phyncke

I have been asked to share from my trip to the Big Island (Hawai'i) and I have been meaning to but I have just been so busy since I got back. Just loads going on. I took notes while I was there of our activities day-by-day. I stole that idea from

khylea who does that whenever she travels and it seems a good practice. It is a way to keep track of places gone and things done etc. I describe things too and think I get more into it as the trip goes along. You will see my entries get a little longer. So here is that.

Then my first pictorial essay is pictures I took of some of the signage I found on the Big Island...subtitle this "Ways You Can Die in Hawaii". These are warning signs, iconic graphics and just amusing wording that just struck me in our travels. I tell you. According to these signs, there are many ways you can die in Hawaii. Morbid thought, but true that. :P You do have to be careful traveling, swimming and hiking there. We definitely heeded these signs and were cautious.

9/28/10-Tuesday
Two hour delay in Oakland but made my connector from Honolulu to Hilo. Not so bad.

khylea met me in Honolulu (Honowoowoo).

Moana our crazy cab driver chick. Really cool lady! Took us to Enterprise to pick up our car rental. Her son is in the Navy.

Kuohi Grille – breaded veal with gravy – a decadent treat. So not on my diet.

Supermarket: Sack N Save – got provisions for our kitchen.

Staying in Hakalau on Homestead Road with eastward view of ocean. As you drive in you go through the rain forest and then across some agricultural lands.

9/29/10-Wednesday
Hilo Farmer’s Market – not more spendy than bay area and really nice people. Great deal on t-shirts. Also some nice crafty items as well as local artists. I found Hawaiian shirt for Dave (my bro).

Walked around Hilo and did the shops. Cute stuff there and nice people.

Ate fresh pineapple – the best ever. Now I know how to tell a pineapple is ripe. This I never knew. Huzzah.

Made mustard chick-broc-rice for dinner in Wailea kitchen

9/30/10-Thursday
Volcanoes National Park – desolate, cool and creepy all at once. Hiked to cool petroglyphics (think hieroglyphics). At times it looks like another planet. Ranger Rick gave a great presentation on botany. All through the day I kept thinking of the B-52’s song…HOT LAVA! Even sang that out loud…ha! We did not actually see hot lava…what we saw was evidence of older (now cold) lava flows. There are two kinds of lava (a a = sharp and painful kind and pahoehoe = smoother more rippled lava flow – latter one is hotter temperature)

Town of Volcano – Sleepy and not much there. Not even a snowglobe.

Big Island Pizza – dinner on our way back to house - chicken pesto and Maui (Hawaiian) – a local hang out. Found this on the GPS. Excellent pizza. Really good.
Some rain today…

10/1/10-Friday
Japanese Garden-Lili-Uokalani Gardens – free admission - beautiful grounds, pools and bridges integrated into this serene landscaped area. Sister city monument with Japan.

Pana-ewa Rainforest Zoo – free admission – recommend a small donation to this lovely zoo set in the rainforest. They have an old white tiger, many macaws and parrots, a sloth, donkeys, monkeys and many lovely plants and flowers in a rainforest setting for the animals. Great birds and a cheerful staff.

Mauna Loa – macademia nut factory. Took self-guided video tour of the factory explaining the process of harvesting and processing the macadamia nuts. Great sale items in the factory store of things you cannot get in the US and very good pricing. Also…good kitsch items of Hawaii. Just a great stop.

Volcano path (the other vista) closed today due to air quality issues. Will try another day.

Dinner today – cooked in – shrimp scampi and salad. Really good. Improvised on the spicing. We should replace the house olive oil here.

10/2/10-Saturday
Hilo Farmer’s Market to replenish supplies – got another perfectly ripe pineapple. I bought some locally made honey and a few gifts for folks back home – t-shirt, photo-magnets and I got a dress for a good deal. More than just food at the market. Nice buys on unique items.

