nice flight to Honolulu, sitting next to a mother and daughter who had
lived there for 17 years. We took a shuttle to Castle Maile Skycourt,
our hotel in Waikiki for the night. We arrived at the hotel at almost
10PM, island time. We were hungry, but even more thirsty for a nice,
tropical cocktail. The concierge said most restaurants were closing
by 10PM, but we could get some snacks at the ABC Market across the
street. We grabbed a bag of chips and marveled at the $10 packs of
cigarettes for sale and then headed straight for the 5th floor hotel
bar. We had 3 Mai Tai's each, which were quite tasty, enjoyed the
rooftop deck with views of the city, and then headed straight back to
our room since our wake up call was at 4:30AM for our 7:00 flight
to Hilo. We had to call a cab in the morning since we weren't able to
give the shuttle 24 hours notice of our departure. The cab ride cost
$33!....but I guess that's the going rate for a cab in Oahu. Our cab
driver was a real treat. Before moving to Oahu, he lived in Rio de
Janeiro, and he was playing Astrud Gilberto in the cab. He also gave us
some great advice about a black sand beach on the Big Island. The sun
just started to come up as we arrived at the airport. It was the
first daylight since we had arrived and I was looking forward to Susan
seeing some of the sights, like Diamond Head. We piled onto our
small, but still comfortable plane and the stewardess said it was
happy hour! Susan had a bloody mary and I had a guava and rum, which
according to the stewardess is a Mai Tai....I'm not so sure about
that, but it was still one of the best cocktails I have ever had. As
we flew out of Honolulu, we saw the city, Waikiki and Diamond Head out
of our window. I couldn't locate the WW2 memorial. Susan's eyes were
huge with excitement, seeing Hawaii for the first time in daylight.
The sun, peaking through the clouds was religious. During the flight,
we passed over Molokai and Maui and landed in Hilo shortly before 8AM.
It was all mist, gray skies and overgrown vegetation everywhere...it
was beautiful and was no disappointment for us, being from Portland,
OR, we love rain. We had already figured out that everyone moves a
bit slower when on island time....everyone except for the baggage
handlers, who put our bags on the carousel for one round, took them
off before anyone on the plane could get their luggage and moved them
to a back office, where once again we had to wait for 15 minutes to
get our luggage as the person who was helping us was back on island
time. After reconnecting with our luggage, we headed to pick up the
rental car. When we looked at our Priceline confirmation, we noticed
that they failed to include which car company we had a car with....no
problem, there's only eight companies on the island and all eight had kiosks right in a row. I started at one end and began to
work my way down. When I get to the second company, Hertz, they tell
me I had a reservation, but it was cancelled on September 8. What?!?
She says, "Don't worry, Priceline does this kind of thing all the
time to get the best rate for themselves." I hit up Dollar and I get
the same thing, except they've actually re-booked and canceled
twice....I finally end up at kiosk #8, Alamo, and they have our car.
We decide to upgrade to a Jeep, which was a great move, and we wait
for about 20 minutes before the lady helping us realizes that the Jeep
they were bringing us had a flat tire and they took it over to the
mechanic, who won't be in until tomorrow. She finds us a second Jeep,
which has been parked 30 feet from us the whole time. We load our
luggage in and by this time, we both need to pee desperately and we
are starving, having not eaten a proper meal since breakfast, the day
before. We drive straight into downtown Hilo in order to find both.
After some trouble due to low blood sugar, we end up at a small, open
air diner, with only locals inside. We each ordered fish and eggs off
the menu. Susan had over easy, I had scrambled.
The fish was mahi mahi
and was so fresh and good, cooked to perfection with a green spice of
some type sprinkled over the top. All of this was on a bed of the
best white sticky rice I have ever had and only cost $7.25! We kicked
around Hilo for an hour or so, exploring some of the local shops.
Susan picked up a couple of Tikis and a necklace and we bought beach
mats. Still trying to get our bearings on the island, we decided to
attempt to locate the place we are staying, Volcano Rainforest Retreat
in the town of Volcano. It's non-stop rain as we head out of Hilo and
up Hwy 11 towards Volcano. It doesn't take us very long before we
find the town of Volcano, which seems to really be more of a
neighborhood and a few shops and restaurants in the middle of the
rainforest. We end up calling the Retreat and get directions from the
owner, Peter and arrive just a few minutes later. I can't even
describe how awesome and beautiful his place is: little gravel paths
meander through the dense jungle to outdoor tubs and showers as well
as cottages. Our cottage is an hexagonal cedar and glass cabin with
360 degree views of the jungle....
even though your neighbors are only
100 feet away, you can't see or hear them through the rain, frogs,
birds and other rainforest sounds. Peter gives us some advice about a
beautiful clothing optional black sand beach in Puna and where to go
to view the lava flowing into the ocean. He tells us to start out for
the viewing site at 6:30PM. We adventure down to the area he
suggests, going from Hwy 11 to Hwy 130 to Hwy 137, where we cruise
beside sugar cane plantations, papaya orchards, mango groves and a
very rough coastine.
