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Published: September 26th 2011
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The
Big Island of Hawai'i is certainly one of the most geologically interesting places I have been in the world. From the moment we picked up the car from Kona airport and started driving the 110 miles to the town of
Volcano (not a very creative town name!), where we were staying for the first two days of our stay on the big Island, we realised this was no ordinary landscape. The drive from the airport goes through some tropical jungle and amazing beaches along the coast, which then suddenly becomes completely dry, dead, barren land and then becomes mountainous and rocky. We also encountered fierce stormy weather and blazing sunshine during the 3 hour drive. This island was completely schitzophrenic!
Our lodge in Volcano was a supurb tropical retreat, and the owners prepared us an amazing breakfast both mornings we spent there. Volcano is a tiny little town and is really just a launching pad to do full day hikes in the Volcanoes National Park. We started by going up at night to see the glow of the
Kilauea crater as the lava bubbles away underneath. Due to the eruption in early August, much of the park is closed
as there is too much sulphur in the air - but we get a pretty good view from the open areas anyway. The next day we went back and did a full day of hiking, the highlight of which was the 4 mile hike through the
Iki crater which was formed in 1959 from the eruption. Parts of the crater are still steaming away and the rocks are all incredibly light as they are full of gas. We also walk through the Thurston lava tube, which is a long tunnel created by the lava flow. It was a pretty eerie place. From there we drove down the Chain of Craters road to the sea, where you can see where the lava from the eruption runs into the sea and cools down. Unfortunately you can't get too close, and although you could climb over the rocks and get to the sea, the visitors centre has some horrific stories about tourists getting burned by wave splashbacks and getting sulphur poisoning so we don't risk the opportunity to see running lava into the sea. If we had planned it better we might have opted for a helicopter or boat ride to get the
full picture, but the hiking around for the day was fun nevertheless.
We drove back to
Kailua-Kona the next day by taking the Northern route, meaning that we had done a full loop of the island. Our first interesting stop on the way was at the
Ahalanui hot springs, a large pool (admitedly man made) that takes in ocean water but is a natural hot spring. We stopped in the biggest town on the west side of the island,
Hilo, which is rather uneventful and then saw
Rainbow Falls, which is supposed to be an amazing waterfall, but I guess there hadn't been much rain this summer and so the waterfall was less than impressive.
The highlight of our trip to the Big Island occured on our last day when we took a kayak and snorkel tour which put us in
Kealakekua Bay, where we kayaked for about 30-40 minutes in the very calm and blue sea to
Captain Cook Monument, which is situated on the spot where Captain Cook died in 1779 (he was stabbed to death by a local chef because he was being a typical whinging pom about the fact that the Hawaiians stole his raft). Right at the monument we jumped in the water and amazingly it is a huge coral reef with tropical fish everywhere! We snorkelled for a couple of hours all around the area and saw many different types of fish and even some massive eels. The brightly coloured fish aren't scared to come right up to you either. You could get pretty close to the coral too. It was certainly a great place to snorkel.
Kailua-Kona was a nice town to stay in, it had plenty going on without being tacky and touristy. Although they were getting prepared for the massive influx of tourists for the annual Hawaiian ironman event that takes place in early October. The slow pace life of the Big Island was certainly a refreshing change from the hustle and bustle of the continent.
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