Beach day – we hit beaches near Hilo - ones near Leleiwi Beach Park and Richardson Beach (Ocean Center). Really nice county managed beaches with protected coves for swimming but also areas where there was some surfing action to watch too. Warm water and clean. Lots of families there for the day as this was a kid safe beach for swimming. Loads of kidlets swimming. We stopped at a few others on the way back to Hilo to look at. Good beach area. Note houses built on stilts for tsunami occurrences—interesting that. VERY high up off the ground.

Hilo Hatties – fun tourist store. All the tour buses stop here for their stuff. They have a great sale rack and good items. Two for one deals and post cards. Not a bad place for touristy gifts. Mainstream things (Hawaiian patterned shirts and dresses, pearls) and you can get sale things. The staff are VERY nice there..(right across from Walmart). I got a calendar for my students (one for me too) and two postcards and only spent 2.50. Deal!

Grocery stop at the KTA this time for a few items…peanut butter, lunch meat and cheese…etc. Thought we should try a different supermarket. This one is right in Hilo proper and is older than the Sack n Save…prices are a little higher. Got olive oil for the kitchen of Weilea. Will leave that for the mojo.

Rained a bit today on the drive back.
Khylea is cooking chicken fried rice for dinner. Fresh pineapple for dessert. This is living.

The birds are at it again. Our night time symphony. Just what are they saying…what does all this birdsong mean? It is so loud…the night sound is intense and you feel like you are in the middle of the rain forest (which we are). Animals have seen – mongoose, feral pigs…zoo animals too (not counting those as that is planned sighting)…ducks. We hear a rooster every morning at dawn…well for a few hours past dawn really. He is up at the next farm. Cricket sound here is the baseline noise of the evening.

10/3/10-Sunday
Went to Punalu’u Bakeshop and Vistor Center and had a cup of Ka’u coffee (not kona but still hawaiian!) and a malasada --sort of like a donut but made out of Hawaiian sweetbread and dusted with sugar. Cute kitschy place with stuff to buy. I got the above and some post-it notes in the shape of a pineapple.

Stopped at Wood Valley Tibetan Temple (just north of Pahala and a short inland detour). Very interesting serenity now sort of place. They wanted a 5.00 donation per person just for looking. I thought that was interesting too and kind of well, odd. I paid it, of course.

Drove to Southern most tip of Hawaii (Ka Lae or Southern Point)– which is the southern most tip of the USA. Pretty cool. Very windy there but the view was pretty amazing. People cliff dive there off of these platforms built right onto the cliff wall. One platform has a pulley and I surmise that people dive off and then haul themselves up to the platform. Radical.

We tried to find Green Sand Beach. Not marked and could not find it. It is difficult to get to so that must be why…elusive beach.

Heading back north we stopped at Black Sand Beach (Punalu’u State Park). Amazing. Very rough waters but beautiful and we saw large sea turtles there…resting on the beach. 4-6 of them. I got pics of them. The sand is truly black and while they say not to take the sand, well…we did not clean off our shoes there and have some black sand to take home. Went swimming here and did our new thing – goggling. Like snorkeling but just with swim goggles and way more affordable. You swim on the surface and look down and can see quite a bit. Ate lunch there from the cooler (sandwiches cucumber and pineapple) and enjoyed the built in pavilions. This spot is enjoyed by tourists (2 busloads of Japanese tourists) and locals alike.

Stopped by Lili-Uokalani Gardens – Japanese Garden (Hilo) again. I love that park as it is very beautiful, serene and a place where the people here go to walk, take their dogs and hang out. A very used area for the locals. We walked out onto Coconut (Mokuola) Island and learned a bit about the tsunami thing here. A real and present danger for the Hilo side of the island…Hilo had been rebuilt and positioned to be able to withstand the effect of a tsunami…basically moved out of harm’s way. The area where the Japanese Garden and Coconut Island are used to be another city but were changed to parks due to the threat of tsunami…no sense building residences and businesses there to have them destroyed. Hawaiians very practical that way. I love finding things out about places I visit. Just fascinates me about how geography and disasters effect a place.

