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| Aloha again! |
| Sunday, January 09, 2011 |
After much deliberation and thinking, we decided to visit Hawaii again for the holidays this year. Big Island was the perfect choice for a number of reasons, great weather to get away from rainy, gloomy California, almost free flight tickets, Resort stay for subsidized prices, and last but not the least Volcanoes National Park. The plan was to relax and relax and relax and when we got bored of relaxing to roam around. :--)
Last trip to Hawaii was too hectic to be called a vacation. Waking up at 6AM and planning to visit every single place worth seeing on Oahu and Maui, even lazing on the shores of beaches were planned to the minute.
After the marathon cooking for an elaborate dinner, hosting friends that is customary in the SK household for Christmas, we had one day to clean up, pack and leave.
Day 0 - Mostly travelling. I picked up not 1, not 2, not even 3 but a total of 4 books. Highly ambitious I would say on a five day trip. Five hour trip, and unhealthy eating took a toll on my body. By the time we checked into the hotel, I was tired to the bones. We took a quick look around the resort. I was blown away by the variety of flowers and plants the grew. Beautiful bouganvilla, beautiful colors, huge flowers and much more.
Day 1 - Visited two beaches. DH had fun jumping around the waves, while I played around for sometime and did lot of people watching. People just strip down to their swimsuit and don't even go into the water, just lie down and laze. Which is also what I did, except I did go into the water for sometime.
This is the first time we are staying in a real resort. There are lot of activities within the resort and a huge pool. And there were some shows, and specials going on everyday. There was a open air movie for the evening, which we watched for a while.
Day 2 - Breakfast buffet was super expensive, but we made sure we had a hearty breakfast every day, lesson from Day 0. Today was Resort day. We didn't go out of the resort at all. We waited for an hour at the Concierge cursing the family that was taking forever to decide on activities and making plans while sitting with the Concierge. We booked a tour which took 10mins, quite pissed. We spent time lazing by the pool, jumping into the pool whenever, watching kids, adults, enjoying the sunny tanning weather. Ordered drinks and lunch by the pool, read books, and went into lazing slumber under the sun. We also played some Table Tennis, and then spent some time doing some stuff for a deadline.
Day 3 -
This was the day we went around the island. We started pretty early, picked our rental car and starting driving. We were staying in Kona, and we drove in anti clock wise direction, around the island. We passed the beaches, Captain Cook, South Point.
To give some background, each Hawaiian island is made up of Volcanoes. And hence the island has a mountain in the middle and slopes down on all sides. Kona is where we stayed which is on the west side, the leeward side of the island and hence is drier, gets very less rain. So this side has the better beaches. The windward side is tropical rain forest, more later.
We reached Volcanoes National Park after 2.5hrs of driving. The park invited us with a "Poor Air Quality" warning. . Big Island is made up of five volcanoes, of which Kilauea is still active, one of the most productive volcanoes on earth. Kilauea was smoking and spewing as we entered the park. Sulphur dioxide is what is present in the volcanic emissions and its not supposed to be good..for people. We visited the Jagger Museum, took pictures by the volcano, it was quite a sight and experience. Really standing on top of a volcano!
One of the greatest experience in Big Island is to walk on lava land to the ocean and see lava actually flowing into the ocean and creating new land. Until now acres of new land are being created by the volcanic eruption.
Then we visited Kilauea Iki which is an old volcanic crater, which erupted long time ago. Apparently it erupted for 36 days and the lava took 36 years to solidify!! As we saw the place, it looked so dead, it was quite impossible to imagine what had happened hundreds of years ago in that very same place.
We visited the Thurston Lava Tube. A lava tube is the tube through which lave flowed at some point. (More on the link)
We decided to skip the Chain of Craters Road which winds about over lava land, because of SO2 on some parts of the road.
We left the park and drove towards Hilo, the windward side of the island. We saw Rainbow Falls which I felt was too hyped up and was quite a let down.
We went to Akaka Falls State Park which was much better. The Falls was beautiful. The short trail was through tropical rain forest, lush green vegetation, with huge leaves, reminding us of Jurassic Park.
We also drove on the 4 mile scenic drive which was nothing compared to Road to Hana in Maui.
We drove up to Waimea region, it was beautiful, as it was cloudy and the sun was going down. We skipped the northern beaches and reached the hotel early in the evening.
