Today was an adventure in the car, but we did get to see a lot of the coast on the Mauna Loa side of the island. Our plan was to go to the black beach of Puna Lu'u, sit in the sun for the morning, and then return to Volcano National Park for the afternoon, evening and night.
Puna Lu'u was beautiful, but not as secluded or as inviting as the black sand beach near Kalapana that we enjoyed on our first day. In fact, we merely stopped there and viewed the beach and the ruins of the old pier which was destroyed during WW2 in order to prevent the Japanese from landing there. Since it was still early, we challenged ourselves and preceded south on the road, up the mountain through a beautiful little town untouched by tourist trappings, through a giant lava flow and around the southern tip of the island into South Kona. South Kona is pristine island farm land where they grow macadamia nuts and Kona Coffee. The views from the road, and the houses on the steep mountainside are spectacular and we considered making South Kona a destination on our next trip to the island. Be warned, the island is so young here, there are very, very few beaches. It's almost exclusively rocky shore. We stopped at a small and quaint farm on the side of the road called South Kona Fruit Stand that was selling fresh fruit.
We bought a dragon fruit and a guava as well as fresh passion fruit lemondade which was delicious.
We headed down the road and took the coastal exit to The Place of Refuge where we toured a park featuring the old Hawaiian king's palace, temples and tiki gods.
It was a very quiet and spiritual area on the coast, even with a tourist bus there. Mark Twain had visited the village and described watching the king sun himself on the rocks.
The park looked like a post card or maybe that Corona commercial. Even with all the people there, sea turtles floated in the bay. We headed back up the hill to the highway and proceeded down the road a few miles before stopping at the Kona Coffee factory for some of the best espresso I've ever tried. It had kick without any of the jitters.
There was also an amazing view of the coast and the factory below and I read up on what makes the Kona Coffee cherry so rare and special....one, it's round instead of flat. Also, a branch only produces one cherry that is this round shape and this is known as the peaberry and comprises about 3% of the total harvest. No wonder the coffee from here is so expensive. We could see the drying of the cherries occuring below us on a huge cement deck. We headed down the coast a bit further to Kulai where we attempted to find a beach where none really exist.
We ended up at the Sheraton, first at a public access bay and then actually in their swimming pool. Susan is great at pushing me to do things I'm a bit uncomfortable with at first. It's almost always rewarding in the end. We swam in the pool, which meandered through the hotel grounds with water chutes and water falls and also drank a couple of very refreshing and very expensive pina colatas. After swimming, we were getting hungry and thirsty and decided to head into downtown Kulai to get some food and drink. Once we arrived, we realized it was very developed and very busy with tourists. Parking on the street was impossible and this wasn't the vacation Susan and I were trying to find, so we headed out of town without stopping and up the road hoping to stop at a small town market for a snack and water. No luck there. We were well on our way to the junction with Saddleback road when we realized we would have to go an additional 10 miles on to Waimaia in order to get anything to satiate us. We weighed it out, along with the warnings that we read in our book about the desolation, bleakness and difficulty traveling the Saddleback, before finally deciding we were going to go for it and travel over the Saddleback, between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa and back into the Hilo side of the mountain. At the start of the journey the road was rough, steep and very narrow and I was a bit concerned. But after a half an hour or so, it plateus out into an army base and the highway opens up and is easy to travel on. We saw peacocks and a very rare Hawai'ian owl as we traveled over the pass. Upon reaching the top the vegetation changes back into the eastern side jungles and it's a nice yet windy drive back down into Hilo. We had a great and reasonable sushi dinner in Hilo. Our favorites were the ahi and salmon sashimi and the Bay City Roll which was scallop in a roll with their special sauce and melted cheese over the top....very unusual. We returned to Volacano National Park well after dark, hoping to see some glowing lava, but had no luck. We even walked down the Kiluah Iki trail for five minutes in the dark and peered over the lookouts, but could only make out mist and a small light on the other side of the rim. I was scared, Susan was disappointed, but we headed back home and turned in for the night, hoping to return and do the trail the next morning once the sun comes up.
No comments:
Post a Comment