We stop in order to get out of the Jeep and take
a closer look at the ocean and immediately spot a giant sea turtle in
the surf.
We also see several indian mongooses crossing the
road...which is pretty rough going, often one lane and not something a
mainlander would call a highway. We're also finally seeing some sun,
although a rainshower seems to still pass by every half an hour or so.
We eventually make our way to the end of the road to a small village
called Kapalana, where we pick up a six pack of Coors and some water.
From there we head back to the beach that Peter recommended along Hwy
137, just after mile marker 19. We make our way down a cliff to the
black sand where half the people are clothed and half are bare. We
hang out in the sun and play in the surf for an hour. It's raw and
beautiful and the black sand is a bit more rocky at the surf and
actually hurts your feet as the waves crash on it. Afterwards, we
head back to Kapalana, change out of our sandles into sneakers, and
head out to see the lava flow. Susan and I had asked the store owner
how far to the lava flow when we were getting beer and she said, "The
trail head is right there, just walk out!" We had also seen a sign
that said, "Lava flow 3 Miles" and since we could see the steam rising
out of the ocean behind a distant jungle, that seemed reasonable.
Even though it was only 3:30, we decided to head out to see lava
dropping into the ocean. We took the path out and it immediately put
us in the middle of a vast lava field that stretched from the mountain
above to the sea on our left. After walking for 10 minutes, the trail
seemed to disappear and we figured that you just had to scramble
across the barren landscape to reach the distant jungle in order to
pick up the path again...and since there was a group of 4 ahead of us,
we figured we were on the right track.
We remarked to each other how desolate and secret this place was...we thought there would be a lot more people out there to see such a natural marvel. After 30 minutes
of scrambling across sharp lava beds, we reached the edge of the
jungle. The four ahead of us decided to hug the coastline, but we had
spotted what we thought was a sign further away from the coast, on the
edge of the jungle...we figured it was marking the trail. Once we got
to it, we scrambled up a hillside to reach the ancient jungle which
had been spared from destruction by the flows. There was an ancient
wall which I later found out was from the 12th century that we walked
along until we found a little traveled path. We basically spent the
next 30 minutes slashing our way through thick underbrush on this path
until it brought us back to the cliff along the ocean.
Again, we marveled at how remote this was and that we expected to see more
people, but kept forging ahead along the cliff. Another 30 minutes of
hiking went by. We even climbed through lava tubes to reach the other
sides of barriers and again through more dense jungle, always
following the steam plume, before finally spying the end of the
jungle, still a mile away. At this point, turning back wasn't an
option. We realized it would be getting dark soon and we didn't want
to making our way along that cliff without daylight....oh, and by the
way, we didn't bring flashlights, cellphones, money or water.
Brilliant, eh? Being a very experienced back country hiker, I was
amazed with our stupidity. So we kept going and actually got pretty
close to the end of the jungle before we finally did come across a
sign, which read "DANGER! DO NOT ENTER THIS AREA! " But we were
blessed, there was an old road leading out of the jungle from the sign
and so we took it, briskly walking as it was getting darker by the
minute. After another 20 minutes, we reached a paved road, where I
guy in a huge construction vehicle passed us and looked down in
amazement...you could see him think, "What are you doing down here?"
But at least, in the distance we could see more cars and a guy
directing parking...now we realized, we had finally reached the
parking lot for lava flow viewing! It was like a Grateful Dead show!
There were thousands of people, vendors selling jewelry, crafts,
flashlights, food, photos and water (which we had no money for). We
asked the parking attendant, "How much further to the viewing point?"
He said, "20 minutes." We felt so stupid, realizing we could have
driven straight here instead of hiking for over two hours across
treacherous terrain and jungle, but knew we had to keep going...we
were not going to give up on this dream! The best part of our
experience earlier, was that we now had the ability to scramble down
the lava field to the viewing point at twice the speed of the other
tourists. We arrived at the viewing point in just over 10 minutes.
It was astounding. In the dusk, we could see lava flowing off the
cliffs and into the sea. The steam plume was glowing as well.
We stuck around for a bit before deciding we better start heading back
before it gets too dark...as we still had a 3 mile walk ahead of us
back down the road to Kalapana. On the way back, we began thumbing
for a ride and a gracious young couple from Seattle eventually picked
us up and brought us back to our car. The bar at the end of the road,
a little tiki hut, was open and we decided we needed a drink after
this experience. I had rum on my mind again. He only had two kinds
of beer and kava. Beer wasn't strong enough for the pain our muscles
were feeling so we asked, "What's kava?" The bartender said it's not alcohol, but it's a bitter, earthy tasting concoction made from the A.W.A. plant, a local traditional elixir, that functions as a pain killer, muscle relaxer and stimulant. Perfect! We split a glass of
that.
It tasted a lot like the opium tea I had 10 years ago...bitter
and earthy. It made our tongues and lips numb made us feel a bit
strange. Lights became brighter, but we weren't "tripping balls" or
anything like that. It also made our muscles feel warm. We headed
home, stopped for mexican food in Pahoa and then eventually back to
the Retreat where we had a nice, late night, hot tub. And slept
harder than I have in a long, long time.
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