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Published: October 29th 2018
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Dateline: October 29, 2018 Hilo, Hawaii
Lava, Macadamia Nuts and Black Sand
After 4 ½ days at sea, we have sighted land! It’s 75 degrees with a heavy mist rain as we dock in Hilo on the big island of Hawaii. This is the only Hawaiian Island where we will take an organized tour. We are interested in seeing what has happened because of the recent volcanic eruptions. The lava flows stopped about 2 months ago but decimated a number of small towns and neighborhoods as it flowed to the sea. At one point, several months ago, the lava was flowing at 24 miles per hour, continuously, for two months and created 800 new acres of land.
We get out our cruise cards and ID and head down the gangway to line up with our tour group. Cope begins “mooing” ? as we are herded (nicely) onto a small bus with 24 people. Donna, our tour guide, is going to take us on today’s journey. Our first stop is the Japanese Gardens, the largest outside of Japan. As with most everything on this side of the island they are lush and green with Banyan Trees, lakes
and pagodas. It is raining so we only stay 20 minutes before we head on up over the island on Saddle Road to see three different types of lava flows that happened in the 1930’s, 1960’s and 1980’s. It’s very rainy and foggy as we head through the clouds toward Kona and the dry (and sunny we hope), side of the island. Alas it is still pouring as Donna drives us through hundreds of acres of lava fields and describes what happened during each of the flows. The entire island is volcanic as are all of the Hawaiian Islands. We never do see the current flow areas as they are off limits right now. But we do see trees here and there trying to survive through cracks in the lava. We see sheep bones as once the island sheep wander too far onto the lava flows they die for lack of food.
Hawaii is the youngest island about 10,000 years old and Kauai is the oldest at billions of years. The entire Hawaiian Island chain is moving northwest at 4” a year…about as fast as your fingernails grow ? After walking on the cold lava flows we head to
the Mauna Loa Macadamia Nut factory where they process 140,000 pounds of nuts a day. Of course, they now come in modern flavors like, salted caramel, sea salt, chocolate, etc. As the tour comes to an end about 2pm, Donna tells us that we have been such an efficient tour group (getting off and on the bus), that we are an hour ahead of time so… after stocking up on nuts, Donna tells us she will add on a special stop… Hilo’s volcanic rock black sand beaches. These beaches are volcanic and rough and have been formed over thousands of years from all the wave action breaking down the lava that has flowed to the ocean. There are huge turtles resting on the rocks and we pick up some sand for Ben’s sand collection. Nice extra stop.
Although nothing exciting or unusual happened today (thank heavens ?) Hilo made a lovely first stop.
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