February 20, 2007 Kailua-Kona

Up at 5:30 this morning, off for breakfast, and picked up at 7:30 for transfer to the airport for a 9:50 departure for a 45 minute flight to Hilo on the Big Island. Our flight was on an Aloha Airlines Boeing 737-200. I thought it best not to mention that this was the airline and airplane that lost a large piece of its fuselage in flight a few years ago killing a few people and scaring the rest of the passengers half to death before miraculously making a safe landing.

Hawaii, the Big Island, also has a rain forest side, which receives 130 inches of rain annually, and a dry side, which receives 10 inches annually. Hilo is on the wet side. Sure enough, it had just rained there and everything was soaking wet. We boarded our bus and drove to the Volcano House on the edge of the Kilauea volcano caldera for a buffet lunch.

After lunch we took the Crater Rim Road around the caldera. The caldera is the collapsed peak of the old volcano with several smaller and newer craters within it. The caldera is no longer active, except for steam issuing from a few cracks and vents. The last lava flowed here in 1982, although there have been flows within the last few years from the side of the mountain about ten miles away. We stopped to walk through a lava tube. Very cool. These are formed when lava flows down a ravine. The exposed crust cools and hardens while the lava continues to flow underneath. Eventually, the fluid lava stops flowing and the remains flow out the bottom end, leaving a hollow underground tube of rock.

We returned to the highway and proceeded towards our next stop. After a while, I noticed that we were driving on quite a washboardy road – or so I thought. Our tour director noticed too and convinced our driver to stop and investigate. It turned out that the road was fine, but that we had blown an oil seal which caused the bus suspension to malfunction. When we stopped, we soon left a puddle of oil on the side of the road. Fortunately, there was an empty bus back in Hilo that was able to pick us up in half an hour.

On our new bus, we proceeded to our next stop, Punaluu Black Sand Beach. This was a very nice spot with black volcanic sand and rock formed from cooled lava. It is also a favourite spot for Hawaiian Green Sea Turtles to sun themselves. They are protected by law and you are supposed to stay at least 15 feet away. It is hard to gauge their size without something to compare them to, but their shells are about three to four feet long and they probably weigh 200 to 250 pounds or more. We were soon on our way again to the resort at Kailua-Kona, arriving in our room at 7. Tonight included a buffet supper. Three buffets in one day – by the third one, we could hardly eat! After supper, we took a short walk down the main street and turned in at 9:30.

We sat with two ladies who were traveling together. One was from Vancouver and the other from Toronto. They had met on a previous trip and had decided to make this trip together. We have also struck up friendships with a very nice and very friendly couple from Wisconsin, a couple for England, and a couple from Wainwright, Alberta who had been on that delayed flight from Edmonton.