Day 3.5 1:17 PM HST In port at Hilo
We are pushing away from the dock as I write this. The ship shudders and the water between us and the dock boils violently.The ship’s horn just blew a long blast, and Anne and I looked at each other and said, without any planning, “The looovvveee boooaatttt . . . ”
Heh.
The Big Island of Hawaii gets 278 days of measurable rainfall each year, and today was one of those days. But it didn’t matter at all. The clouds and rain kept the heat and humidity away, and the grey sky provided a wonderful contrast to all the tropical vegetation. There were some palm trees that positively glowed with an internal, emerald luminescence that took our breath away.
We had an awesome adventure this morning. We rented a car, and drove to Volcano National Park. It was awesome! It took us about 45 minutes from the port, and only cost us 54 bucks, plus 3 bucks for gas.
Once inside the park, we made a stop at the visitor’s center, where we picked up a map, and found out that our time on the island (just under 6 hours) didn’t allow us to drive all the way to our planned destination: the lava flow.
(We’ve just left the dock, and are sailing out past the breakwater now. The island is a patchwork of various shades of green, where fields and trees come together, sitting placidly beneath thick, grey clouds.)
Instead, we drove a circular road, 11 miles around the crater of Kilauea, called, appropriately, Crater Rim Drive. The road starts out in a full-on rainforest, where we stopped at some steam vents and got our first glimpse of the crater, and then travels around the edge until it crosses several enormous lava fields, which are completely devoid of any life at all. The silence that surrounded us while we stood at the edge of the caldera was like being in a vacuum. I told Anne that the lava reminded me of pictures I’ve seen of the Moon or the surface of Venus . . . and I found out later in the day that some of the Apollo 1 astronauts actually trained in the crater in the early days of the Apollo Program. I also read in my awesome Lonely Planet Guide to Hawaii that they filmed some scenes from the remake of Planet of the Apes in the Kilauea Iki crater. But don’t hold that against the volcano, okay?
It was an amazing, breathtaking experience, and it was wonderful to feel the Earth as a living thing — it’s hard not to with all the steam and sulphur and micro earthquakes all around you.
On the drive back to the port, Anne and I talked about what we’d seen, and decided that we weren’t disappointed to have missed the lava running into the ocean. We got to travel from a rain forest, to an alien landscape and back again in just three hours, we did it entirely on our own, and we wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Now, I am off to participate in a CruiseTrek event, as we head down to Fanning Island: 1200 miles south east of Hawaii, in the Republic of Kiribati. I just realized that I’ve written 4 entries since I got here, and I haven’t had time to upload any of them . . . I wonder when I’ll get to put this one up? 🙂