Hawaii - the Big Island!! Part the 2nd - Kailua-Kona side

OK, the title is a bit of a fib -- first, pictures from the drive from Hilo over to resort land on the west coast.  A bit more from the wet side of the island.

First falls - Rainbow Falls, just outside of Hilo.  Complete with a "short arms selfie" (of doom, doom, cookie, doom!) to prove we were there.

This cool tree looks like it belongs in Lothlórien.

 

Another panorama stitched to a panorama ;-).  Not perfectly stitched, but not bad!  More cool trees near Rainbow falls.

This one is Akaka Falls.  These falls are special because of the FISH and SHRIMP that climb up the falls to spawn at the top.  Yeah.

It's the 'o'opu fish, a goby; it has a suction disc on its belly, which it uses with its pectoral fins to climb 442 feet straight up on the water-wet rocks to the side of the waterfall.  The shrimp in question manages it without a suction disc.

As you can see, William and I were there too, but I look like I was doing that obnoxious mom thing where one "helps" one's son by telling him what to do while taking the picture.  Should'a just smiled proper ;-).

Then we crossed the climate border from east to west and found a grassy dry land, criss-crossed with old black rough lava flows, with neon green-grassed resorts along the coast, covered with palm trees and shopping malls.  And gorgeous sandy beaches with coral reefs.  And another mall and a golf course.  It was, frankly, kind of unreal feeling.

Black black lava, green green grass. Old not-so-black lava with cool petroglyphs, with palm trees and a resort in the background.  And below, the view on the road - flat and mostly treeless grassland, interspersed with old black lava flows.

Our digs in resort-land, a condo, like any other condo.  A little sad after the treehouse, but lots of nice flat walls to do my shoulder physio against, which was, admittedly, desperately needed. ;-).

The view of/from our "lanai", but it feels slightly wrong to call a condo deck a "lanai".  

The thin strip of sandy beaches is even more insanely gorgeous and inviting given its surroundings!  It feels like: "how the BLEEP did this get here?!"  Wasn't I in the middle of either black rocks or another damn mall?  Yet there it is!

This was "just" our local beach by our condo, available to the locals as well, not just resort people.  'Anaeho'omalu Beach on 'Anaeho'omalu Bay (aka, "A Bay").  It even had a feral cat colony, complete with lots of mongooses (it is incredibly hard not to type "mongeese").  No pictures of us actually on the beach because, well, I apparently look my age when I've just come in from the water and I'm a little vain for that.  William's got cool new octopus swim trunks, though.

The next day we did some snorkeling, but we were too busy snorkeling to take pictures of us doing that.  I really wanted to get one kinda like this: 

complete with Little Green Bag in the background, all Reservoir Dogs-ish, with the obligatory Red Dwarf twist, but without the mop heads and fake bad teeth, just with our snorkel gear....but it didn't happen, largely because my family would have smacked me if I tried to make them do that.  I'm getting a little embarrassing in my "mature" age ;-).  After snorkeling, though, and also before snorkeling again, we had a lovely lunch, all mildly sunburned (as we kinda didn't do that re-apply thing), salty, and happy.

And then, it was Homeward Ho ;-).

Hawaii, the Big Island!!!! Part the first - Hilo side

We've done it again - another vacation that doesn't involve visiting family!  Craziness, I tell you, craziness!  Countdown, 2.333 years until Iain leaves us for university.  A few more of these trips to go before he disses us for his journey to his future ;-).

This April break we did a short 1 week visit to the island of Hawaii (a.k.a., the Big Island).  The east/west divide climate-wise is pretty dramatic.  The Hilo side (east side, the bit with Volcano National Park) is dramatically wetter.  Hilo gets something like 140 inches of rain a year.  The Kailua-Kona side (west side, resort side) is on the lee of the mountains and gets more like 20ish inches of rain a year (one site says 9", one 32", so i averaged it ;-)).  Volcano Village and Volcano national park are in addition 10-15 degrees colder than sea level.  Definitely pack for layers!

Carla and Scott did us good and pointed us to the most awesome place to stay - a proper treehouse, yet with running water and electricity.  Completely off the grid.  Water collected from rain and electricity from solar panels (and honking big batteries).

View from below:

Staying here was heaven.  After a crazy day, overfilled with volcano/lava sights, we returned to the sounds of rain and birds, nothing else.  Cozy silence.  Utter bliss!  Here you can see the view of the whole treehouse, viewed from the couch (Ria's bed).  Double lofted, so 3 levels.  First loft up was the master bed"room", and you can just see in the top left corner of the picture the loft above our bed where Iain slept.  (I photostitched a panorama onto the top of a panorama for this one, turned out great!)

We were surrounded by rainforest, obviously!  Fern heaven.  (OK, one picture isn't a fern, but Iain took that one and it is so nice!)

VOLCANOES!  LAVA!

Man, its hard to limit the pictures.  Here we are at the south rim of Kilauea's main crater.

Ria @ Keanakako'i crater, just on the other side of Crater Rim Drive from the previous picture ;-), and some more lava.

And this is why much of Crater Rim drive is closed to traffic - the earthquakes that came with the 2018 eruptions ripped the road to shreds in mulitple places.

Lava flow from the Mauna Ulu eruption in 1969, I believe.  Boys available for scale.  It really looks like someone took a giant sized (12 foot tall)  road of black tarmac and just crumpled it into bits and dropped it where it started.  Massive rivers of black rock rising above the rest of the landscape, with trees/grass/plants just alongside.

In the grassy bits there's this lovely white flower that looks like an orchid, but I don't know if it really is.  On the right is the 'ohi'a.  It can close its pores so it doesn't breathe in volcanic fumes, and can grow directly on lava.  It is the start of plants on a lava flow (at least on the wet side of the island... on the dry side nothing seems to grow on the lava).

Alien landscape.

We finally reached the end of Chain of Craters Road, and found ocean!

This bit of lava looks like a cow patty.  I should send William to wash his hands ;-)

...and that was the end of our first full day.  Yeah, we overdid it that day.  Boy did we appreciate our silent treehouse when we got back!

Next day we checked out black sand beaches (sorry, no vista view picture, it was a nude beach ;-)).  There was a bit of a scramble to get down, with a cool tree.

William's and my feet in the black sand....and see how big the grains are in Iain's hand?  Nothing stuck to your skin you could just brush it off, even when wet.

Then we went to the end of Route 137, where the road is closed due to the 2018 lava flows, and saw new earth, not even 1 year old yet, where it flowed to the ocean.

One bit looked like a monster face!  And someone had put a nice wreath on the lava.

Day 3 had one last lava event - a tour of a lava tube:

Lots of colors to the rock, and shiny bits on the ceiling of the cave.

Finally, the best "Keep Out" sign of the trip ;-)

The transition to the Kailua-Kona side of the island will be in the next post ;-).  Far fewer pictures to navigate for that one....