Hawaii: Days 3 & 4

I think I mentioned our drive yesterday, we left the resort at 9 and stopped at Akaka Falls for a short 0.5 mi hike, which was stunningly beautiful.

We then had lunch at Cafe 100 in Hilo. We both had traditional Hawaiian lunches. I had the "Hilo Boy", fried chicken, teriyaki beef, rice, and a curry soup, all of which were delicious. Stef had a fried chicken plate with rice (and about half my teriyaki beef).

After lunch we went to Hawaiian Volcano National Park. There is a pretty big crater around Kileaua that is still emitting a lot of smoke! We viewed it from a couple of angles, including along the smoking rim of the crater. We also visited the sulphur bank, which wasn't quite as pungent as either of us expected. By far, my favorite part of the day was a lava tube. These tubes provide a path for lava to flow away from the magma reservoir. We walked almost 1000 feet into one of the tubes using our headlamps! The tube was about 10-15 feet in diameter and it was pitch black. We turned off our lights for a minute and literally couldn't see our hands in front of our faces! Stef was most amazed by how fresh the air smelled.

We then attempted to see Lava flow into the sea. We walked through a mile of dried lava that flowed over a neighborhood along the coast in 1990. It was absolutely surreal, almost a moonscape, except a few people had refused to give up their land and had built new homes onto of the lava, most lacking running water and electricity. Unfortunately, we were unable to see actual flowing lava. Varying reports placed this as normal and conflictingly as a result of a July 18th flow that cut of the access road. Regardless of cause it was very disappointing, especially since we felt a little taken advantage of by those trying to promote the lava flow.

Stef handled driving back to the Kona side of the island which ended up being a bit of an ordeal, but after 12 hours on the road (3 straight hours driving), and a fair amount of rain over some of the mountain passes, Stef delivered us safely home, with just enough energy to order room service.

Today we sat on the beach, did some snorkeling, drank some beers, it's been a terrific day!

Still struggling to upload some of the images, the DSLR images are too big to email more than one at a time.

I put some the pics from yesterday's drive and today's snorkeling to a picasa web album located at: http://picasaweb.google.com/peter.r.wise/HawaiiSept10#

--Pete

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