; it's not necessary to return the pass at the end of the day to tell them you made it safely home.) The Pu'u Huluhulu lookout is a short, steep climb up a mini-mountain of lava (only a hundred or so feet high) covered by forest. Because it was sufficiently high and wide, the surrounding lava flows basically parted around it, leaving the forest essentially intact. Unlike most of the rest of the hike, you're surrounded by forest during the ascent (nice and cool), and end up at a breezy outlook with good views (weather permitting) of Pu'u O'o. Because we had much haze and rain in that direction, some of which caught up with us later, we didn't see much more than the near slopes of the lava mountains that are the source of the active lava lows, but even from more than 4 miles away, it was easy to see huge gouts of steam escaping the fracture zone on our side of the crater.

One particularly nice portion of the hike is a "lava lake", where lava flowed into a small valley and filled it, successively overflowing down the hillside and filling up again, with cooled lava piling up and building "bathtub rings" higher and higher around the edges. It's not on the main trail, but a short hike to the side, once again illustrating the benefits of taking time to enjoy the journey and not letting the goal of covering distances stop you from enjoying the ride. Here, we clambered up a steep and slippery ridge (about a dozen feet), and sat down at the top to enjoy the view and imagine a bathtub several hundred feet long and filled with molten lava. [This was Shoshanna's favorite part. --Shoshanna] We turned around not long after that, because we still had some things we wanted to do.

Probably the highlight of the hike came at the end, when we took a short side excursion to a prosaicly named "fissure". [No, wait -- this ws Shoshanna's favorite part. --Shoshanna] This was an area where the ground was literally pulled apart by the force of an earthquake; there are many famous earthquake faults, but most seem to be essentially invisible or nothing more than a disturbed patch of earth. Here, lava fountained up out of the resulting fissure, shooting hundreds of feet into the air. When you approach the fissure from the parking lot, all you see is a serious of mundane-seeming knobs of lava that form an erratic kind of wall only a dozen or so feet high, like the back of a cartoon dragon. But these knobs were formed by spatter from the lava fountains, and when you round the end of the line, you see that they're lying right beside a deep fissure ranging from inches to perhaps 10 feet wide that runs (with a few interruptions) hundreds of feet. Some of it has filled in in recent years, but most of it still extends downwards a considerable distance: tens of feet in a few places, and as far as the eye can see in one place.

The edges of the fissure are often an orangey-brown lava, but there are many other colors, including a wasp-like yellow and black mixture and an irridescent blue-black sheen with purple highlights. In the fine lava gravel surrounding the vent, there are many examples of what are referred to as "Pele's tears": smooth, teardrop-shaped black grains of lava about the size of a lentil or split pea that solidified in mid-air as they fountained out of the eruption. Very pretty.

We finished the day with a drive down Chain of Craters Road, which descends about 3000 feet to the southeast coast. The first part is a gradual descent, and the surrounding land is covered with forest interrupted by frequent lava flows, some of which clearly covered the road at some point in the past. Towards the end, the road swings towards the sulfur and steam plume from Pu'u O'o, and then plunges rapidly towards the sea in a steep descent, with spectacular vistas of the coast and ocean. The penultimate stretch (as far as we went) drops by up to 1000 feet in a very short distance, creating steep slopes that are nearly cliffs in places. Here, you can see an intermingled series of old and new lava flows. When these flows occurred, watchers saw 700-foot cascades of fiery lava flowing down the slopes.

That night we chose not to go back and look at Halema'uma'u crater; there was no sign of an increasing intensity of activity, and it was raining mistily, so we figured we weren't likely to see much of interest. Plus, we had a longish drive the next day to reach the final stop on our Hawaii tour.

