Bob Versus The Volcano

Sea turtles all lined up at Punalu'u Black Sand Beach in Hawaii

Today was the day to take a 12-hour tour to see the best of the best on the Big Island of Hawaii.  The 12-hour tour will feature volcanoes, waterfalls, coffee, black sand beaches, lava tubes, and more.  It was a busy last day on Hawaii in Hawaii.

First stop:  a coffee plantation.

This is the Kona Coast and Kona is the coffee of Hawaii.  And on the coffee plantation we saw mango trees (above) and we saw banana trees (below).

Those are apple bananas, not the Cavendish that make up an overwhelming percentage of bananas imported into the U.S.  They make great banana bread.  Well, the coffee shop at the coffee plantation made great banana bread with those very same apple bananas.

What else did we see at the coffee plantation?  Pineapple plants.

Soursop.

Also known as guanabana in Latin America.  And we did see coffee plants:

But no coffee in production.  This is not the season for picking the coffee cherries for those coffee beans inside that get roasted into black magic perfection.  We did get to sample the Kona coffee -- dark roast of course was superior in every possible way to the medium roast -- but there was no coffee under production.  This is growing season, not picking season.

After a stop at a bakery for sandwiches and malassadas, Portuguese sweet donuts.  Which, we learned, are made from the same sweet dough as the Hawaiian bread.  Which is actually Portuguese in origin.  Just adopted by the Hawaiians.  After that, on to the next stop.

Second stop:  Punalu'u Black Sand Beach Park.

Even though there is some sort of monument/memorial/public art showing a child (or what appears to be a child) riding a sea turtle, all the signs agree on this:  do not ride the sea turtles.  Mixed messaging I would say.

The black sand on the beach is awesome.  It feels like sand.  But it's black.  It's from the black volcanic rocks being worn down into sandy powder by the forces of the ocean.

It's still black like lava rock.  I don't think it's silicon dioxide, like regular beach sand.  But it feels like sand.

And, as you can see, there is plenty of black lava rock just waiting for the ocean to pulverize it into black sandy powder.

It's like a real beach.  Only the sand is black.

They have a few black sand beaches in Iceland, too.  The landscape on the Big Island resembles Iceland, too.  Except the sun is much hotter.  And it's tropical.  And it has sea turtles.

Sunning on the beach.

I also believe that the waves pounding the Big Island are far more surf-able than those of Iceland, although there were no surfers out at this particular beach on this particular day.

But the waves were gnarly.  As the kids would say.  If the kids were surf dudes stuck in the 80s.

Third stop:  Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.

This was both awesome and disappointing.  First, the awesome.  The star volcano here is Kilauea.  As is true of all volcanoes on the Big Island except for an extinct volcano in the far north, an eruption does not mean an explosion of lava and ash shooting out the top, as we typically think of a volcano.  Instead, there is a massive crater filled to the brim with molten lava.  At the very top, a skin has formed so you do not see the red molten lava.

But you do see sulfur dioxide steaming out of cracks in the lava.  There is so much lava in this mountain that when Kilauea erupts, the lava spews from some fissure in the ground which might be several miles away.  It just depends on where the weak points can be found in the nearby portion of the earth's crust when Kilauea is ready to spew.  So we did not get to walk next to a flowing river of red molten lava.  Which is what I was expecting.  Because I've seen the pictures of that.  But that would only be during an eruption and the latest eruption spell ended a few days ago.  And it most likely would not be right around the crater, but at some fissure point several miles away.  In other words, I did not get to walk next to a river of molten lava as I had hoped.

This is the "rain forest" side of the Big Island.  Kona is on the western, desert side of the island.

So while I did not get to walk next to a lava river, I did walk through a lava tube.

It was not the same experience as walking next to a river of lava, but it was the best that I could on this trip of getting up close and personal with a volcano that had only stopped erupting two days prior.

Fourth stop:  Rainbow Falls.

At this point we are on the far eastern edge of the Big Island, just past the City of Hilo.  It is green.  It is a rain forest.  And, most importantly, it has water.

Oh, a few giant banyan trees next to Rainbow Falls.

You can't have a waterfall without water.

And that's why there were no waterfalls until we got to the wet side of the Big Island.

Fifth stop:  Akaka Falls.

Longer walk.  But through very interesting vegetation.  All for a much taller waterfall.

Unfortunately, for photography purposes, it was impossible this time of day to snap a photo of Akaka Falls without shooting directly into the sun.

 

I did get a few pictures, but not-so-great.

And, of course, the photos were shot at a distance to get the entirety of these rather high falls into a single shot.

Sixth and final stop of the day:  Waipi'o Lookout.

This is overlooking the sight of a village that was wiped out in a massive tsunami in 1946.  You can drive down there, but the road has a 25 percent grade.  And is a single lane, with no visibility as to what or who is coming in the other direction.  I'll stick to the lookout point.

And this concludes the Hawaii getaway vacation 2025.  I've now gone to all 50 states.  Time to keep seeing the rest of the world.