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6th May 2006 - 14th May 2006
Trip to Hawaii! Mmm.. At the first thought, I didn’t really want to go there. I am basically from south India where we have lots of beaches, some good ones too.. The weather is not that hot(other than peak summer). So, um, what’s the big deal?
Then, my husband bribed me with thoughts of volcanoes, hike down a colorful crater, colorful fishes. What the heck! No trip can be non-enjoyable. So, we decided & then planned. I mean, we had no doubts which island to visit. Fortunately, we think alike(mostly) and we knew instantly it’s going to be the two southern most islands, Big Island & Maui.
Hawaii First we booked the flight- ATA airlines(2 months in advance though!). Cheapest available, I am sure. We were going to fly to Hilo, Big Island; fly from Hilo to Kahului, Maui; fly out of Kahului back to the mainland. Island Air gave decent priced options for inter-island flights. OK! The most expensive part - taken care of. I had no idea what is going to be in store in the planning process.
Planning had its own difficulty. We visited
every nearby library and picked up every possible book on Hawaii. Trust me! I never read any book in full. Bits and pieces, here and there. (Apart from Volcanoes National Park and Haleakala, neither of us knew much about Hawaii)
But one book struck me. And that book was with us until our trip ended.
- Big Island Revealed
- Maui Revealed
The author has practically lived in Hawaii and given information on a mile to mile basis.
For any trip, I have the responsibility of the lodging. I prefer not to go for expensive resortsfor 2 reasons; one being, you will end up staying in the resort/hotel the whole day and not have time for traveling out, and other, I get bored. Of course, they are expensive as well
Nothing with the lodging seemed to fall in place. I mean it is a huge island. How are the roads going to be? How far can we get in day after seeing everything that’s in between? Where to stay? What to expect? I read a lot of reviews about budget hotels from $100.. Hey! Now, that’s really not my kind of a budget hotel.
I came across
this site that helped me a lot. We pretty much stayed in a lot of the places listed there. I got lots of reviews about
Arnotts lodge in Hilo. Unfortunately, they do not check in after 10 pm and our flight lands at 9.50 pm. But, we made it there the last 2 days in Hilo, when we were covering Volcano National Park. The following days were mostly confused, with me calling and checking maps every now and then. Man! The names really confused me (they all seemed the same) that I had to check with the maps to know even which island they were referring to. Tough job there! We had no idea what we were getting into, or how to go about it.
Visiting some sites practically everyday, I thought that we had to do an entire loop of the big island if we did not want to miss out anything and spread out our sight seeing plans. So, from Hilo, we head up north to Honokaa. It was pretty easy finding lodging there (as there was only one listed wherever I saw-
Honokaa club)
Finding lodging on the Kona side of Big Island
proved to be Mission Impossible. Why? Because there were so many options. And they were all “pricey”. I sat with that for a long time. Days were flying. I had to make a reservation. I was not too happy with the reviews, but I opted for
Manago Hotel, Captain Cook(10 miles from Kona)
Maui was still there. But, Hana was not that big of a deal as again, there was one place that fit our budget,
Joe’s Rentals.
My last headache was in the main city, Kahului. I want something close to the airport so that we do not need to drive too long to reach the airport. I spent some time on this as well. But, I decided
Banana Bungalow in Wailuku(roughly 4 miles from the airport)
Phew! Mission accomplished? Will just need to fill an empty template with places to see…hmm.. Piece of cake? No way! I knew that. For other vacations, we exactly knew what to see and it was much easier to pick up lodging on the way or close by. Trust me! At this stage, I have no idea how Hawaii is going to be. A little insecurity, I guess. Maybe that’s
for good?
I forgot about Hawaii for the next couple of days. I still had not decided on places to see. Just a few “must- sees” here and there.
As the days of vacation came closer, my mind seemed to blank out…Trust me! Usually it doesn’t. Okay, I do get paranoid sometimes!!
I read a lot about packing very specially for Hawaii. Bug spray was top on the list…I really did not know why??? Maybe I will find out
Lots of sunscreen, food(vegetarians), snacks, warm clothes(Haleakala National Park), cool cotton clothes(for almost all other days), hats, hiking shoes, sandals; everything that seemed important went into packing.
The D day! May 6 2006 was here(still no concrete plans 😊). Our flight was scheduled to depart OAK at 7.35 pm. With my husband around, I never get to arrive late to the airport. So, there we were, at OAK at 5.00 pm. I really get annoyed when my husband makes me wait, but better safe than sorry.