South Point and our return to Kona

Our last two days in Hawaii would be in southern Kona district, just south of the town of Captain Cook. (That's about 8 o'clock on the dial, nearly back at Kona/Kailua, where we started out. To get there, we had to drive past South Point, so named because it is the southernmost point in the United States. It's famous for being the place where the first Polynesians are believed to have landed in Hawaii, and but is visited most often because it's the mixing point between the fast-moving, heavy seas of the eastern coast and the slower, quieter seas of the west coast. It's also an exceptionally windy place; the trees are "trained" by the wind (i.e., their branches are swept downwind) until they resemble flags, with few or no branches on the upwind edge and some stems leaning almost horizontally.

The wind strength is sufficient for most of the year that there are two wind farms near the point; one is defunct, with the wind turbines standing rusting and forlorn (many with missing blades) just down the road from the currently active turbines. It was so windy when we got there that it was hard to walk (backpacks didn't help), but we managed to make our way slowly to the cliffs through a cloud of stinging grit that occasionally obscured the sea more than a short distance offshore. It's an interesting place, but to my mind, worth only a short visit. The pounding surf on the eastern side is certainly impressive, and many people come here to leap off the cliffs (30 or so feet to the sea) and then clamber back up the cliffs. We enjoyed watching the waves for a while, watched a couple folks jump off the cliffs, then moved on.

We continued our drive to Kona, dumping our bags not long after noon at our B&B (the "Lucky Farm") just south of Captain Cook. We're staying in "the coffee barn", which is a separate small building (a shack, really) just downhill from the owner's house and dining area. This is a converted old shack that was formerly used for processing coffee; you can still see the rotor that drove the belts that operated the various coffee-processing machines mounted in the roof just over the door. Two of the walls are open from chest height to the roof, and screened in, so it's like one of those seaside Polynesian resorts you see in the tourist brochures that have no walls, only four roof posts connected by screens. The shower is outside the door in a small screened-in area, and comfortable to use (because of the heat in this part of Hawaii) even as late as 9 PM, a few hours after sunset. It's a bit primitive compared to its Polynesian luxury equivalent, but comfortable and clean, and despite its proximity to the highway (maybe 100 feet), it's surprisingly quiet because of the surrounding trees. Very hot and humid during the day (the south Kona coast is one of the hottest parts of Hawaii), but deliciously cool at night because the air is so dry. (They're also experiencing a fairly severe drought.)

The area is similar to the area north of Kona/Kailua, where we started our trip, but with older lava flows and lusher vegetation. Not up to the standard of the Hilo and Waipio/Waimea areas, but still pretty lush in places. We decided to end the daylight part of our day's voyaging with a tour of the Kona Island Brewing Company. We were taken on the tour by Randy, an entertaining veteran of the brewing business, and ended with several free samples... about a full bottle of beer's worth. We had dinner at the brewery's restaurant, which was quite good. We each had a pint; Shoshanna's Pipeline Porter was good, but I'd had it before, so I tried the Coco Loco, a coconut porter. The one I'd had the previous week was better; the Kona version wasn't a bad beer, just not as good.

Our main purpose for being here, other than to see a part of Hawaii that was different from the previous parts, was to participate in a night snorkeling trip to see manta rays in Kealakakua Bay. A couple companies run trips to see these animals, but Shoshanna found the one with rave reviews. We drove down right around sunset, a bit tipsy from all the beer, and got fitted out for wetsuits. Our company, Fair Wind, runs a couple tour boats, including the Hula Kai, a catamaran power boat that would take us out. They're an excellent company: high-quality equipment, highly-trained personnel, everyone very happy at their job and enthusiastic. All in all, a great experience and highly recommended. As the darkness grows, they take you a short distance offshore (within easy swimming distance of the rocky beach of the Sheraton resort), and hook up to submerged buoys that have been permanently anchored there to avoid disturbing the coral with anchors.

