la vie en rose

On Sunday morning we decided to go to the Hilo side of the island, so we packed an overnight bag and started south. We stopped to snorkel at Napoopoo Bay. Hee hee - but you actually pronounce it "Na-poh-oh-poh-oh."

Across the bay is the Captain Cook monument. We wanted to go there, but you have to either take a boat or kayak over there. It marks the spot where Captain Cook was killed, and the land that the monument stands on is British soil (no passport required). Captain Cook had set sail from Hawaii in 1779, only to return to the Big Island to do some ship repairs. A fight broke out among his sailors and the Hawaiians, and Captain Cook was killed. However, the Hawaiians still had great respect for him, so they cut up his body and roasted his bones (something they would do with chiefs). The English sailors demanded that some of the remains be returned to them for a proper sea burial.

Sometimes there are dolphins in the bay, just not that day (that would have been awesome!). But snorkeling across black sand and into colorful coral beds was a visual treat.

We continued south. I was so hungry, but there aren't many towns in that part of the island. We stopped in the 1st place that looked decent, but we were happily surprised to find otherwise.

Punaluu Bake Shop is the southernmost bakery in the US, but it's real claim to fame is their sweetbread. We had cheeseburgers on sweetbread buns, and 4 different variations of their sweetbread malasadas: strawberry-filled, guava-flavored, a chocolate eclair-style, and our favorite, lilikoi-glazed. (Malasadas (mel-a-sa-dish) are like doughnuts and lilikoi is passion fruit.)

The southern coast of the Big Island is very windy and, because of the proximity of the volcano, everything at one point has been covered by lava (hence all the black sand).

Black sand is temporary - once the lava source is gone, eventually the beach will fade into a different color. It looks like poppy seeds.

Punaluu Beach also has turtles on it! You can't get closer than 15 feet to them (since they're a protected species), and if you touch them, you'll probably die or catch fire or something, I don't know. One thing I do know is that they are really big.

This one snorted water at us. Probably because I told him he looked like he was wearing a pith helmet.

Kilauea has been erupting only a couple weeks shy of when I was born (the current eruption started in January, 1983). A new vent opened in March of this year and it is pumping a plume of sulfur dioxide and ash out (hence all the vog on the island).

Actually, it's the goddess Pele who is spitting out all the smoke.

We couldn't drive around the Crater Rim Drive, as it was closed where the SO2 was blowing. The vent where the smoke is coming out is 115 feet across, so that should give you some idea of how massive the whole crater is (it is massive).

When the lava travels underground, it can cool into tubes. Thurston Lava Tube is in Volcanoes National Park and they have it all lit up.

We left the park and went to see where the lava was dumping into the ocean. We had to walk through the town of Kalapana, which was pretty much destroyed in 1990. About 100 homes, a church, and a store are buried under almost 30 feet of lava. A few houses remain, and people still live in them without running water or electricity.

Close-up of the lava.

The county set up a viewing area, but because of the instability of the lava shelfs and the possibility of hot, molten lava bursting forth into your face, we really couldn't get very close.

J remains convinced that he could surf a lava flow from the crater into the ocean.