The Big Island pt. III - Kona

Before it's winter, let the final chapter of Hawaii unfold: Kona. So if you recall, we were last in Volcano. On the way to Kona, many an adventure was had.

[But first a quick update. As you all know, Kilauea has been erupting pretty constantly since we left. In fact, between the time we posted Part II and this, our favorite two swimming spots were destroyed by lava. It's pretty crazy seeing your favorite vacation spots destroyed on the news]

[These are the Kapoho Tide pools getting buried in lava. You park by the houses and walk right in. I imagine the tide pools will be back quickly. The road access not so much.]

[Here's a pic of lava filling Kapoho Bay. The Champagne Pool featured in blog part II is circled in the above picture. It's now completely under lava and closed permanently. It was a truly amazing place and I feel super lucky we got to see it.]

mmmk, doesn't look it from my phone camera, but this is the green sand of the green sand beach. Green from a lava after-thought called olivine. It's semi-precious stone that you might be more familiar with is peridot.

[Here's an up-close shot of sand from this beach. We didn't take this picture, but I assure you that when you pick up a handful of sand and look at it, it was this beautiful. From far away, it's just a slightly greener tinge of brown]

Our journey to the green sand beach, Papakolea was even more exciting than the beach. We had heard that the off-road path was pretty crazy, and that even if you had 4wheel drive they don't recommend it as you have a very high chance of taking off your vehicle underside. For 20 bucks round trip and waiting for you at the beach, a local will put the stress on his crappy truck.

Sooo, yes, I allowed my two most prized possessions to ride cowboy style in the back of a truck on the worst road I've ever been on. Yes, worse than the coveted RFH (see back to the valley post). Ok, maybe not WORSE, but different bad. Anyhow, I opted for the one seat next to the driver what with the little lady cooking in the belly and all. I checked on them frequently, and they seemed to be having a great time.

As you can tell from the lack of Matt's head, it was a little bumpy.
[This ride was pretty insane. The drivers just cut whatever paths they can. The used ones start to erode heavily. Eventually they are deep trenches that are deeper than the truck is tall and sloped at 30 degrees to the side. Brock and I were white-knuckled the entire drive, and we even caught some air on the bigger bumps.]

But is was a beautiful beach, very windy, worth the adventure to feel the beautiful olive grains, much kinder than the course ones at the black sand beach. 

I opted to stay mostly dry, knowing that we had a loooong day ahead of us far from a shower.

Lava tubes are abundant on the big island, and you can visit them. The one most folks go to is the Thurston Lava Tube up at Volcano National Park, but we wanted a more in depth experience, and I'm so glad we did. This tube was located in a lava community, basically a suburb built on old lava flow. This was a very surreal place. A complete desolate black rock wasteland with houses build in chiseled out sites. So strange. But this is cool, if your lava property is built above a lava tube, the subterranean tube that is on your property is also yours!  Apparently folks in the area build grottos down there? Don't know. But as you venture down a tube, you will come across areas that say "private property". Our guide was absolutely wonderful and very patient as Brock and Matt ran up to the lodge to take a poo after we were down there.

[the weirdest thing about these caves compared to others: the rock is all porous so it absorbs sound. you can yell really loud and there's no echo at all. this means there are no bats in these caves. they'd run into all the walls]

After, we hit the only restaurant around for miles. Our guide also worked there... ("only restaurant around for miles"...hmmmmm). Lizard on the wall.

After this, we had to haul to make it basically all the way up the west coast to practically the Waipio Valley again to get to Kahuna Ranch for a bbq, stargazing and some ranching action.

We had a blast, and this area of Hawaii, Waimea might be the place I would move to if I had to somewhere on the island. It is up in the mountains, 40 minutes from the beach and 40 minutes from the valley with spectacular views and very nice folks. Stars were crazy. Pigs were nice.

Macadamia nut pie was divine and worth all 600 calories (actually 1100, considering I ate most of Brock's as well). Matt was the volunteer for the lasso demonstration and I am sad to say I was without phone or bag to capture the moment. But he was quite the cowboy. It was our busiest day for sure.

[Brock test out his branding skills]

[This is rancher John and his pet pig Piggly Wiggly. John had some pretty amazing stories of Hawai'ian cattle ranching. Delivery of cattle to the market is complicated by the Jones Act, which makes it illegal for John to ship them to an American port. So his cows all ride a cattle cruise ship to Vancouver before taking a train to Texas. Somehow this is still profitable? This whole party scene is starting to make sense. He once tried flying them straight to Texas in a plane. The cows were fine, but they generated so much heat the angry sweaty pilots refused to ever do it again. When I revealed that I trade cattle options for a living i got a gruff, "oh, you're one of THOSE guys eh? sorry for screwing up your fancy paper markets by delivering actual cows!" Quite a character. He's a third generation Hawai'ian and somehow still sounds like he's straight out of Oklahoma. Must be something about ranching. ]

[Piggly Wiggly LOVED being fed rolls by the kids. Brock loved feeding him. This went on for a shockingly long time. You can't stuff a pig]

[so huge!]

[Here's where we practiced roping some very tiny steers]

But the next days are quite chill as we jump from beautiful beach to beautiful beach.