I had no idea how ATA was going to be(I got to know later that they started services to Hilo only a couple days back😞). Proved
better than the other good ones, though. Pretty good in-flight service.
Flight was on time. There we were! Hilo International Airport. The minute we got out of the plane, the clouds were pouring in rain. The baggage claim area was out in the open. Very interesting!
It was 10.00 pm and the clouds were showing no mercy in pouring loads of rain down on us…
We managed to get to Alamo and rented a Chevy Cobalt(purple). That was the first time we’ve rented a two door car with moon roof. I started to feel the adrenaline rush about this trip. The owner of Wild Ginger Inn, Benjamin Sr., was kind enough to be awake until we came, and even helped us with our baggage. We checked into a bamboo room and could still hear the rain pour outside(It was all dark and I could not practically see what was outside the window). We were tired more than we knew and hit the bed soon enough.
I got up to the sound of birds. I went 😊. Where did all my tiredness go? It was then I saw that, our window opened unto bamboo trees(I just remembered
that we were in a bamboo room). We got ready and came out of the room and were shocked! Where darkness covered last night was the beautiful Hilo bay.
The place served a complimentary breakfast that was very mouth watering; some local bread, with a variety of jams(can you believe I saw a coconut jam! Was not too brave to try it, though), fresh fruits(papaya, banana). Everything reminded me of my home in India.
Well! We got into a little chat with the owners. They are basically from OAK, CA and moved out last year. Their idea of retired life.. I envy them.
After a little Hawaiian hug with the owners, we left the place(with confused directions to Wal-Mart). O boy! This place is confusing or what. I practically could not find the difference in road names. Everything looked so similar. All had “k”, “w” and all the vowels. So, obviously, we got lost and a local had to help us out. After stocking up grocery, we left off to the waterfalls.
I was driving, and my husband opened up our bible “Big Island Revealed”.
First was the most popular, Rainbow falls. It was raining like
Boulder creek falls
Tropical Botanical Gardencrazy. We initially thought of waiting out the rain. But we saw so many people out in the rain, simply because, rain seldom stops in Hilo. We got some quick snapshots of Rainbow falls, took the small trail to the top of the falls. Pe'epe' e falls and Waiale falls followed.
Our next stop was the more popular Akaka falls. After sometime there, we headed to a 4 mile scenic drive that went near the coast (clear marking along hwy 19). It was more like a thick forest. Our immediate destination: Tropical Botanical garden. There was a huge entrance fee ($15 per person). It better be worth it, I thought. There was a 500 ft board walk that goes into the valley filled with lots and lots of different varieties of plants from all over the world. They even have a waterfall there. At one point, the walk goes to turtle point(out into the ocean). Amazing views!
For all we saw, it was well worth the money(I guess!) I think that was about it. We had to head to Honokaa. There was another botanical garden that boasted of a waterfall. But, we assumed that with so much of rain, the
waterfalls would be more like a flash flood. So, we checked in early at Hotel Honokaa Club. The owners, Annelle and Jory, were very friendly and mentioned about sunset in the Waipio valley. It was a short 8 mile drive to the outlook.
We did catch an amazing sunset.
Next morning was even fresher. We got all excited for the talk of the town, Waipio valley. And! We were taking the
wagon tour inside the valley. Our 9.30 am tour cancelled(heavy rains over last couple of days & the streams were impassable). I saw people using the bug spray. So, I showed off a little too! We got dropped by a 4wd into the valley at 11.30 am. That gave us time to check out the waterfalls by the ocean(wagon tours do not go near the ocean). We did the 1.30 pm wagon tour. We were the only people. It was fun. The mules were scary at first, but they worked very hard. We crossed 2 streams(I could have fallen out on the first). The streams were rising so fast that they might cancel the next tour. It rains a lot, in the valley. We came up and just
then it started pouring again. Boy! Were we lucky or what?
Done with the east coast, we were heading to the North West to the other end of Waipio valley, Pololu valley. It was a very nice drive. It rained off and on. So, caught a couple of all-color rainbows. Way back, we noticed the sudden change in weather and land. We rushed from green, thick, lush green rain forests to lava-laden, sun-rich desert. Was this on the same island? I really wondered. But, over a small clear-up of the clouds, we caught a glimpse of the 13000 ft Mauna Kea summit and the observatories in there.
