Hilo Road Trip

We tend to save our road trip adventures for the weekend since Christopher is working during the week and since these adventures can be hours long. The island of Hawai'i is the largest in the chain of islands and it can take you 10+ hours to drive the highway(s) that encircle it, that does not include and site-seeing stopping time and it's mostly because the speed limit here is never more then 55 and in a good number of places it's only 45....things move much more slowly in Hawai'i.
This day (actually last Friday), once again, Makoto took the wheel of the demon (just in case we needed her for an off-road moment) and with Ira as our guide (he used to live in Hilo) the four of us headed out to see the Hilo side of the island.



We headed north passing through my favorite town of Waimea....I was going to write an entire post about Waimea but then I realized the photos I have cannot do the area any justice and no one is as excited about that place as I am....
Here are the couple of photos that I do have and you can read more about Waimea's rich history here.

This first photo was taken along the road to Waimea, showing snow topped Mauna Kea in the background and a old, volcanic cinder cone in the foreground.
This second photo was taken from the Waimea airport, showing the town nestled up at the base of the green, rolling hills.

I guess I fell in love with Waimea because of those rolling, green hills, open grasslands and the brilliant sunshine!...I have been to or through Waimea at least five times since we've been here and, even though it's green (signaling rain!) and those big clouds are always rolling over the top of the hills behind town, I have yet to see anything but sun there. All the locals tell me that's atypical, I'm not sure I believe them.....
I will say, the area is quite windy and the temps are a full 15 degrees cooler in Waimea then they are in Kona. This has prompted me to say that we will one day own a winter house in Kona and a summer house in Waimea....guess I gotta keep making those leis.....
Waimea is known as a cowboy town (really, check out the link to the town's history), Hawai'ian cowboys, ka’ aina o ka paniolo in the Hawai'ian language, are a plenty; there are a lot of ranches and big trucks but the place has an air of class to it...those wide open grasslands, the well planned and tended town center (with only two stop lights) and it's cultural diversity along with some great (we've heard) restaurants and a really fabulous wine store have given me the impression that it's a place I could live.
One really great attribute is the area is not overly built up...the Parker Ranch, at one time the largest private land holding in the United States, topping out at over 225,000 acres, is still the largest land holder in the area though not as large as it once was. Most of the open land you see in the photos is Parker Ranch land, full of cattle and horses and turkeys; I think that's how the turkeys arrived here in Kona, through Parker Ranch.
So enough about Waimea....







Our first stop of the day (besides Tex's for a malasada!) was in the town of Honomu (population about 600) where, on the very small main street we noticed a shop called "Same, Same, But Different"..no kidding...I wasn't able to get a photo of it but from what I could tell, they sold sari's. We also noticed this Japanese Buddist Hongwanji Temple with it's Palladian windows (there are a lot of little temples and churches all over this island), and directly across the street from the temple is this ENORMOUS! banyan tree. Actually there are two trees side by side and they are immense! Christopher used his photo splicing abilities to get the whole shot. Once you enlarge the photo, notice the car and the people to the left of the tree...like I said, immense!
A banyan tree has this method of sending roots back down to the ground from other parts of the tree, clinging to itself or whatever other plant form (or man made structure) is nearby, strangling the life out of it. Notice the "tree" to the left of Christopher in the third photo. That's a coconut palm that happened to be in the wrong place, it's completely engulfed in the banyan's roots. Awe-some!






A bit further on up the road from Honomu, on a walk through the rain forest on this wet side of the island (although, once again, this entire side of the island was brilliant sunshine; barely a cloud and certainly no rain), we wandered through some HUGE! bamaboo to see Akaka Falls with it's 420 ft drop. Makoto says this falls is minuscule compared to some on another part of the island....an adventure for another trip!






























On the way out of Akaka, Maktoto and Ira grabbed their machetes from the boot of the demon and took the time to cut some sugar cane for us to chomp on...
Sugar cane, although no longer an industry here like it once was, is still farmed on a smaller scale on this side of the island and, like you see in this photo, it will occasionally jump it's field and grow "wild" along the road.
The cane is as hard as bamboo and quite fibrous to chew on but it certainly is sweet (duh) and once you carve off the outer layers you can float the inner part of the stalks in your margaritas or screwdrivers where it will soak up a little of the liquid, making it a bit easier to chew on. Yum.


























We continued making our way around the island and eventually came into Hilo, the second largest city in the state of Hawai'i after Honolulu. It's a port town with the island's supplies arriving here first before being trucked to other areas...everything from new cars to food makes it's stop here. There was a pretty park along the ocean front and some interesting architecture on the main street that borders the park but we pushed through to points further down the coast.

