Blogs from Kailua-Kona, Big Island, Hawaii, United States, North America - page 12

Thursday was my 35th birthday. I spent it on the island of HI. That is not a bad way to celebrate another year. I spent the morning walking around the town of Kona. Every Oct triathletes from around the world come to Kona to compete in the Kona Ironman. The ironman consists of a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike ride and then a 26.2 mile run. The race starts and finishes oceanfront in Kona. It is a nice place to walk around and people watch. My big plans for the day was the Mauna Kea Summit tour. We were taken to the top of Mauna Kea to see the sun set. Mauna Kea is the world’s largest volcano at over 13,700 feet tall. If measured from the sea floor it would measure over 32,000 feet ... read more

Aloha from the Big Island of Hawaii. Day one was an adventure to say the least. An extremely long day of travel. Left Charlotte at about 8 am eastern time. I arrived in kona about 2 hawaiil time. Got my rental car and found my bed and breakfast that i am staying in. The Rainbow Plantation is very ecclectic. Not to bad except the peacocks were pretty loud this morning. Went to bed and died for sleep Tuesday. ... read more

Today we were all up and about by 7:45 a.m. and we didn't even need to be up by 9:00 a.m! We left for the shore station around 10 and spend about 2 hours there. At the shore station we did the same thing that we did on Tuesday. We used the theodolite and took the postions of all the vessels and pods of whales in the area. On Tuesday there was a lot of whales and only a couple of vessels. But today was totally the opposite, there was a ton of vessels and not as many whales. We also saw a school of Hawaiian Spinner Dolphins. There more than 50 dolphins that were jumping and swimming right passed us. It was incredible. After the we were done with the two 15 minute sessions, we ... read more

Today we was an exciting day filled with a lot of work. We woke up at about 7:00 and got ready for the day. We left at about 8:30 a.m. and went and met up with Yin and Chris at the Kawaihae Pier. We went down to the pier to work on the canoe Makali'i which means small eye, with Chadd Paishon a captain and navigator. In 1976 Chadd and a bunch of others built a canoe, Hokulea and sailed to Tahiti under the navigation of Mau Piailug from Satawal an island in Micronesia. Mau taught them how to navigate using just the stars, moon, sun, and the feeling of the ocean. Chadd gave us a history and showed us around the canoe. It is a very large canoe. It was finished in Febuary 4, 1995 ... read more

Today we had an early start as usual. Got ready and out of the doors at 8:30 a.m. This morning it rained for the first time, which is funny because it's the dry side of the big island. We drove to the National Park Service called Pu'ukohola Heiau to see and hear about the black tip reef sharks. We saw about 7 overall. After hearing Kat's and Lehua presentations of the sharks, we walked along the beach. Our feet got seriously diirrttyy from the mud. Mary and Nia found some wicked shells shaped like cones. Our group walked with Chris and Jan passing the temple of the whale along the way to the Vistors Center. We looked through the Vistors Center and learned great facts about Pu'ukohola Heiau. At the Vistors Center there were displays of ... read more