Volcanoes!

While we did not have any official appointments Thursday morning, we did have a packed scheduled for the day.  We checked out of the Royal Kona, and met in the driveway to head off to the Place of Refuge, or Pu’uhonua O Honaunau.  This area was originally built more than 500 years ago by the local Hawaiians, and was a place where anyone being pursued could find refuge.  Our immediate point of comparison for this was Lapakahi, the old fishing village that we visited a few days earlier.  We immediately decided that this beautiful oasis was a far more hospitable place to live, and must have had much more friendly residents than the desolate and barren wasteland of Lapakahi.

Place of Refuge

Taryn Tiki

As we walked back out of the village, I noticed a sign at the beginning of the trail warning against vandalization such as writing names in white rocks on the lava rocks, stating that this is inappropriate.  For some reason this struck me as ironic.  We walk around ancient villages like this, and are amazed at the buildings and writings of those 500 years before us.  Do you suppose those in charge at that time warned against making permanent drawings and carvings?   What if the ancient societies had heeded these warning?  Are we cheating future societies centuries from now by discouraging the people of today from leaving their mark? 

From the Place of Refuge, we proceeded south to the Black Sand beach.  The four of us were scheduled to meet up with Jason and Michelle at this location.  We split up for a bit and walked around individually for a bit.  Taryn walked directly over to the beach, while I walked over to the rocky coast, and began making my way towards the beach admiring the coast.  I’ve always found the crashing of waves on the coast almost hypnotic.  I could sit for hours and watch the waves crashing as they come in. 

I continued to slowly walk on the very edge of the rocks, watching the waves crash and foam up to the tips of my toes.  Mesmerized,   I continued slowly towards the beach.  I finally reached the sand, and continued watching the large waves come crashing in. As I continued slowly walking along the coast, I saw something out of the corner of my eye that I was about to trip over, and had to quickly stop, almost losing my balance.  A large rock was in front of me, and I quickly regained my balance. After I regained my balance, I realized, this was not a rock, it was a turtle.  A BIG freaking turtle!!! About 18 inches across.  My jaw dropped in shock.  I looked up and saw Taryn and Michelle in front of me.  They’re eyes met mine, and I looked at them and pointed excitedly at the ground, to point out the huge turtles…not one, but three of them, right in front of me!!!!  

To my surprise, they didn’t seem excited, instead, they looked at me in shock and disgust.  Taryn screamed, “Ryan, what the hell are you doing!!!! Get out of there!!!!”  I looked back in confusion, not understanding why they were not sharing in my excitement at this random wildlife find, that I literally almost tripped over.  Taryn followed up with “You are not supposed to be in there!!!!”  This confused me.  I looked around, and realized, I was standing in the center of a section of beach outlined by a perfectly square border of rocks ranging in 8 to 12 inches in diameter.   Suddenly I realized, this section of beach was cordoned off to protect the turtles at my feet.  To make things worse, there were about 10 people around the outside border watching the turtles, looking aghast at the moron that just walked into the middle of the sea turtle sanctuary.  I quickly exited in complete shame, worried that Greenpeace and wildlife protection agents would be tackling me to the ground at any point.

After learning of my ecological faux pax, I quickly fled to the other side of the beach, where I met up with Jason, and found a vendor of frozen dairy confections.  We each grabbed one (the confections, not the vendors).  About this point it was time to head out towards Volcano National Park to meet our guide for our 7 hour guided tour of the park.  Taryn and I headed over to Ryan and Amy who were on the other side of the park. Ryan was taking advantage of the solid coastal winds, and was flying a kite.

Ryan and his Kite

We jumped in the car and headed towards the park, but before we met our guide and entered, we had planned a detour to stop and see the 2400 Farenheit glass studio.  This ended up being a bit more difficult than we had anticipated.  Our GPS brought us to a grove of trees between a couple streets, that clearly did not have a glass blowing studio.  After wandering for 10 minutes or so, we finally gave up searching and decided to call the studio.  RJ, who we had now officially dubbed the group’s resident curmudgeon, pulled out his phone and called them up.  In his most matter of fact voice when the studio answered, Ryan skipped any obligatory greeting, and immediately said “ We want to come and see you guys, and would like to spend some money, but you are very hard to find.”  In response, they provided directions, and we were quickly able to find them. 

Most of the building was dedicated to the glasswork studio itself, and had only a small glassworks studio.  This studio had a small, yet amazing display of pieces for sale.  We spent a half hour here, and collectively spent about $1,000 on various pieces, completely clearing off one shelf of similar looking pieces.

After doing some shopping, we headed over to the Volcanoes National Park visitor center, and met up with our guide Hank. Hank was a tall, thin, soft spoken man in his mid 50s from the state of Montana,working for LavaLand tours.   We followed him into the park, and he provided us a tremendous history of the Kilauea volcano.  In 1959, this volcano began erupting creating the landscape that we were about to tour.  We started at one end of the rim of the long solidified lava lake, and snaked our way down into the Kilauea Iki, the pit crater where the eruption occurred.  On the way in, we found a section of scattered lava rocks, where RJ, Jason, and myself decided it was time to cross off one of our goals for our trip:  The three of us laid in the rock, and began making the obligatory lava angels. 

From here, we traveled into the crater area, and found the source of the eruption, and walked across the lava lake that had resulted from the eruption.  Hank took us to a couple places where we could actually feel steam being generated from the heat that STILL remains  from this eruption 55 years ago.  It was quite amazing to stick your hand near a hole in the rock, and feel the steam shooting out that was coming from the geothermal heat below.  Jason pointed out how amazing it was to look at this landscape, and hear the history of something that was truly recent history, as opposed to geologically recent history measured in thousands of years.

Making Lava Angels

The Whole Crew

After hiking for a few hours around the crater, we took a walk through a small lava tube.  Unfortunately, this brief trip was tainted by several loud, screaming, children.  We determined they must be feral, and we contemplated various ways of silencing them, most of which would be frowned upon by modern society, so we restrained ourselves and persevered on.  After the lava tube, we gathered for a quick lunch that Hank provided, and then took a few tours of lava flows, and steam vents. 

The steam vents were quite amazing.  Hank took us to a field that had a guard rail around a deep hole, which had a tremendous amount of steam coming out of it.  Apparently, the rain from the recent hurricanes was just now reaching the underground heat pockets from the eruptions decades ago, and was now reaching the surface.  Our guide offered to take anyone back to more natural looking chasm (without the guardrail)  with steam coming from it.  We took a quick 1/10^th mile hike into the field and found a hole that was about 10 feet across, and 3 feet wide that had a huge plume of steam coming out of it.  The air was in the low 60s, but when we walked down wind of the vent, the air was about 95 decrease, and was full of steam blowing in our faces.   We’d walk out and instantly be freezing due to the severe temperature change, and the moisture that had collected on us.

After this, our guide took us to the museum and giftshop.  It was getting dark now, and the gift shop overlooked the main crater.   At night, this crater glows a bright orange, as if it is a portal directly to hell. Though it was far in the distance, it was still an amazing sight to see. On our way back to the visitor center, we had all gotten a little silly, and began discussing all the various applications of Vegan Beef Jerky that we had determined existed throughout the week.  In our best Billy Mays interpretations, we all practiced hawking Vegan Beef Jerky’s healing powers, building applications, and all the other problems that we knew could be solved by vegan beef jerky.  After spending some time here, our guide thanked us for being one of the most entertaining groups he had ever led. 

Overlooking the crater, is the Volcano House restaurant.  We headed here for Ryan’s birthday dinner, and enjoyed the orange glow of the volcano through the restaurant while we dined.