Dinner at Ken’s House of Pancakes – from the guidebooks (like all of them) and worth going too. Local Hawaiian food as well as American cuisine. Khylea had really good mahi mahi while I ate omelette and pancakes. The pancakes were to die for. I would eat there again…reasonably priced and they yell SUMO! when they deliver that soup to the tables. Staff dresses in Hawaiian fabric clothing. Fun!

Trying out the Jacuzzi hot tub at Wailea House. (Report – A+)

Worthy of note – Hawaii or at least the Big Island is an island of micro-climates. You can drive and hit different weather systems. We started out in the pouring rain and drove into arid dry desert-like area…from rain forest to arid zone. Very interesting that. All sorts of weather happening here.

10/4/10-Monday
Visited Akaka Falls – just south of our turn off and then inland (due west)-beautiful waterfall – two actually Kahuna Falls is there too. A bunch of tour buses were at the sight too. Joy.

Stopped on the way out at bottle shop and got a cool bottle for my black sand. The guy even cut me a cork for it. Very happy.

We drove north on route 19 toward the top of the Big Island. *List towns went through. Stopped at Loe-something Point – once a sugar-town and seaside port which was hit by a tsunami in 1946. It has been turned into (again) a public use park as it is right in the wave-line. Beautiful spot with stunning waves and coastal view. The memorial to those lost in 46 is touching…with news clippings and pertinent information. The rest of the drive no stops but really showed how different the island topography is on the north-side. Parts of it looked like the rolling hills of Ireland…really green and different than Hilo area. A bit further…misty and fog shrouded…loved that.

*Towns-Districts – Distr of N. Hilo, Umaumo, Ninole, Maula Gulch, Laupahoehoe Point, Honoka a, Kawaali Gulch, Ookala Community Forest, Distr of Hamakua, Kealakah Stream, Paauhau, Ahualoa…(beyond that was Weimia further north)

We finally got to the volcano sighting point on the other side of Crater Rim Drive and could see the plume and the glowy effect that the lava has on that. You walk down to the barricade and wait until 45 minutes after sunset and can see the glow. Really cool. The Civil Defense staff have a lot of knowledge about the lava flow and told us a lot about how active it is there…showed us today’s finds of lava and such. Really nice.

Dinner in – sandwiches and had a jacuzzi. It is pouring rain tonight. I don’t mind the rain. They do get flood conditions here in Hawaii…flood signs posted all over the freeways.

10/5/10-Tuesday
Morning rain storm
Went back to Leleiwi Beach Park for a swim. Nice relaxing time.

Stopped at L&L Hawaiian BBQ for lunch. Very fried food and one of the locals choices for lunch. Cheap and so so.

Drove through Onomea Bay on the way to the house. Scenic vista. Also there was a botanical garden on that turn off which we did not stop at.

Doing the cleaning routine for Wailea and spending the evening here at the house. Fly out tomorrow morning for the Bay Area. Have had a wonderful time here and I know I will come back again to this island and other places in Hawai’i. Tomorrow we fly out through Honolulu (we call it Honowoowoo) and each head to our respective cities.

And now onto the pictures, also behind an LJ cut.

Big Island Signage...101...or ways to die in Hawaii...

You could get hit by a coconut or branch from a palm tree....

Coconut Island, Hilo

You could fall off a cliff...

Akaka Falls, Hilo

You could get pulled out to sea by the rip tide or hit by a rogue wave in the surf...

Leleiwi Beach Park, Hilo

You could step in a crack or again, fall off a cliff...

South point, Hawaii

Lots of fun to be had in Hawaii, really. We had a great time! :P Hope you enjoyed my post and really...the signs were amusing. I will post more pictures of things we saw etc. Aloha!