Hawaii is a place of wildly variable weather patterns. Some days, it’s 82 degrees. The next day, it’ll be 83. You never know what to wear. A safe bet is a knit shirt, a pair of shorts and some flip-flops. You also want a camera or cell phone in your pocket to try to capture the beauty of this special place.
At about 9 AM, our ship docked at Hilo on the northeastern part of The Big Island. The Big Island is really Hawaii, the island, but folks have nicknamed it The Big Island to distinguish between the island and the state. The Big Island is about the size of Connecticut. They say you could squeeze all the other Hawaiian Island onto this one, large landmass.
When on a cruise, the ship offers multiple options for local tours and sightseeing, and they naturally get a cut. We have other excursions booked later in the week, but on this day, we left our options open. When we checked with the cruise director, however, she said all the trips and bus tours were “booked up”. We were out of luck, or so we thought.
Not knowing what to do, we went outside looking for a knowledgeable cabbie and bumped into a friendly Hawaiian lady named Tina who was offering private excursions through Legends of Hawaii Tours. We signed up immediately and were soon joined by two other couples. What a fortunate turn of events.
We began our tour in a city park in Hilo with gardens of beautiful flowers and plantings. We saw what appeared to be a pair of wild parakeets, magnificent little fellows adorned in buttercup yellow. Tina identified all the trees and flowers and I quickly forget their names, but my camera won’t forget. The picture taking had only begun.
At Rainbow Falls, we saw a gushing spring sending tens of thousands of gallons of water down a 100-foot cascade, forming a rainbow at the base. It was gorgeous.
We also discovered that the most feared word on the Big Island is “Tsunami”. Several in the past have sent 100-foot waves crashing into the islands with massive loss of human life.
Next, we were on our way to a Macadamia farm, a massive spread with 250,000 Macadamia trees. Tina explained that it takes a macadamia tree ten years before it can bear fruit. Then the trees must be carefully pruned and tended for the next 25 years as they produce nuts.
Macadamia nuts are harvested by hand, and only when they fall from the trees are they ripe and ready to eat. We stopped in the farm’s gift shop and sampled the various flavored nuts (my favorite was the chocolate covered macadamias) and we bought a few bags to take with us. We also sampled their homemade ice cream. I chose macadamia and coconut – the best stuff I’ve eaten so far on the trip. We also saw a papaya field with luscious fruits dangling from the vines. We also saw numerous mongoose (mongeese?), Hawaii’s version of squirrels. They are light tan rodents, similar to ferrets. They were imported onto the island to keep the rats, which had escaped the ships, in check. Because of the mongoose population, snakes are rarely seen on The Big Island.
Soon, we were off to the see the Lava Trees State Park. Lava trees were former live trees that were engulfed with hot, molten lava, forming mummy-like statues. One of the lava trees was hollow in the center and a live tree had sprouted from within. The entire island of Hawaii is really nothing more than a land mass formed on a foundation of lava. There are five volcanoes on The Big Island, but only one is currently active, Kilauea.
Next, Tina drove us down a highway beside the Pacific where the inky blue waves crashed against a black backdrop of the lava shoreline. The water was stunning. Even my camera was unable to capture the magnificent color. What an amazing place!
Instead of driving up into the Hawaii Volcanoes State Park, as did all the tour buses, Tina took us to the base to show us the volcano from below and where the lava had oozed its way down the mountain and crashed into the sea, adding miles of new beachfront property. The Big Island is one of the few places growing in size, rather than shrinking.
Tina told us of the legend of Pele, The Goddess of the Volcano, and how she alone controlled the time and place of eruptions and lava flow. “Don’t make Pele angry” is the word on the streets.
A final stop was at the Painted Church, a small, colorful church founded by a Catholic missionary in the 1920’s. The church depicted the story of Christ with numerous paintings on the walls, so the native islanders could see the narrative and thus understand. It was lovely and inspiring.
Tomorrow, we will see the west coast of The Big Island, docking at the port of Kona. I’m hoping my camera doesn’t run out of juice.