Big Island, Big Fun

Aloha friends and family,

This post is about my weekend with my roommates John and Cathryn on the Big Island, which is the fourth and final island (of the major ones) in the Hawaiian Islands for me to visit. We only had a weekend so we flew over to Big Island on Saturday morning at 7 and were in our rental car for the weekend and driving by 8:30. We flew into Kona, the major town on the western side of the island, and drove south past the town which had a Walmart and some stores but was still much less developed than Honolulu. We stopped at a small, family-owned restaurant and had hearty breakfasts and coffees to get us ready for the day ahead. After breakfast, we kept driving south for more than an hour along the main road of the island, which runs around its perimeter. The southern part of the island is quite remote with lots of open fields and farmland. In the late morning, we arrived at South Point, which is the southernmost point on the island (and thus the southernmost point in the US). The area is rocky with cliffs looking out at the ocean and the water was a gorgeous shade of blue-green. We found a little alcove with a 15-foot cliff jump and some breathtaking snorkeling.

The water was probably 30-40 feet deep and crystal clear with coral at the bottom. The spot was teeming with aquatic life; we saw sea urchins, anemones, fish, and a baby sea turtle. By far the coolest sight, though, was a ginormous school of fish. At first I thought it was a massive rock on the ocean floor with interesting striations on the side, but slowly my mind and eyes realized it was a school of fish numbering at least in the thousands but more likely in the tens of thousands and comparable in size to a small school bus. From just below the surface of the water I couldn’t even see the whole school at once since it extended so far. At first it was a little spooky being just 25 feet from the fish because collectively they were a massive entity, but it quickly became obvious that they were just minding their own business and didn’t have interest in me. The fish individually were unremarkable; they were roughly 6-8 inches and dark in color. But altogether they were astounding. The way they moved in unison was awesome. I was so impressed at how they knew to move in cohesion and which fish to follow. A few times I observed one half of the school moving one direction and the other half moving a different direction, but they would seamlessly and effortlessly start moving the same direction after some invisible communication between them. It was one of the most awe-inspiring scenes in nature I’ve witnessed.

After snorkeling at our private little alcove, we went to the main cliff jump area, where there was a 40-foot jump. It was a nice height that made the jump exhilarating without being too scary. Still, it felt like a surprisingly long time in the air.

We continued on from South Point to Punalu’u Beach, one of the more well-known black sand beaches on the island. The sand is black and coarser than normal sand because it forms from volcanic material and lava fragments eroding over time. The beach was also much warmer than a normal beach despite it being an overcast day because the black sand absorbed all the heat.

Our next stop was Volcanoes National Park, on the southeastern side of the island. We hiked the Kilauea Iki Trail, which was a trail through some woods and then 1.5 miles across exposed crater along volcanic rock. On the latter half of the trail we had a good view of the Halemaumau caldera, where we could see volcanic gases and smoke rising from the lava.

[Side note: One cool volcano fact we all learned, when we finally decided to look it up on the reliable internet after over-confidently postulating nonsense and half-truths about how volcanoes work (actually that was 99% John and me, I don't want to incriminate Cathryn), is that they’re caused by “hot spots” (large magma flumes rising from the mantle of earth’s core) that stay fixed relative to the moving tectonic plates that the continents on earth’s surface lie on. So, as the plates slide over the hot spots, the volcano appears in different locations on Earth’s surface. The plate that the Hawaiian Islands are on is sliding northwest slowly but surely so the location of the volcanic activity is moving to the southeast. The hotspot is currently beneath the southeastern part of Big Island, the youngest of the islands at only ~700,000 years old, and the volcano is spewing new lava that’s adding to the island’s land mass. Going northwest the islands get older, so Big Island is the youngest, followed by Maui, Lanai, Molokai, O’ahu, and finally Kauai at ~5 million years old.]

It was late afternoon when we finished the hike so we had some time to kill before going farther into the park to see the lava, which we wanted to do at night time for better visibility, so we got dinner at Volcano’s Lava Rock Café. We returned to the park after eating but had to wait in a parking lot near the entrance of the park since the lot for lava-viewing was full, which happens most nights between 7 and 9. We were expecting to wait for up to an hour or two, but luckily some space opened up for us after 15 minutes and we were waved through. From the car, we walked about 1-1.5 miles along a paved path and then road to get to the public viewing point. The walk there was fun since the stars were very bright and we walked without any flashlight, testing our night vision. The main viewing point wasn’t that good since we could only barely see the lava and its glow.