If you look at the map above you'll see rt 130 that shows up as a little, yellow spur near the eastern most point of the island...out in that direction we came to Ahalanui, a county park with a thermally heated, spring and ocean fed pool. The brackish water was a maximum of 6ft deep with many, shallower places, about 95 degrees and has a man-made wall and inlet separating it from the ocean. But, with every crash of a wave, a rush of fresh ocean water would flood into the pool.
Since it was a Friday afternoon the pool was full of geris (old folks) and children (think pee!-ew.) and since there were signs saying the water is not disinfected (staph runs a bit rampant on the island) and that the fish and eels can be aggressive, we decided only to put our toes in. It took no time at all for a small school of fish to try and exfoliate our feet!
This little break from driving allowed time to drink some beer and eat the huli huli chicken we picked up along the side of the road! It's all about the food, right?!











BUT! the day wasn't done yet!
On the way into Ahalanui park we tried to take the little walking tour of the lava tree forest but the sign said it was closed for renovations until the end of March. The place was torn up and there were state workers in there doing whatever it is state workers do so we moved on to Ahalanui but, on the way back past the park it was 4:30 and state workers were done for the day.....
Not one to be deterred, Makoto decided (and we fully backed him) that we were going to jump the fence and take a tour anyway. Hawai'i belongs to the people, right?!

The first photo shows the the huge canopy of monkey pod trees at the entrance to the park (with the construction accoutrement strewn about) but around the corner and onto the newly torn up foot paths, we saw the lava trees. They're kinda eerie....blackened, entombed sentries scattered about a living, breathing, green jungle. They gave me the heebie-geebies.
What is a lava tree, you ask?
These lava trees formed in 1790 when fast moving, molten lava (11 ft deep!) hit living 'ohi'a trees. The wet trees cooled the lava that was encasing them at the same time burning the tree itself into ash.
The molten lava then drained away in gashes in the earth that were caused by an explosive eruption, the slightly cooler lava surrounding the trees had already started to harden and remained above ground....weird.

As we were jumping back over the fence that was supposed to keep us from entering in the first place, a pick up truck came onto the entry road with a charcoal grill tied down in the back of the truck bed....the grill was still spewing smoke.
As the husband jumped the fence to use the restrooms of the park, his wife took tongs and reached into a pot that was in the back of the truck and offered each of us a long marinated, smoked chicken thigh! Now that's Hawai'ian hospitality!
She said they had been at the state beach, cooking her delicious chicken (which, btw, she said she loves to do) and they tried offering it to anyone passing by. They didn't get any takers so they were on their way to another park to try and feed some of the homeless (read..HIPPIES! they're everywhere down here! tent dwelling, no bath taking, dreadlock wearing, patchouli smelling hippies!).
The chicken was delicious! and with our smokey, greasy fingers we gave her a hug and a mahalo and wished her aloha.



























BUT! we still weren't done!
We were off to see the steam vents; these were totally not what I expected. I thought there was going to be a rocky outcropping with holes into the earth and steam coming out. Now that I think of it, that's exactly what we saw but it wasn't quite as I pictured it.
We parked along a highway and hiked off into a jungley scrub land of ferns and orchids all the while ignoring the "Trespassers will go to jail" signs (meant more for the naked hippies then for us) and listening for the tow truck that was going to come take the demon should a passerby have alerted the property owner.
The steam vents (there were a number of them) were rocky outcroppings that allowed steam to escape from the earth below (imagine that). Makoto said they were sometimes filled naked hippies (actually the word "dong" was used more then once) steaming themselves into a state of higher being. We found no "dong" this day, probably because of the no trespassing signs and the expletives that were spray painted on the blacktop at the entrance to the overgrown path. What we did find we, well, were steam vents. Very cool (actually steamy hot) outcroppings of rock that, somewhere in the middle of them, had a chasm into the warmer depths of the earth. A couple of them had make shift benches to sit on. One of them was a slit just big enough for a human to slip through and it opened up to a "cave" of sorts that could accommodate a few people..we took Makoto and Ira's word at this...and the last one we visited was pretty deep and also contained a small cave with a bench. Christopher did crawl into this one while I took pictures...spelunking is not my thing, especially if there's heat involved.
The second photo shows a little steam around Christopher's head and the third photo shows him in the little cave....

We still were not done with our adventure! But, I will have to write the last part in another posting...stay tuned. All-in-all it was a very full day with 12 hours on the road but so worth it!