Hawaii, part four: Hawaii!
I got up bright and early the next morning to go visit the Honolulu Chinese temple shrine thing! ...Okay, just kidding, I went to the airport, but inside the airport was a beautiful open-air garden with a Chinese motif. Honolulu wins best airport, hands down. They also had some very interesting exhibits about Hawaiian culture and why you should "declare it for Hawaii" and also not track mud onto neighboring islands in case of contaminating them.
Anyway, I was at the airport because I had a day trip to the big isle planned!
More islands.
The big isle, Hawaii.
Yep, that's snow at the top there. I didn't go up this mountain, which is the tallest in the world, I think, if you count the part underwater, because it is very cold up there and also there is no interesting volcanic activity.
Would you believe this is the only waterfall I saw the entire time I was on vacation?
The bus system on Oahu is so easy and convenient I figured they must have something similar on the Big Isle. I mean, tourists have to get up the mountain somehow, right? Not so! My choices turned out to be a) tour group or b) rental car. Even with the extra fee for being under 25 the rental car was a bit cheaper, and I'd be able to go wherever I wanted and not be stuck with a tour, so it wasn't a difficult choice.
The car turned out to be very nice (I thought it might have been a luxury car, since it even had automatic headlights and the gas thingy was on the wrong side, but my uncle says that stuff is standard now, so maybe I'm just used to inexpensive cars), and I only had to ask the rental people over to explain things a few times before getting on the road. (Seriously, I could not find the switch to move the seat forward. It was very embarrassing.)
First-ever car rental == success!
The visitor's center, always my first stop in a national park. This one was small but nice, with plenty of rangers hanging around to talk about stuff, suggest hikes, and explain all the crazy lava things going on. Apparently I hit a week during which a number of historical volcanic activities were occurring, and they even had up a display about the new lava breach that had just started last week. They work fast.
In fact, I got very lucky by going on the day I did, because the park had been closed just a day or two before because of all the poisonous gas pouring out of the caldera and it would be closed again in another couple days. It was okay the day I was there because the wind was blowing the gas out to sea instead of across the island. However, the sky was still very cloudy and white.
By the way, aside from the lava the big theme at the center (and everywhere else on the big isle) was Invasive Species. Mosquitoes, especially, and the evil bird flu they were spreading, and wild pigs, and ferrets, and snakes, and all sorts of stuff messing up the ecosystem.
The second visitor's center, this one by the big caldera. It's actually a replacement for one that got covered up and burned by lava some years ago. Things aren't very permanent at Hawaii Volcanos National Park.
This center had some really neat displays about Pele (Hawaii volcano goddess) and also the rest of the Hawaiian pantheon. It had never even occurred to me that they would have other gods, and the center had up all these pretty pictures of them, so I actually ended up buying a book on Hawaiian mythology. Did you know Pele had an on-again, off-again relationship with the local pig god who could also turn himself into a fish with a very long name?
I have no arms in this picture. Why do I not have arms?
The gas and steam pouring out of the caldera. Apparently the hole it's blowing out of glows at night, but I planned to see the lava then so I missed it.
This is one of the big historical things, since this is the first time this volcano (there are three active ones on the big isle) had erupted in - 25? - years. It blew a big hole in the side and the park promptly closed all the trails down there. Not that the trails, like the center, were all that old - about a hundred years ago that big crater was a boiling lake of lava.
Me, on the edge of a cliff overlooking the caldera.
And another view. Can you tell the road kind of circles around? Normally you can drive all the way around in a big loop but, once again, it was closed because of the noxious gas. Even when it's open, they have all these signs about how to recognize if you're breathing in carbon monoxide or sulfur and that you're to drive with all your windows rolled up. Of course, you do the latter anyway because it is boiling hot and humid up there. (Except when it wasn't, and you were cold and had to put back on the jacket you just took off. Stupid mountain volcano weather.)
Did you know lava can make giant tube tunnel things in the earth? Neither did I, but I was still going to walk through one.
When they said "entrance" on that sign, they meant "head of trail to get to the entrance, because geography keeps us from putting the parking lot right next door, and also, wouldn't you like to admire all of our Hawaiian rainforest scenery?"
That is an ominous entrance if I have ever seen one.
The tube itself. Not pictured: the many, many puddles of water on the floor, several of which I managed to step in.
Those are lights, by the way, not lava. Obviously. I mean, you're looking at old lava, but obviously none of it is molten or they wouldn't let people just wander through here with children.
While I object to tour guides, I do not object to optional guided hikes lead by park rangers. So I decided to go on this one, offered by the visitor center through the rainforest. Highly recommended was a poncho, which could be obtained at the other center for a dollar and which I obtained. Did I use it? Of course not.
Have I mentioned how much of the park was closed?
Caves and cracks! Even in the best of the times, please keep your children on a short leash.
The island looked so small from the air, but once you get on it the mountains are a lot bigger.
That's steam coming up out of the ground, not low-lying clouds. Steam.
Another view of the caldera! Have I mentioned the caldera? It's very big.
I got stuck in traffic. In Hawaii. I didn't even know they had that many cars. It was so slow a guy got out and walked, and he was going faster. (I actually met this guy later at the lava, which was funny. He was very nice.) It was so slow, I felt perfectly safe calling my mother to ask if she could find an alternate route on google maps (no), and you know how I hate talking on my cel while driving.
Anyway, I was worried it was going to be like this all the way from the freeway to the lava (ten miles!), but it picked up about two miles in after a really horrible intersection and the road narrowed from two lanes to one. (A lot of the slowness was from the merging, but after you merged, it was clear sailing.)
So, lava. Usually it flows within the national park, but there had been a new eruption or something about a week or two ago and it was now flowing through some suburbs and farms outside of the park. Technically, this made it a local city fire department problem, but they deferred to the national park people since they're kind of experienced with this molten lava thing.
Anyway, the park people had set up a viewing area where you could get pretty damn close, but that got covered by lava and also most of the flows were over private property, so the viewing areas got pushed back. They set up a trail to follow, and before you were allowed on the trail they checked to make sure you had a flashlight, water, and shoes. I was short the flashlight, but some enterprising people were selling some from the back of their truck along with water bottles, snacks, and so forth. There were also portapotties (from the park, I assume, and not the truck people) and some other transient vendors. The whole thing was very enterprising.
Lava! Only a few days old, too. That bright rectangle is reflective paint indicating where to walk. Some people, it should be noted, did not heed its warning.
Looking back, you could just see some lava on the hill. It was flowing all the way down, of course, but this was the only part visible from the trail near the beach and with my camera. Also, it was getting dark.
The lava! About half a mile away, but still. You can't really tell from this picture, but this is right over the ocean, and if you had a boat you could go over and see it pouring in. I, sadly, did not have a boat.
People looking at the lava. The viewing area was pretty crowded.
Walking back, because of all the flashlights and how dark it was, looked like a Japanese festival of lanterns. This picture doesn't nearly do justice to how pretty it was to see all those moving lights along the trail.