We’d heard from friends that there was a better viewing point farther along the road we walked in on, so we walked past some cones and signs to get closer. The road started getting malformed and cracked but we could keep walking with ease. As we went along, the road became more dilapidated and we thought we might have to turn back when we got to a 15-foot deep trench right through the road, but some girl who had hiked to this viewpoint before showed us the way around it.

Eventually the road came to an end at a cliff. It was a sheer drop, so the road must’ve fallen into the lava at some point, which was crazy to think about. Even though we were still pretty far away, it was a much better view and we could see different streams of lava.

One surprising thing was how loud the lava was. The noise was a deep thrumming, which almost sounded like an airplane taking off or some heavy machinery operating in the distance. I was taken aback at the sight of the lava. It was unlike anything else I’d seen before, except for the geysers at Yellowstone, but they were still significantly different. The raw beauty of the lava was amazing on its own, and it was only made more beautiful when thinking about how the lava was expanding Big Island by bringing more land into existence. I felt like I was witnessing a grand geological process, something that usually takes place over a magnitude of time that’s incomprehensible for humans, in the matter of an hour. These earth-changing processes usually feel abstract and immaterial, but as I sat there looking out at the lava it felt incredibly real. It felt like I was being given a special viewing into earth’s inner workings that are seldom so tangible.

Swimming with the humungous school of fish and viewing the lava from up close were some of the more transcendental experiences I’ve had in a long time, and they gave the day an almost magical glow. We were all tired from our big day of travel and activity and went to bed pretty promptly after getting home. We still had one more surprise in store for the night, though. The strangest thing happened around 3:30am when we were awoken by somebody BLASTING music (seriously, like concert level loud) right outside our Airbnb. The driveway was right outside our window, so it might’ve been coming from a car but it could also have been the house across the driveway. Luckily the music went away after a couple minutes and we could get a little more shuteye. It was bizarre and we were all dumbfounded as to who was playing the music and why.

We got up early on Sunday morning to watch the sunrise (maybe the loud music was from a kind soul who wanted to make sure we didn’t sleep through the early morning part of our itinerary). Our Airbnb was in Pahoa, on the eastern side of the island, and we went to Hilo, the major town on that side, and watched the sunrise from Hilo Bay.

Our next stop was Rainbow Falls, an 80-foot waterfall in a beautiful rainforest area. One of the cliff jumpers at South Point the day before told us he jumped from up there and we had seen YouTube videos of people jumping, but the jump was much more restricted and looked a lot sketchier, so we were all happy to look from a distance.

From Rainbow Falls, we went to Kaumana Caves. We used our flashlights to navigate through the dark and narrow caves and eventually popped out in the jungle.

We kept going north along the east side to Onomea Trail, which was an easy hike along a paved path to pretty, rocky beaches. It was a stunning view and it reminded me of a slightly less dramatic version of the Napali coast in Kauai.

After the hike, we treated ourself to some burgers for lunch and coffees to replenish our energy at a cute farmers’ market along our drive north. The drive was gorgeous with huge, lush trees on our left and sweeping views of the ocean on our right. This part of the island on the windward side is especially green because of all the rain it gets, so all the vegetation was popping with color.

We stopped at Waialea Beach on the northern coast, having almost completed the circle around the island. It was a nice beach with palm trees and good snorkeling, and it reminded me of Lanikai Beach on O’ahu. We were hit by a wave of midday fatigue and took some much-needed naps. After napping I felt energized and snorkeled and swam the coast of the beach. It wasn’t as good as South Point, but it was still decent with plenty of fish and urchins. The reef was quite shallow so I had to be careful to make sure not to scrape my feet or body on the ground or step on an urchin, since last time I cut myself on reef my foot quickly got infected and kept me from my two loves, surfing and volleyball, for a few long days.

Our final stop of the day was Mahai’ula Beach. The drive there was along a perilous, rocky road which had some serious bumps that our rental car was not well-suited to handle. After spending 20 minutes on the last stretch of road, we got to spend about 15 minutes exploring the beach before having to go to the airport to catch our flight. We wanted to get out to Makalawena Beach, but it was a mile or two hike from where we were and we didn’t have the time.

The weekend was super fun. We packed a great deal of adventure into the ~36 hours we were on the island. The lava and snorkeling at South Point were definitely highlights for us all and will stay in my memory for a very long time. The island is aptly named: it’s big. We didn’t get to do everything because we just didn’t have enough time, but it’ll give us reason to go back in the future. Some of the things on my Big Island bucket list are night swimming with manta rays, seeing more waterfalls, snorkeling at Captain Cook, driving up the big volcanoes in the center of the island, and hiking to a hidden natural waterslide. That’s a wrap on our Big Island weekend. As always, thanks so much for reading!