Hawai'i - Part 2 - The Big Island - Hilo

What a frustrating start to a frustrating day!!! After getting up at 5.30 am to get packed up and checked out for our 09:40 am flight to The Big Island, we were informed by reception that they don't store bags!!! After explaining that we had an email pre-arranging this, the guy did eventually take our case (wonder if we will ever see it again!!).Ant asked him the name of the company who operated the airport shuttle (so knew what to look out for), whereupon he told us there was no shuttle booked for us!!!As ever I was panicking by now as we had to be at the airport 75 minutes before our flight to check our bag in.The guy on reception kindly rang the shuttle company for us and as he hadn't yet passed our hotel, arranged for a pick up.

We made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare and by 8:00 am we were checked in and waiting for our flight which was delayed….. and delayed… and delayed.We eventually got on the plane at about 11:20 - almost a 2 hour delay for a 40 minute flight!!!! That's what happens when you book with a budget airline.We eventually landed at Kailua-Kona airport, picked up our rental car and set off for the 2.5 hour drive to Hilo on the other side of the island.

The BigIsland is the largest of the Hawaiian islands at 4,028 sq, miles hence its name - officially it is called Hawai'i but to avoid confusion with the state name, it is always referred to as the BigIsland.

The Big Island is built from five separate shield volcanoes that erupted sequentially, one overlapping the other. These are (from oldest to youngest):

• Kohala—extinct
• Mauna Kea—dormant
• Hualālai—active but not currently erupting
• Mauna Loa—active, partly within Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park
• Kīlauea—active: has been erupting continuously since 1983; part of Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park

More about the volcanoes later.

We have just 5 days here on the BigIsland and are spending the first 2 in Hilo on the east (windward) side of the island.Hilo is the largest settlement on the island with approximately 41,000 people and its location on the eastern side of the island of Hawaiʻi (windward relative to the trade winds) makes it the wettest city in the United States and one of the wettest cities in the world. An average of around 126 inches (3,200 mm) of rain fell at Hilo International Airport annually between 1971-2000, with 275 days of the year receiving some rain.At some other weather stations in Hilo the annual rainfall is above 200 inches (5,100 mm).This means there are some spectacular waterfalls on Wailuku River at the north end of town.After checking into our hotel, we set off to take some photos of the Rainbow Falls and Boiling Pots.Rainbow Falls gets its name from the fact that, on sunny mornings, you can see rainbows in the mist thrown up by the waterfall.Unfortunately, it was neither sunny nor morning!!!Further up the river we stopped to take more photos of the Boiling Pots where the water rushes through old lava rocks and lava tubes and appears to bubble up or boil as it makes it way downstream.

Our hotel for the next 2 nights is called Dolphin Shores - quite strangely it is located in the middle of a residential area so has no shore and no dolphins.What it does have, however, is chirping frogs!! They are so load that the hotel actually provides free ear plugs!!!!!These are actually coqui tree frogs who arrived in Hawai'i with plants from the Caribbean.They are non-poisonous and are small, about the size of a quarter (or 10 pence piece in UK).They climb up trees at night to sing their mating song, and later parachute down from the trees using their webbed feet.The hotel also had an abundance of papayas and bananas that we were free to help ourselves to.

The main reason for staying in Hilo was for its proximity to the HawaiianVolcanoesNational Park - Madame Pele's dwelling - the goddess of the volcano.

The Legend of Madame Pele

Long ago Pele lived with her family on an island called Kahiki.She quarrelled with her powerful sister, Namaka, goddess of the sea, and Namaka send tidal waves to overflow Pele's land and destroy her houses.Helped by her family, Pele fought the sea goddess but was defeated.

One of her brothers, the shark god, provided a canoe, and brothers and sisters sailed with Pele over the many-coloured sea.Whenever they found an island, Pele tried to make a home but Namaka followed and drove the family away.At last they reached the island called Kaua'i where Pele dug with her sacred digging stick and threw up a lava hill called Pu'u o Pele (Hill of Pele).In the fire pit she had made, she and her brothers and sisters lived content.

Namaka climbed to a high mountain top and as she searched the sky, she saw the glow of fire reflected on the clouds."She lives! Pele lives!" the angry goddess shouted and rushed to attack.Though brothers and sisters gathered about Pele and all fought bravely, they were defeated and fled before Namaka.

Pele and her family reached O'ahu and once more Pele dug.She made a fire pit as she had done before, but salt water rose in it and drowned her fire - today the pit she dug is called SaltLake.

At L'ahi (Diamond Head), Pele dug a fire crater but once more water put out her fire. Again and again Pele tried - on Moloka'i and West Maui.No better luck - always water flowed in and the fire was destroyed.