Day 4 - This was the big day. We were going on a Helicopter Tour! Morning again we lazed around, too lazy to visit any other place. Afternoon we were at the airport, Air Tours area. We picked up lot of Ginger candies, since our previous experience on tiny flights wasn't so good, and we wanted to be prepared this time.
After safety instruction and pilot instructions, we got on to the Helicopter. We were totally 6 plus the pilot. And the helicopter was pretty crowded with huge men with us :--( My one foot was literally cramped with no space to keep it on the heli floor.
The heli once again circled around the island, but the bird's eye view was pretty scenic. The blue sea, the coralled shores, the volcanic land looked spectacular.
Big Island has 11 of the 13 climates of the world. There is snow on Mount Mauna Kea. Its also supposed to be the tallest mountain, from its ocean base. And there are beaches. And the tropical vegetation. And that is what is unique about the island. It was amazing to see how the landscape changed, right in front of our eyes. Beaches gave way to volcanic land as we flew towards the park. We saw patches of lava flows, brown/black patches in the middle of green patches. Quite a sight!
We reached the Pu'u which is an outlet for the Kilauea Volcano. Usually they would show the lava flow into the ocean, but at this time there was not ocean entry, which was quite a bummer. Which was one of the reasons we decided to do the Helicopter tour, so that we can somehow look at the flowing lava. Yes we saw something tiny. And the whole place looked like a cemetery, with smoke coming here and there. The whole place looked quite gloomy. Black/grey ish ground all over. A scary thought popped up in my head, what if the heli crashed right there? I broke into a sweat.
We saw some fresh lava flowing, very tiny patch. (Check out for reddish hues)
And we saw a skylight, which is nothing but a window on the top of a lava tube, exposing hot lava underneath. All we saw was a tiny spec, but it was quite something.
We also saw built land washed up and rendered useless by lava flow. The picture below shows a piece of the road going nowhere, plugged shut by lava.
I was glad to get out of the lava land, onto the green pastures of the windward side. The scenery was beautiful with tiny waterfalls everywhere.
Soon we entered the Waipio Valley, which was simple heavenly, out of the world. These are the places that one cannot see by land. But it can be seen with eight plus hours of hiking. The coastline was beautiful with 2000ft valley walls and cliffs, tall waterfalls, I will leave some pictures to speak for themselves. And yes my pictures don't do justice too.
The last 20mins we spent looking forward to landing, as we were quite nauseated and had been popping ginger candies like crazy.
Day 5 -
Last day of vacation. :--( The sinking feeling of going back to work, to schedules, to deadlines, to responsibilities. Bleah. Spent the morning by the pool again, I picked up on reading. I am almost done with JUST the first book. :--S Met other folks at the airport. Everyone, cribbing about not wanting to go back to mainland, to cold, gloomy weather.
DH had a goal to finish Ponniyin Selvan by end of 2010. :--P I think he started reading sometime in March. He finished it on the flight on the 2nd of 2011. I said he reached his goal 2 days later. He claimed he reached his goal, 363 days ahead of schedule. Convenient goals I say. :--D
It was one of the most relaxing vacations to end a rather hectic 2010.
Phew!! If you reached the end, THANK YOU! it was quite an effort writing this travelogue. But I know I will lose interest if I delay writing any longer. |
posted by SK @ 5:26 PM  |
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| 6 Comments: |
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good vacation... nice photographs. but u could haved added more... don u wish to swim in da lava??? lolz. ask ur dh need more kalki's novels. i have a huge pdf collections...
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Nice travelogue! It's inspiring me to make a trip to HI.
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Looks beautiful and scenic. Hawaii is one popular destination( at least, for US folks) that we have not visited so far. From what I have heard, people relate it to Kerala.
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Aaha Hawaii - beautiful Hawaii. How I loved that place! Nice to see the pics - these nature pics are so therapeutic!
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Reminded me of my trip with Boo same time last year. Happy New Year!
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Kadar,
This took some 2hrs to post!
Reading paper books are more fun. :--)
Mahes, Thanks! You should!
Shoba, Yes very much like Kerala, India for that matter, the vegetation.
Saumya, Yep! Nature puts our petty issues into perspective.
Yaadayaada, You too! I did read about it :--)
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good vacation... nice photographs. but u could haved added more... don u wish to swim in da lava??? lolz. ask ur dh need more kalki's novels. i have a huge pdf collections...