More from the Big Island

Saturday was a big day because Loyola--little Loyola Chicago--was playing in the Final Four.  Now, normally, we wouldn't give a fig about the tournament at this point, but it's Loyola, and I'm an alum.  Mostly, my alumni sports energy is spent on Notre Dame, as it should be, but here I have a team to which I have a legitimate graduate connection playing in the Final Four--yes, we have to make room for it in the itinerary.

So, we hung tight at our little, teeny beach here at the hotel, and snorkeled in the morning.  And boy howdy, did this little, teeny corner of heaven not disappoint.  Right off the beach we ran into liberally-colored reef fish of a hundred different varieties, and even a few spooky-looking long ago jettisoned anchors and other boat parts to complete the scene.  Nice work, Kona!

At gametime, we walked down Ali'i Drive along the sea wall to Laverne's, an upstairs sports bar with open views of our little bay.  Most of the folks in the bar were cheering for the underdog, which was nice, including a family whose awkward son will be a freshman at Loyola in the fall.  Also, we were playing Michigan, and all right-thinking persons of the world ought to have been resolutely set against Michigan winning so much as a dollar scratch-off lotto ticket, nevermind a final four basketball game.  Alas, we lost, which was a terrible bummer, though it did free our Monday up from having to carve out more vacation time for sports.

After the game, we basically just vegged at the pool, which was great.  The Big Island Revealed guidebook lauds our pool bar for having cheap drinks, so I took them up on that for awhile, then we went to dinner at the fab Kona Inn, a 1930s, koa wood drenched, formerly-very-upscale-but-now-just-kind-of-upscale restaurant right on the water.  The Ono was excellent, though Erica cautioned me about my mercury intake levels, which must at this point be just sky high.  

Sunday was Easter!  We celebrated with the fine parishioners and attendent tourists at the lovely St. Michael the Archangel church right on the main drag in Kona.  The church has sliding glass walls, and they all were open for the service.  Because of the overflow, we sat outside and looked into the sanctuary.  It was all very tropically wonderful.  

Afterwards, we headed out of town to Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park, a 96 mile drive from Kona along the outer fringes of the gargantuan Manua Loa volcano (the largest mountain on Earth, by volume of rock.)  During the drive, we kept track of the Notre Dame women's basketball team, who was playing Mississippi State in the national championship game, via phone updates (there was no available radio feed).  And consarnit, we won!  And in extremely unlikely and awesome circumstances, too.  Just as we had eliminated the perennially-undefeated UCONN in the national semifinal game on a last second miracle shot two days before, the same player hit an even more egregiously-unlikely, fade-away, last tenth-of-a-second three pointer to win the championship game.  Go you Irish.  The drive took forever, since you're not allowed to drive more than 50 miles an hour on this island, and the roads are all just two lane affairs, but we managed to get to the national park in enough time to hike the short Desolation Trail, which traverses a former forest struck dead by an unexpected lava shower in the late 1950s.  Check it:

The Desolation Trail. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. 

Me just slightly off the aforementioned trail.  Now that's what I call desolation!

We then drove around to the Jaggar Volcano Museum (no relation to Mick), and checked out the crater itself.  Here it is in it's smoldering glory:

85+million years and still boiling away

We didn't have a ton of time left before sundown, so we checked into our "hotel" (a very nicely remodeled small condo outside the park, the check-in for which was located in the local True Value store).  We have late dinner reservations at The Rim restaurant in the National Park hotel lodge perched on the crater rim of Hawai'i's currently active volcano, Kilauea.  The food was good, but the view was surreal.  Over 2 miles from our table, across the open plateau of the caldera, was the Hale Ma'uma'u crater, site of a perpetual lava lake, which sites above the Hawaiian Hotspot.  Here's the view from our table, where we dined in the glow of earth's primordial furnace:

That's elemental fire, friends!

The next day, we were all set to do the Kilauea Iki trail, which runs down into and across the bed of, a nearby crater.  Here's a picture we snapped of Kilauea Iki from above the day before:

There are people on the whitish trail down there, if your monitor is big enough to see them

We began the day with a short side trail to the Thorston Lava Tube.  Lava tubes for when the outer parts of a lava flow harden, creating insulting cover for the flowing lava underneath.  When the lava flow stops, a tube is left, and you can walk around in it.  We got there very early, so no one else was around, and the lights in the tube weren't yet on.  So, our time there was lamentably short.

Tubin'

Alas, the off-gassing of sulfur dioxide from Ma'uma'u caught a rare northeast wind, and blew the stuff our direction, forcing us out of the area.  So we didn't get to do our hike (a total bummer), and we ended up leaving the park altogether.  Oh, well, next time.

We ended up taking a different way back, through Hilo.  This town, on the windward rainy side, is a major port, and was once really something.  Today, it is...ratty.  It's one of those places you've been where evidence of former glory is all around you: grand parks and promenades kind of gone to seed, rotting stands of huge trees and rotting shrubbery.  Downtown shopping areas that were clearly cool just after the war during America's tiki culture enthrallment, but are now not, abound.  We ate at a very local place (the straightforwardly named "Hawaiian Style Cafe"), and I got some great saiman (Erica's kahlua pork was smothered in high fructose corn syrup masquerading as barbecue sauce.)  Afterwards, we took a short detour to a nearby waterfall, and then went up, up, up the Saddle Road back to the other side of the island.

The Saddle Road is a recently-refurbished highway originally built during wartime to connect the two sides of the island by the shortest way possible.  It goes right between the summits of Manua Loa and Manua Kea, with stunning views of each.  Though it begins on both sides at sea level and crests at over 6500ft, it does not switchback, owning to the gradual slope of the shield volcanoes.  Frankly, it is weird to drive on a road like this.  Just a constant, endless 5% grade going up, and then down.   Once you're up into the wild backcountry of this island, you begin to appreciate how huge and desolate the Big Island really is.  There are no towns or even residences anywhere, though some of America's largest ranches can be found up here, and even some herds of wild pigs, donkeys, and goats.  At the midway point of the highway, where it is bisected by a road that leads up to the two mountain summits, we pulled over and did a short hike up an ancient cinder cone called Pu'u Huluhulu.  We got some great views of the definitely-not-Hawai'i-looking landscape.  

The snows of Manua Kea 

Weird foliage and Manua Loa

The evening was spent limin' (a great, beachy loan word from Virgin Island pidgin.  I don't know the Hawaiian pidgin equivalent, but I'll look it up) by the pool.  

More later.