28-08: Hawaii (from now on in English)

Recently, I found out that my blog can be integrated into Facebook. I am using this feature now and since almost all of my listed friends at Facebook do not understand my high quality German, I will try to write my blog posts in my clumsy low quality English. But beware: I do not have English auto correction installed for my MS Word version, and my dictionary battery ran out of juice a long time ago. Sometimes, a simple book is still the best solution. If you find spelling errors (possible), grammar and word order errors (most likely) or punctuation errors (definitely, I have no feeling for the commas yet), you can keep them.

Secondly, I want to point something out for all those who might not be aware of it: If somebody speaks of Hawaii then he/she either refers to the state of Hawaii which includes all the islands (over 100), or he/she means Hawaii (the biggest island of the group). The state of Hawaii consists of seven populated islands: Oahu, Lanai, Kauai, Maui, Hawaii, Molokai aaaaaand ... (forgot it). I have been to Oahu so far and three days ago I landed on Hawaii. Hence, when I speak of Hawaii in my blog I mean the big island with Mauna Kea and stuff.

I left Oahu right in the moment when I got used to it and enjoyed every moment. But as they say: You should stop as long as every is fine. I took the 11 am flight to Hawaii (with stop on Maui) and for the first time on my journey around the world I could see some land. I sat at the window as always, but this time there was no haze, no cloud carpet, no night. I could see Oahu, Maui, Lanai and Hawaii from above. I have uploaded a few pictures to the corresponding album. I arrived on Hawaii at half past twelve and got to Avis at 1 pm. My plan for Hawaii looked like this: Get there, rent a car, circle the island in three days, leave. I checked for the lowest prices of car rentals and found that Avis (I get no money for this) under bid all of their local competetors. But that could have been the reason why I could not get the compact car which I wanted. All of them had already been rented to others (on the Big Island there is always no other way of getting around than with a car). So I tried to find out what's the cheapest car they have. The lady said *wobble* convertible (during my stay abroad I got pretty good with "listening comprehension", but I still have problems with understanding names). Woah, convertible sounds nice I thought. I asked politely for the brand of the car and still, all I understood was *wobble*. I combined my wishes with my observations from Oahu and guessed: "Did you say it is a Ford Mustang Convertible?" "Correct". Ooooooh, cruising with style, that would be nice, but lets wait for the price first. The receptionist said that they usually rent them out for 100$/day or more, but I should get a special price (I don't know why, maybe my german accent charmed her, haha). In the end the car cost me 210$ for three days, only 40$ more than for the compact car which I originally wanted. Sweet. I even had the choice between silver, white and green colour.

A quarter past one, and I drove the Mustang out of the parking lot. I didn't need any time to adjust back to right-hand-side driving. What I had to find out was the purpose of all these buttons on the panel. It took a day, but then I finally realized that the On/Off/+/- buttions on my steering wheels controlled the auto pilot, after I pressed + while holding On (why the hell this combination?). Other nice features of the car were: it was convertible, the speaker volume automatically adjusted with the speed, it could play mp3 cds, there was power under the hood (couldn't even test it properly because of these ridiculous speed limits) and it looked awesome. The disadvantage of using a car was the continous attention I had to pay on it, because theft out of cars is as common on Hawaii as it is on Oahu. You should never leave valuable things in the cars, and no things at all visible. And if you need something out of the boot/trunk (which one is british english, I already get confused), then get it BEFORE you reach your destination.

All I did the rest of the day was cruising into the main town on the eastern shore of Hawaii (Kailua-Kona), browse a few shops and search for a beach. I had to realize: If you want to lie at beautiful white sand beaches, then stay on Oahu. If you want to go surfing or anything else wave-related, then either come back during wintertime or stay on Oahu. Even swimming could be a problem on Hawaii. Damn. This island is the youngest in this chain of islands and there are cold rocky lava streams everywhere. They often extend to the coast which is therefore mostly defined by sharp or larger round rocks which is a perfect for coral reefs. The Big Island is a snorkeling and diving paradise, but nothing for surfers or bodyboarders. The only sand beaches can be found on the east coast and I had trouble finding one. After my swim (there were no waves) I drove to my preferred accomodation for the night. There are almost no hostel-like accomodations on Hawaii. There is one on the east coast and maybe four altogether. At this place I had to find out that in order to be able to stay there I needed to book two nights minimum. The hostel was almost empty and they wouldn't let me stay for one night. Unbelievable. So I used the free WIFI at this place and got a camping permit for one of the beach parks online. I could have pulled over at any "beach" parking lot, but as I already explained, they are not secure. Locals come there to drink and stuff like that. At official camping spots they have security patrols which is the reason why I booked it (6$ a night). They had toilets there and open air showers at the beach, in fact a very nice infrastructure. The only disturbance was caused by HUGE and numerous cockroaches in the sanitary area. I searched for the spot most far away from these EUH!-things, unrolled my sleeping bag and fell asleep under the stars.