We read about sunset at ‘Anaeho’omalu beach to be one of the best. It was! We got just in time to catch the sunset behind the coconut trees. The clouds cleared a little bit and we saw the sun shine over the Mauna Kea summit what a site!
We had a long way to go before we checked into our hotel in Captain Cook. Not very difficult. Only one in the town and is on hwy 11. One of the worst places to stay- I need
to mention that. It was cheap, very cheap, but you get what you pay! I even got some bug bites sleeping on their bed(Had I known earlier, would have used the bug spray!!).
The next day, we were more than happy to checkout early. After a little more grocery at a close by store, we visited the Napo’opo’o beach. We went over to the a concrete structure on the banks and I saw something yellow below….It took my husbands’ confirmation to dawn upon me that they were actually reef fishes. Water was again, very clear and a little deep as well. We heard from a local that the place near Captain Cook Monument was filled with great reefs with amazing fishes. They take you there on a kayak and then you can snorkel. We did not have time. We just saw Captain Cook Monument from far and were happy with it. Getting there is a strenuous 2-3 mile hike.
Next is a place I’ve wanted to go check out in a long time.
Pu’uhonua o Honaunau National historic park or the “City of Refuge”. It is a beautiful place, but it was very hot when we were there. The place has
magic in every ounce. We got to see a green sea turtle that came up very close to the shore. They are protected so we could not get close. By the time we got back to our car, I badly needed a milk shake(and we were in the middle of nowhere). We were heading back to the main hwy and stopped real quickly at the painted church enroute.
By this time, we had covered a lot of road, but the main was still awaiting us. So, we headed down to the Volcanoes. But we saw a road to South Point. After checking with the construction workers around about the road conditions, we decided to give it a go. It was a long one lane road for the most part. With the book, we reached South Point without much difficulty(there were a couple of odd intersections). The green sand beach was still way down, so had to ditch it.
We picked up pace to see the volcanoes in time. We checked in the visitor center and got all the information to head down 24 miles in Chain of crater road. Enroute, we stopped for a couple of craters, lava
flows, here and there. There we were at the end of the road where lava flowed over to close it. We parked the car, got our hiking shoes on, flashlights(we need to get back!) and started on our dream hike. Not very far, but to someplace where we have never been. Nothing even close: to see a live volcano join the ocean after traveling 8 miles from the Pu’u’O’o vent. Sun had still not set so we knew where we were going. We went so far where we knew we could get back on time. A lot of people went much farther. I am sure they would have got a nice view from there. We were happy with where we were. We set the deadline at 7.30 pm. We were off on time back. Boy! What a hike it was? There was the moon, but it was behind the clouds . So, we trusted our flashlights and our instincts and walked our way back. Just made sure we were together. The park is open 24 hours, so you can come in and go anytime. Even at midnight or way past that. We saw some people come in as we headed
out.
We had to check in at Arnott’s lodge by 8:30 pm. I called them up to have someone wait up late for us. We were heading to Hilo and it showed…The rain! It was a little difficult to drive in the rain especially with the car headlights flashing in the other direction. We reached in time to rent a 2 bedroom apartment all for ourselves. There was no one to share the other bedroom. We had dinner and went to bed. The next day was really amazing with birds chirping away. They never stopped for a minute. The rather dark view from the patio was nothing but green plants of every kind. Awesome view to begin a day. I wanted to pick up some artifacts, so headed for the farmer’s market that morning. After enough of “chop-chop” from my husband, I finally had the heart to leave the place. We had to finish up the crater ridge road(around the Kilauea caldera) at Volcanoes National Park. So, we did all that wanted and a little more even. We really fret for not having done the Kilauea Iki hike down into the crater. It was beautiful. We did see
some activity down there. But, it was raining. We walked into the Thurston Lava tube next and surprisingly, there was not much crowd. Then came the south west rift, Halema’uma’u crater, some vents nearby, lots of dated lava flows until we reached Jagger Museum. After some food for the brain, we were heading to the Steam vents & Sulphur banks, our last stop. The sulphur banks reminded me of Lassen back home.
A couple of souvenirs at the visitor center and soon we were heading back to Hilo again. We still had the Banyan drive and coconut island. It was completely awesome. So many banyan trees, I’ve not seen it in my hometown also.
We were amazed how much the sky cleared up the next day. Why? Because we were leaving the island then. 😞
Hilo airport was one of the most natural and simple airport I’ve seen. It was beautiful!
We boarded the Island Air flight headed to Kauai via Maui. It could probably take in 50 people. More people were taking it all the way to Kauai. Another final look of Mauna Kea above the clouds and off we went to Maui.
One look at the
Haleakala, I knew were in Maui. Kahului airport was comparatively bigger.
People in Big Island warned us about the heat and traffic in Maui. We were surprised. So many people. And traffic, yeah! Trust me when I say it gets really crowded. For a minute we were reminded of bay area peak hour traffic.
A quick stop at the local Wal-Mart and we were heading to Hana. The heat really put us off. We prefer colder climates. I took the wheel for the simple reason, my husband wanted to practically visit every waterfall given in the book- Maui Revealed(that is like, something at every other turnout). I do not have that kind of patience. So, I let him read. After a point, there was something at every turnout. The weather was a welcome relief. There was a slight drizzle every now and then. We did so many waterfalls. I do not remember most of their names now. I specially enjoyed the twin falls, where you need to cross a stream to get to the falls. We were practically checking everyone coming back. They were drenched till their knees. So, there we were in front of the
stream. We were seeing people do it and for a change Ganesh led the way. Soon, we were in front of the waterfall. It is definitely not a waterfall that you have for yourself. But it was fun.
I remember another waterfall. It is a special memory. ‘Special’ because we had to do rock scrambling all the way-some less than 1000 ft. The rocks were very slippery. But it led to a very tall waterfall.
The last part of our trip involved driving on a short unpaved road leading to Blue pool. A guy coming from the other direction gave us directions and that helped us. After paying $2.00 for parking in a home, we went down to the ocean some 5 minutes. We had to cross a stream that was meeting up the ocean. On the other side, all we saw were rocks. Fortunately, these were not as slippery. A 3 min rock walking leads us to the beautiful blue pool(waterfall) on one side and the ocean on the other. It is a magical place, completely worth the drive.
We stayed there for a while and headed to Hana around 6:00 pm.
Hana, known for
its popularity was died down then. Almost dark, no shops around, no restaurants. And I am talking about the highway here! We checked into Joe’s place. We were the last people to check in. So, Ed, the owner, recognized us. He was very friendly. He ran a tour of the home. Two living rooms, kitchen, 2 bathrooms and 3 bedrooms on the first floor. Something similar on the second floor, I guess. The room is the tidiest I’ve ever seen. Would highly recommend it to anyone. The place is pretty much filled up all the time.
We dropped our entire luggage inside, took an umbrella and took the short walk down to Hana bay. It was beautiful. It was almost a full moon rising behind the mountains. I saw it! I saw it! This place is magic!!!
We came back, had dinner and knew only when we got up the next day that we were running late. We rushed up with everything and left off to Kipahulu part of Haleakala National Park. The Ranger recommended the hike to Waimoku falls, but after reaching Makahiku falls overlook, we finally had the “enough of waterfalls” feeling. So, we
came back and continued to ‘Ohe’o gulch to see the 7 sacred pools. We actually saw only a few of them…The place was closed to swimming due to ocean currents, rock falls, small sharks(:-·) .
The Ranger affirmed that the road from Kipahulu was graded and is fine now. My husband was very hesitant. But still we gave it a shot. Road was bad, very bad to some distance. Involved steep one lane sections. We drove very cautiously. It was a little strenuous and we changed drivers to help, but the drive was nothing short of spectacular. We were very glad to see paved road again. I hoped to see Mauna Kea or some part of Big Island from the southern point, but was disappointed. We were practically doing a round trip around Haleakala. I just could not help thinking how small we were in front of Mother Nature.
We got onto Hwy 37, all the way to Kahului. 36 and then 32 to Wailuku. Our final 2 day lodging at Banana Bungalow. We checked in at 2 pm. got our load down from the car and then headed to Iao valley. It was a beautiful valley,
not so hot. Iao needle if some 2250 ft monolithic rock that was once used as a watch tower during King Kamehameha’s reign.
There was a short trail that took us around the place.
Having done that, we wanted to head north to Lahaina. But a truck accident on hwy 10 forced us out of the hwy into hwy 31(the part we thought we’d miss). We stopped at all the beaches we wanted to. Just hanging around. The beaches were really beautiful. We headed for sunset on Wailea beach. We were playing in the beach for sometime and caught the sunset just in time setting behind Lanai. The clouds covering Haleakala cleared a bit and we could see the sunset on the huge mountain. We headed back home after a long day. Banana bungalow has a kitchen(they even have a Jacuzzi!), so happy home cooked dinner..
Forced ourselves to sleep early as we had to get to Haleakala summit to catch the sunrise around 5.00 am. We targeted 3.30 am so we will have enough time.
We did get up that early, brushed our teeth in a blur and started driving(with all the warm clothes we had-the summit
is going to be freezing cold). The road up is really winding, at least at night. No overtaking. So, there was this long convoy of cars back to back. We reached the summit around 5 am. The horizon was bright, but we still had time until the sun rose. It was freezing! and worse, windy. My husband went up to get some snapshots. I wanted to warm up before getting out. We waited and waited. A minute seemed like a year. 😊
Then finally, we saw the yellow ball rising above the clouds. Spectacular! Is still short to express the scene. Dramatic! Is more like it.
The summit was crowded by now. Camera flashes going here and there. One of it must have been Ganesh. I just went back to see the full moon set behind the observatories. Can I get any luckier?
We were overwhelmed. Just a few minutes after sunrise, the summit was empty.
There were bike riders getting down the mountain. Somehow, we felt, car is a better way to see it all. We came back to the car & drove down to the visitor center near the trail head. It was 7.30
am. We had slept for almost an hour. We needed it. We forced ourselves up and checked out the visitor center. If we had come to the visitor center earlier, I’m sure , we’d have never dozed off. In front of us was this huge crater decorated in red, brown, white & black. Huge cinder cones here and there.
I was talking to one of the Park Rangers, who said that she was not so happy about opening the visitor center at 6.30 am. She was a native and she wanted to be there for the sunrise. She’s been there for 20 years and everyday the sunrise was different. God! She must be something! To see the same suns rise every day and see it different. I don’t know. Maybe I’d say the same thing. I did not have that privilege. She talked us into going 20 minutes down on the Sliding sands trail (45 minutes to come up). Then we met this couple who went down until they saw some silversword. I’ve seen them on the videos. They survive only in Haleakala. They live from 5 - 30 years and bloom once and then die down. So,
South Point
Southern most Point in USA we decided to go until there.
The first thing that I came across on the trail was horse dung. They stink or what! Horse-riding on the trail is very popular, so I heard. Sliding sands was really sand that was sliding. We knew coming up was going to be difficult. We were not in that good a shape as well.
We went on and on and it became better and better. Then we saw another trail, to Ka Ku’u o ka ‘O’o crater. It was getting hot and we wanted to turn back from there. We’d hiked down an hour and a half. It was getting real hot and we stopped to take some rest before we begin our hike up. We saw some kids, so we should be okay, so I thought. Only when we started to hike up did we realize how farther we had come down. We took a couple of stops here and there until we finally reached the top. It took us 2 hrs 30 min. Not bad at all!
By then the sun was really showing its power and I had no energy left in me. We had to get
to the hostel, take a shower, grab something to eat and then head off to Lahaina. So, we did just that.
We did some driving along some beaches. Kapalua beach, Napili beach & finally headed to Ka’anapali beach for the sunset. This beach was no way related to what we had seen earlier. It was surrounded by so many resorts. We still had time before sunset. So, we took the stroll along the beach. It is a long beach, 3 miles. My husband wanted to swim in the ocean, but later we noticed that the beach was red flagged, meaning, dangerous currents and tide. We did not want to take the risk on the last day of our vacation. We watched the famous ceremony on the popular black rock after sunset and now, all we wanted was to get back home. We have a 10.30 flight to catch the next morning and we had packing to do.
It was raining a little. So, we had to have dinner inside, not on picnic tables outside by the garden, like the previous night.
We got up just in time, got ready, packed out bags, dropped the keys and
jetted to the airport to drop a friend, dropped our car off at Dollar, picked their shuttle & got back to the airport. Both of us picked up stuff to eat at Starbucks. I did some souvenir shopping at the airport before getting onto the plane.
Journey back home was quick and uneventful. Landing in OAK, we felt the heat at 7:00pm(82F).
Got back home around 8.00 pm. Just in time to have dinner and crash.
Round Trip Map Next morning, we got up and still hoped to be in Hawaii.
Alas! In bay area, CA.
Well! A journey well ended.
Another one just around the corner, we're sure. 😊
Bon Voyage,
travelbuffs
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As they say, a hiker enjoys the journey, not the destination.
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shakila
non-member comment
great job
Hi Meera, Great Job. You describe soo Good :) I enjoyed reading your blog. regards Shakila