Finally, on the top of Haleakala on Maui, a splendid pit was dug.Here the family lived, satisfied that they had a lasting home. But again, from her lookout, Namaka saw smoke and glowing clouds.Once more she rushed to the attack.Pele had grown strong and confident. This time she fought single-handed with her powerful sister.Long the battle raged but at last Namaka won. She left the family mourning over Pele's death and returned to her own island in triumph."Pele is no more.Her power is destroyed."

Once again from her point of lookout, Namaka searched the sky.What did she see?Over Mauna Loa, on the island of Hawai'i, dark smoke hung.The clouds above the sky glowed reed, and plainly the sea goddess saw among the clouds the form of a beautiful woman."Pele lives!" she muttered. "She has become a goddess whom I can never kill."

The brothers and sisters also saw the lovely form among the clouds."Pele lives!" they cried joyfully and joined Pele in her new home, the fire pit of Kilauea.

Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park is not a theme park; it is a 333,000 acre park of 70 million years of volcanic activity.Kilauea (which means much spewing), the park's main attraction, is one of the most active volcanoes on the planet.It has been erupting since 1983 and is the longest continuous rift-zone eruption in written history.An estimated 1,000 gallons of molten lava flows out of active vents every second.Nearly 2 billion cubic yards of lava rock have come from this eruption - that's enough rock to pave a two-lane highway, 1.2 million miles long, encircling the globe 50 times!!!!More than 8 miles of highway and 200 homes and other structures have been claimed by the volcano since the mid-1980s.

The active vents from Pu'u 'O'o exude lava through a 7-mile long lava tube that opens into the sea, and several hundred acres of new land along the southern coast have been added to the Big Island since the eruption began.

The lava flowing into the sea was what we had come to see so we drove to the end of Highway 130 where we had been told you could hike to the lava viewing area.When we got there however, all you could see for miles was lava rock - there were houses built on the rock and signs that there had once been a road here but there was no visible path or route to the ocean.We ventured out a little way but I was very apprehensive and nervous. We later found out that this was fresh lava (only2 months old) which can be very unstable and crispy so I'm glad we didn't go too far!!

After a quick stop at the local village to take photos of the black sand and cliffs, we headed for the visitor centre to learn more about the recent eruption on March 6th when the volcano's Pu'u 'O'o crater collapsed, and a 0.33-mile-long (0.5-kilometer-long) fissure ripped open on a separate region of the volcano. The new vent has since been sporadically erupting lava up to 80 feet (25 meters).

At the visitor centre we picked up a park map and guide to some of the hiking and driving trails.Our next stop was the JaggarMuseum where we viewed the gas rising from the Kilauea Crater - you can normally hike the caldera but this, and portions of the 11 mile Crater Rim drive have been closed indefinitely due to high levels of sulphur dioxide fumes.We also saw a printout of the seismographs taken on the day of the Japan earthquake!!

As the Crater Rim drive as partially closed, we decided to do the 36-mile (round trip) Chain of Craters Road.This trail descends 3,700 feet to the coast through lava fields anything from 10 to several hundred years old and ends at a lava flow that has covered 10 miles of road since 1983.Along the way we stopped to take photographs of the steam vent created when rain condenses on the hot rocks.At Pu'uloa we stopped and took the 1.5 mile hike over 400-700 hundred year old lava rock to view some petroglyphs.There are a huge variety of petroglyph images. The majority show a variety of human forms as well as simple dots (holes) or dots surrounded by other shapes (circles, spirals, etc). There are also other unusual petroglyphs, including fish, starfish, hooks, insects, capes (or possibly squid) and ships.

The petroglyphs that are dots (or holes) relate to a Hawaiian custom specific to this lava field. When a baby was born the piko (umbilical cord) would be taken to the lava field. A hole would be created in the rock and the piko placed in the hole and covered with a rock. If the piko was still there the next day the child was said to have long life.

At the end of the Chain of Craters road, we took some time to explore the lava fields that have slowly covered this highway over the years and to take photographs of the Holei Sea Arch created by the waves eroding the different levels of hardness of the layers of lava.

The following day, we headed back to the park to take in Thurston Lava Tube and the Hilina Pali overlook (an 18-mile return trip that we hadn't had time to do the day before), before heading back to the west side of the island for our last 3 nights on the island.Most lava tubes form in molten pahoehoe (which means smooth, unbroken) lava flows; exposed to air the top portion of a lava stream often solidifies and insulates the underlying fluid lava, which continues flowing beneath its hardened crust.As eruptive activity diminishes, the supply of new lava stops.The molten lava then drains out like water from a shut off hose, leaving behind a hollow tube.

After exploring the Hilina Pali overlook and taking some more photos of the caldera from Jaggar Museum, we set off on the 2.5 hour drive back to Kailua-Kona - this is an amazing place but we were quite disappointed at not seeing molten lava flowing.