The next morning I realized that I slept at a black sand beach. The first thing I did that day was going for a swim. I wrote in my previous post that we had no luck with sea turtles while snorkeling at Hanauma Bay. Now I tell you this: The black sand beach was only sandy for the first few meters in the water, then it got rocky. At this point the (small) waves reached barely the family jewels. Getting in the water was no problem and for getting out I had planned to stay horizontally and get washed ashore by the gentle waves. I used my arms to stablilize myself horizontally, occasionally just pulling me along the rocks. Suddenly my hand bumped into something and I thought, that is one big round stone. And a moment later: Wait, that feels funny, like leather. And click: That's no stone, that is a turtle! And: I don't want to get a finger or toe bitten off. So I got vertically immediately and tried to get ashore asap. You won't believe it, but while taking huge steps, I actually tripped over the next turtle and almost landed in the black sand from head to toe. I definitely was awake after that intermezzo.

This day was going to be hot. The sun shone without mercy from the blue sky and I was glad that my car was no pure cabriolet. On the checklist for this day was the amazing Volcanoes National Park at the south side of Mauna Loa (which by the way is only a few dozen feet smaller than Mauna Kea). I did a few short hikes there, had awesome views on old and fairly new (1970s) lava streams and could see massive amounts of steam and volcanic gases rising from the center of a huge caldera (see pictures). They even closed a part of the crater rim road due to the toxicity. Then I drove on to Hilo (largest town in the east of Hawaii), checked in a hostel, tried to find a beach in Hilo and ended up jumping into a cold pond near the beach because I wasn't able to find safe entrance to the sea. After that I went lava viewing. That was probably the highlight of that highlight day. There is a continous lava flow from one crater on the south side of Mauna Loa to the sea. This stream swallowed villages and beaches already and blocked an old road, which once led you along the south shore. To get to the lava viewing spot, you actually had to drive over a few of those already cold lava streams. That was kinda cool because bits of old road changed to improvised one lane lava stream crossings and then back to old road a few times. For safety reasons, the viewers couldn't approach the molten lava more than a few hundred meters and that's why I could only see the orange glow and vaporized water. A few times lava splatters were visible in the dark. Nevertheless it was very impressive... and busy. In the evening I actually met a guy from the Oahu tour in that hostel in Hilo. We went for a beer (what a coincidence, it was called "Red Lavaman") and then I literally fell into my bed and asleep. Smack-bang.

The next day there was more "sight"-seeing. I went to have a look at the rain forest in east Hawaii and some really beautiful waterfalls (see pictures). I drove all the way around the Mauna Kea back to the west coast where I shortly visited a petroglyph site (ancient lava carvings) and a holy hawaiian temple thing. There wasn't very much to do, so I just drove into one of those ultra high luxury resorts. I have never been to one before, and I was very surprised to find a shopping mall in there. I disembarked my vehicle and slowly walked along the glamorous shops. That was boring, but at the end of the shopping mall I discovered a stage and was just in time to finally witness a hula show which was by the way indeed tempting. With another camping permit I slept one more time under the stars.

Today I went for a swim, relaxed at the beach, observed more sea turtles elegantly gliding through the water and returned my car at 1 pm.

As summary of Hawaii (the state) I have to say that, although the volcanoes national park was quite impressive, it isn't really worth it to visit the big island unless you are really annoyed by all the shopping and party and people on Oahu. There is not much to do on the big island and there are almost no young people like on Oahu, especially no sweet girls. And the native Hawaiians are not my type. Nevertheless it was fun driving the Mustang and seeing the volcanoes.

Now I am back in Honolulu, sitting in the lounge and waiting for my flight to San Fransisco. And you are up-to-date.

Aloha,

Stefan