Gather no moss: adventures of P and P: June 2017

Hawaii the state also has an island named Hawaii- this gets confusing faster than "Who's on first?", so Hawaii the island is usually called "Big Island." King Kamehameha the Great was originally chief of just Hawaii/Big Island, so as he expanded his Kingdom of Hawaii by conquest/peaceful submission the name Hawaii came to be used for all the islands as well. So, had a chief from another island united all 8 instead, we could be talking about the state of Oahu instead. I wonder how many articles on Big Island start with this lede vs. my next point:

Why is Big Island the biggest island? For the same reason it's such a cool place to visit: volcanism. Hawaii is a chain of volcanoes, with the oldest to the west and the youngest and most active to the east. The tectonic plate Hawaii sits on is moving slowly west over a huge hotspot: a mantle upwelling which creates volcanoes above it. Big Island is currently over the hotspot and has several active volcanoes, so the island is still growing and there are old lava flows visible everywhere. Once it moves off the hotspot erosion will catch up and Big Island will start shrinking, but there will be a new island to the east! I'm starting to get carried away with explaining context instead of telling you all the cool things we did so TL:DR Big Island has tons of cool volcano stuff and important Hawaiian cultural sites.

Our friends Jim and Josh from Honolulu flew over for the weekend and gave us a whirlwind insider tour. I'm listing out everything we did and it's huge, so strap yourself in for a long post. It's so much that I had to group it by category. How did we do all this in 5 days?!

VOLCANOES

Hawaii Volcanoes National Park has some crazy stuff. Kilauea is the most active volcano, and there's an observatory overlooking the enormous caldera. It's been erupting continuously (but not explosively) since 1983. The lava mostly travels underground through lava tubes (pic below from an old Mauna Loa lava tube we explored) and emerges near the coast. We rented bikes and went a few miles down Chain of Craters road, the former coastal road now covered in lava, to check out where the lava meets the ocean. The town of Kalapana used to be here, but it was covered by lava flows in 1986. A few people have moved back and set up temporary houses on top of the lava on their original lots. We went at dusk and did some sunset/night hiking on the lava flows, so I got to live out my fantasy of trekking through Mordor to destroy the ring. It's the most stunning landscape, and all the warning signs really help sell the feeling that man vs. nature is no contest at all.

The volcanism means that there are some crazy geological sights. We went to South Point, the southernmost place in the US, and hiked to nearby Papakolea green sand beach. A silicate deposit next to the beach is rich in olivine (gemstone quality is called peridot), so the beach is a dark, sparkling green color.

Besides green sand and your regular white sand, there are also plenty of black sand beaches. We did a short hike to the Pololu valley black sand beach: we took a picnic lunch but had to hide in a driftwood shelter to escape the rain.

HISTORY

It's not all beaches though: most of the coast is jagged black volcanic rock, like it is at The End of the World. That's really a place we went to: The End of the World is a battlefield where the fate of the Hawaiian religion was decided. When King Liholiho broke the kapu system in 1819, his cousin Chief Kekuaokalani led a group of rebels still true to the Hawaiian religion and challenged Liholiho to a battle here. The rebels lost and Kekuaokalani was killed. The lava rocks are so sharp it's hard to imagine how anyone could effectively fight here.

Big Island's coast is strung with heiaus, the lava rock foundations of sacred Hawaiian temples, but the highlight is Pu'uhonua O Honaunau National Historical Park. Under the kapu system, Pu'uhonua was a refuge. Anyone who violated kapu faced a death sentence, but if they could make their way to a designated refuge before capture (not an easy task) they would be forgiven and absolved by priests. Pu'uhonua has a reconstructed heiau, and was also a sacred royal hangout.

Statue of King Kamehameha in Kapaau, near his birthplace. This is the original statue commissioned by Honolulu: it was cast in Europe in 1880 but lost at sea en route. Honolulu used the insurance money to order a recast, so when the original was salvaged in 1912 it made it's way here near Kamehameha's birthplace.

Big Island has plenty of early 20th century history as well. Big Island is famous for Kona coffee, and the Kona Coffee Living History Farm tells the story of the immigrants who came here to work the farms (seriously, go see it if you come to Big Island). The Uchida family moved here from Japan and lived and worked their small holding here from the 1920s through the 1980s. The house has their belongings from the 1940s, and reenactors work the land and live just as the Uchidas did, and will happily show you every side of coffee farming and domestic life. The Living History Farm is at the end of the Mamalahoa Kona Heritage Corridor, an old road with historic early-20th century general stores and art galleries.

We also saw historic Hilo on Big Island's east coast, wrecked twice by tsunamis in 1946 and 1960, and the monument listing the height of the tsunami swells.

WATER

Hawaii has excellent snorkeling, so we borrowed some gear from our Airbnb and jumped in the water at Two Step. The water is crystal clear and it's easy to see the tropical fish swarming the coral reef just below.

Jim and Josh also took us to Akaka falls and the local way to Pe'epe'e falls for a rock scramble and some waterfall swimming.

EVERYTHING ELSE

I'm a big astronomy fan, so I freaked out at the chance to see the famous observatories at Mauna Kea. Measured from the undersea base to the summit (10,000 m), the (dormant) volcano Mauna Kea is the largest mountain on Earth! The summit is 4,207 m, which is plenty high to feel the effects of altitude, and it's so arid and high that it's a perfect spot for astronomy. There's hardly any light pollution (Big Island's street lights are even the same shade of yellow to make it easier to filter out), and there's plenty of nearby infrastructure to support a large footprint of international researchers. Thirteen telescopes grace the summit, and are responsible for famous discoveries like the speed of cosmic expansion, exoplanets, the size of the Sagittarius A black hole at the center of our galaxy, protoplanetary disks, and the age of the earliest observable galaxies.

A few more places we went/things we saw:

Big Island has the most space and the most affordable land, so there's a thriving culture of transplants, including the hippy scene at Pahoa. The kombucha bar's kombucha was great, but we passed on the kava (it just tastes like dirt to me).

Big Island Brewhaus and Kona Brewing Company are both on Big Island, and their brewpubs are top notch. They experiment with tropical fruits and coffee in many of their brews, and I'm hoping to find some of their down-catalog products distributed here in DC.
Big Island is the home of the Ironman triathalon. There was a qualifier while we were there, so we saw super fit athletes training and hanging out everywhere.
We also went to Waimea, HQ of the Parker Ranch, formerly the largest ranch in the US. We drove there under a vivid double rainbow, and the clouds broke just long enough for us to see the observatories on Mauna Kea both above the clouds and under the rainbow!

We saw an incredible amount of sights, but it's easy to have a great time on Big Island just driving around. The roads are beautiful and the landscape stunning.
Big Island's transplants also include invasive Puerto Rican Coqui frogs: they chirp every night in a loud song that is somehow both piercing and mesmerizing: