travel

hawaii

i've been to maui, so i wanted to try another island. we picked 'hawaii'. i didn't know this fact, so i'll repeat what janel told me.

so you know how there are a bunch of hawaiian islands? well, they all were formed via volcanic activity of course, but they cool part is they are all part of the same lava spout. what happened is that spout was active for awhile, spitting out an island. after awhile it'd go dead. in the mean time, continental drift would move the island north-west. eventually the spout would become active again and make a new island. so that's were the series of islands came from. the big island, hawaii is where we went. it's the most south island, so it is the newest and it is still actively forming.

our flight was from chicago to maui on a 777, then a short hop on that same plane to kona. the flight there was 8:14 hours. not bad for 1/4 the way around the world. early december i was in zurich which is almost exactly on the other side of the planet as hawaii. so just in december i had flown enough to fly around the world. that's crazy. what a world traveler i have become.

the first thing to do when you get to the big island is get a car. it would be impossible to get around without it. janel managed to get a week rental for $205 or something, not bad. on our car trip to the bed & breakfast we were greeted by some nice heavy rain just as it was getting dark. the place was only 15 miles south from the airport, but it took 45 minutes to get there. that's because they don't have many roads on the island and those roads are only one lane each way. not good. so the traffic was crazy. it turns out we managed to hit the worst time of the day in the worst direction, so for the rest of the trip it was not that bad (except one other time).

our first bed & breakfast was called rainbow plantation. as you'd expect it was run by a super hippy lady. they had tons of crazy animals running around. peacocks, pot belly pigs, miniature horses. the place we stayed was a grounded boat. it was quite cool other than the bathroom being much too small. we had a really nice ocean view from the back of the boat too. each day we'd have breakfast with the other people that were staying there. it was nice to get random travel info from other people and give advice. i can just imagine that the big parrot that was near the table was sick of the same conversations everyday.

unfortunately the ocean was being a bitch so all the beaches were closed so we ended up hiking down to captain cooks monument. it turns out that i'm in shape. i guess all that running was worthwhile. the hike was 2 miles down 1200 ft. the first part was really tall grass and the second part was on lava rock. a pretty hardcore hike. at the bottom we saw a giant sea turtle. holy crap.

the next day the ocean still was a bitch so we decided we wanted to go snorkel. usually you do that at the beaches, but they had boats that would take you to special spots. well, one of the main special spots was captain cooks monument. we saw the boats down there the other day before so we decided to save the 60 bucks each and do the hike again. we snorkeled, but my snorkel had a hole in it, lame. it's not as if i have enough problems with my breathing as it is. i'm a trooper though. we swam around for awhile, saw an eel. someone said they saw an octopuss, we didn't see it. i was tired of swimming so i got out before janel. silly me, i stuck my foot right into a sea anenimy. i had some nice spikes in my toe. doh. at least they are not (very?) poisonous.

we packed up and drove to the other side of the island where the volcano was. we dropped our stuff off and went on the big loop around the volcano. not all that exciting. then we drove to the the start of the lava flow. the plan was to hike out just as it was getting dark, then hike back in the dark. lots of people do it, it will be easy. well, we didn't really know what we were getting in to. the hike was 3 miles to get to the flow over flow that cooled recently. it was pretty crazy terrain unlike anywhere else i have been. we did make it to the flow just as it was getting dark and it was worth it. by flow it really means flowing rock, by rock, i mean rock. it is still hard. you can really feel the heat from several feet away. quite cool. we hiked back in the dark and i only fell down once.

the next day we drove around the rest of the island. it was the 25th so nothing was open. we stopped off at a few waterfalls and went straight our last b&b which was about 30 miles north of the airport. luckily the beaches either cleared up or the north beaches were just clear. we stayed two nights and went to the beach both days. the second day we went to hapuna and boogie boarded. that was cool. i got good enough to where i was trying to stand up, but i never got it, my board just kept sinking.

on our way to the airport a deputy stopped us and said we had to turn around and take the other south route. that's right, there are only 2. also, that was the only cop we saw the entire time we were there. no wonder magnum could do whatever the hell he wanted.

overall it was a good time. just the perfect length too.