First destination beach beyond our resort is next door at Mauna Kea resort beach. Just beautiful. A stand out was at Mauna Kea (or was it Hapuna?) as I was snorkeling around, we chanced upon 3 giant sea turtles feeding on the critters on the rocks a bit out in the water. It was truly special, I've scuba'ed with turtles before, but never so close and able to see them hang out and eat. I swam out to get Brock and Matt masked up to take a peek. So cool. 

Many a hole and castle were made. 

Next morning we head for a snorkel excursion to Kealakekua Bay for some of the best snorkeling on the island and a visit to the Captain Cook monument where the Australians honor the poor fellow who out stayed his welcome with the locals and got a good stabbing. Brock is obsessed with folklore and mythology and asked for me to tell the Captain Cook story many times so he was excited to see the spot. Yeah, we don't have a picture. Any how, we got on a boat and went to an area and saw some fishes. It was a bit of let down after the turtles, but Brock did very well, although he got cold and came in early. I was having some of the most epic acid reflux of my pregnancy, so I didn't last as long as I wanted to anyways. Yes, Mexican and laying flat on your tum looking down after an hour boat ride is a awesome recipe for indigestion, if that's how you roll. The boat had water slides, part of the reason I opted for it, but they had a really long drop that Brock was not into and little lady was also not into, so we watched daddy partake. 

[The boat ride out was long, but comfy]

[snorkeling in the bay!]

[My underwater phone case wasn't working well this day and nearly every time I went underwater the camera went off. We saw lots of cool stuff, but this was my only successful underwater pic of the day]

I guess we didn't get many photos of the snorkeling event, but here I did video some spinner dolphins giving us a chase. We also saw a fin of a black hammerhead shark!

[These fish were at the entrance to our hotel. Brock made sure to bring them snacks every time we left.]

[Kona Brewing! The beer is actually really good there. Don't buy it stateside, it's all made in NH and I assure you it tastes worse. They also had the best tuna tartare i have ever eaten]

Tonight we had big plans to go up to 9,200 feet elevation (as high as child under 10 and pregnancy will allow) to the visitors center at Mauna Kea to get a star experience like none other. The most advanced astronomy center in the U.S. (or anywhere?) is up there, and the overall experience quite lunar at cloud level. 30 degrees up there too with plenty of snow. Well, mother nature was not on our side. Apparently when we called the center they were looking at 2% visibility with a storm coming in, big bummer for stargazing... and we had just called to inquire about parking (it apparently fills up fast)! Not tonight. Parking was A-OK. So we decided, sadly, to not make the trek. I think Matt was the most bummed. I promise we'll be back when our kids are over 10 or with grandparents and we'll go all the way to the summit!

 Instead, we went for a lovely stroll down the Waialea Beach trail.We meant to do this the previous night when we went to dine at the Lava Lava beach club for dinner, but we ran out of time, so it seemed that we got a second chance.

I love this, Brock picked it up and declared it Potty Rock.

[Brock and mommy find Hawai'is smallest beach.] 

[Brock loved stacking rocks and decorating with coral.]

The beach front trail is home of the Waikoloa Anchialine Ponds, an easily accessible natural attraction. This series of brackish water lava pools are home to various small fishes, tiny red shrimp and crustacean mollusks. The ponds are managed for research and educational uses by the University of Hawaii.We didn't see any of the coveted red shrimp, but we did see some mosquitoes. That aside, the ponds were lovely and it was fun walking alongside the lava path.

Wild goats are abundant on this area of the Big Island, our resort seemed to also be a goat resort.

Final day we head to Hapuna Beach State Park.

[a perfectly decorated castle!]

[ahhhh! the sun!!]

We collected many shells, and apparently I can't follow my own advice because I pick up a lovely cone shaped shell and put it in our bucket. When we went to the foot shower to rinse off, I rinsed off our sand stuff and picked up the shell. Out pops the head of a cone snail! This is not good actually, they spit venom that makes you super woozy and sick. That poor snail was airborne in .2 seconds, what a day it had. 

Matt insisted we take a picture next to the antiquitous pay phone.

For our final adventure on our way to the airport, we hit up the most amazing poke joint on the island (that I did not get to eat with the little lady and all, but I did get some wonderful cooked fish) and then went for a "quick" hike in the cloud forest that is quite near the airport.

It was beautiful, and perfect before a nine hour flight, but we got lost. Not sure how, but the "loop" seemed deceptively linear. An hour and a half later, we get on the right with Brock on Matt's shoulders. Luckily we had plenty of time to kill before our red eye back home. And thank goodness for that, because apparently TSA is also in vacation mode in Hawaii. We waited in security line for 2 hours, and it was not a long line. We could not figure out what was going on, then a local was like, yeah, it is always like this here, but I have a flight to catch so I am going to go talk to them. She went up and told them that all of the passengers on the Denver flight where in line and magically, the line sped up and we got through. Too bad the plane didn't fly over the volcano, we might have seen it explode! What a trip. And we couldn't have gone at a more perfect time apparently. As of this email, the Kapoho Tide Pools and the Champagne Ponds we snorkeled in are gone under the spew of Kilauea along with many of the roads we drove on. Thank you Madame Pele for sparing us, and I am feeling pretty bad about the few shells and lava rocks we took home with us (taking nature is KAPU on the island!), we had the most amazing time and will try to pay tribute to you by this blog entry.