Then you get into the water, which is warm enough but still a bit of a shock after a day of 80 to 90 degrees Fahrenheit. The biggest innovation here is that the company has a long floating boom equippped with strong lights that attract large quantities of plankton, which in turn attracts the manta rays. The company has been doing this for more than a decade, so the mantas have both learned that this is a good source of food and grown accustomed to the humans, so they often come swooping right up to the lights to nab plankton. A lesser but still cool innovation is that they equip all the snorkelers with those plastic pool noodles (for the women) or "power floats" (for the men). In case it wasn't obvious, they're identical noodles; gender humor! The idea is that you put your hands on the boom to keep your head at the surface, then rest your ankles on the noodle so you can float there completely suspended without having to exert any energy and without your feet hanging down enough to annoy the mantas. The company also give everyone's mask a spritz with a simple antifogging solution (Johnson's baby shampoo diluted in water), then you rinse most of it out; what remains forms a film on the inside of your mask that prevents it from fogging up for at least an hour. Cool!

It's really quite a dreamy or meditative experience hanging there suspended in the water, breathing quietly through your snorkel. There are tons of needle fish (about a foot long), so named because they're thin as reeds and have a tiny sharp snout like a needle. They swim boldly right past you, often bumping into you in their pursuit of larger plankton or smaller fish attracted by the lights. You hang suspended about 10 to 20 feet above the coral bottom, and there are many fish of all colors swimming around, also drawn by the lights. In addition to the snorkelers, there were several divers along for the ride, who stay down near the bottom to avoid disturbing the mantas. Their dive lights provide additional illumination, so you get a good view of the entire water column, including clouds of plankton dancing through the lights like snowflakes and the bottom-dwellers. Because it's mostly lava rock and coral at the bottom, there are no crabs or other crustaceans. But there are many black urchins, and a few "crown of thorns" starfish; apparently the latter aren't a problem here because their natural predators are still abundant.

We didn't end up seeing any mantas (this happens periodically), and when I felt the need for some activity, I let go of the boom and swam around following the divers to see what else there was to be seen. We ended up leaving the water after nearly an hour. The tour company was clearly bending over backwards to stay long enough for us to see mantas, but the water is cold enough you can only stay in it for so long, even with a wetsuit, before you begin shivering. To help you through this, they offer warm soup and hot chocolate at the end so you can warm up before returning to your car. One thing they offer that we hadn't known about was a "see mantas or come again free" guarantee. So we'll be returning again the following night in the hope that mantas will be coming inshore this time.

Last day in Hawaii

We started our day woken by quiet birdsong (particularly welcome after the heavy-metal frog bands that infest the forests south of Hilo), followed by a leisurely breakfast. Today is our low-stress winding down day before we return to reality. We headed over to a local living history museum and coffee farm, which was managed by the Uchida family in the period before and after World War II. This is an example of one of the tenant farmer arrangements in which Japanese laborers rented land from its American owners and performed all the farm labor, growing, harvesting, and processing coffee for sale and growing fruits and vegetables for their own use. Once established, they brought mail-order brides over from Japan to start their families. These women were referred to as "picture brides" because they and their suitors picked each other out of catalogs of photos—many "emended" to make the potential spouse seem more attractive. (Plus ca change!) (Our hosts at our B&B this morning told us that working coffee farms was often the next step after emerging from indentured servitude; once the Japanese laborers finished their indentured terms, they had the option of re-indenturing, going back to the old country, or moving upland and going into coffee farming, and many chose the third option.)

We started our tour with a long chat with Mister Serillo (spelling? That's how it sounded, at least), an older Japanese or Filipino man built like a professional wrestler who is the farm's jack of all trades and animal handler. He was feeding Charley, a beautiful donkey, and told us a bit about the farm, donkey biology (they need to live in dry areas with lots of rocks to keep their hooves worn down; like horses, they have strong personalities; it takes a long time before they come to trust you), and his work career as a migrant laborer, then civil servant. Next, Pearl, a lovely older Japanese woman who grew up on a similar farm as a third-generation coffee farmer and was intimately familiar with the work, told us a lot about the coffee processing machinery and all the clever innovations the workers developed. (Since they were dirt poor and had no access to most stores -- they were living in a largely cash-free economy -- they had to build everything themselves and recycle everything.) For example, the workers wore special slippers divided into two large toes, with a gap between them, and during the picking of the coffee cherries, they used a long hooked stick to pull the branches down within reach; a knotted rope tied to the bottom end of the stick could then be fitted in the gap between the toes, holding the branch in place so they wouldn't have to hold it with their hands. The soles of the slippers were made from the outer parts of old tires (the inner tubes were used to reinforce the picking baskets), and the upper parts of the slippers were sewn from old rice sacks, which were also used to make everything from clothing to schoolbags. I finally found out why (apart from their red color) coffee fruits are called cherries: we each had a chance to pop one open, and the flesh inside the red coat does taste somewhat cherry-like.

Pearl left us in the capable hands of Etsuko, a younger woman from central Japan, who was responsible for the part of the tour that showed the family's house. She was charming, and showed us all the different tasks involved in domestic life. She seemed particularly delighted that we knew a little Japanese and a little more about Japanese customs and history, and was envious when we told her we hoped to travel to Japan next year for our major vacation. One thing I'd known (but forgotten) about the Japanese language is one surprisingly Canadian aspect: all three of our Japanese hosts frequently ended sentences with "hai" (the Japanese word for yes) or "yes", as an interrogative much like the "eh" many Canadians use. They also ended occasionally with "neh", much like we sometimes use "not so?" or "n'est ce pas?" as a conversational cue. Etsuko also told us a bit about the wartime experience of the Japanese in Hawaii after Pearl Harbor: many were allowed to remain behind to continue farming the land, although this seems to have mostly been the women; many (most?) of the men were sent to internment camps, as on the mainland. In fact, they were sent to camps on the mainland.

We finished our tour by returning to the coffee and vegetable fields, where Pearl offered us fresh oranges. I took a large one that had just fallen from the tree; it was sweet and delicious. Shoshanna got to harvest her own orange using a 20-foot pole with a canvas bag at the end. It took a bit of struggling, but she ended up with a beautiful fresh orange.

For the afternoon, we decided to do a spousal "being together while being apart" thing. Shoshanna wanted to end our Hawaii trip with time on the beach; I hate to spend any time on a beach (too hot and sandy) unless there's interesting wildlife around, but wanted time to write up our final blog entries. So we compromised by picking a beach with picnic tables under good shade. Shoshanna went for a swim, or basked in the sand, and in between, returned to chat with me while I tapped away on the laptop. (Just to be clear, I didn't completely nerd-out. I also enjoyed the birds, the waves, the girls in bikinis, the lovely natural scenery, and a toddler who was clearly in seventh heaven exploring the beach. But I did find enough time to write up the past couple days.)

In the evening, we returned to the manta ray people and set out on another cruise. This time, the results were spectacularly different. The waves were higher and the wind was stronger, and perhaps that was what attracted the mantas... only one at first, then two more joined in. The first one glided in out of the dark like a shadow among shadows, and was shortly joined by two more. The smallest looked to have a wingspan of about 6 feet, and the largest, about 10 feet, though it's hard to tell because of the magnifying effect of the water. (I'm basing these estimates on the size of Jim Wing, the diver/videographer who accompanies the boat on each trip both to help attract mantas and to sell films of the event. He's really quite good at this, and he spent the whole time luring the mantas with his lights and encouraging them to come towards the floating people.)

The mantas zoomed around, coming within inches of us at times, doing backflips and loop-the-loops and gliding in and around each other like expert dancers. They seem to follow the light beams upward, since that's where the plankton are most concentrated, then at the last instant, flip onto their backs and spin away before colliding with the watchers. I also suspect they're just naturally curious and want to get a good look at us too. They're incredibly graceful, and never collided with anyone or with each other. They come and go between the lighted area and the impenetrable darkness, vanishing like shadows into shadows. With their huge mouths, it can be a bit scary at first as they come straight at you, even though you know intellectually they're completely harmless. But after a time, you simply forget their size and just gape at them. It was beyond amazing watching them dance around us, and the hour in the water seemed to pass in minutes. A terrific end to our vacation!