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 do on this trip as far as 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, and it has 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 continue seeing what's there in the rest of the world.

My Antigua Hotel Doubles as Church Ruins

Agua Volcano visible the gardens of my hotel

I decided to treat myself to a much more luxurious hotel than where I normally would lay my head. Prices were down because of COVID phobia. And I got cheated out of my 60th birthday celebration last year. So I decided I was worth a splurge.

I am staying in the Casa Santo Domingo on the edge of Antigua. That is a courtyard just over from the row of rooms where I am staying. As I may have said before, my room has a pool view, which no one is using due to some combination of mild temperatures, rain storms, and COVID-induced limited capacity at the pool.

Lots of religious art because this used to be a church.

Until the earthquake.

Antigua was largely destroyed by a massive earthquake on July 29, 1773. The city lay largely in ruins. The Guatemalan capital then was packed up and moved to the present site of Guatemala City, which made zero sense since Guatemala City was just as earthquake prone. (Most recent massive quake: 1976.)

The ruins of the old church are still used for Sunday mass once a week.

 

There is a roof, but it's otherwise open air.

And for you preservation absolutists who want to be horrified that they built a luxury hotel around the unreconstructed (but shored-up) ruins of great church, relax. There are plenty of other churches in ruins in Antigua. Church ruins are as common in Antigua as casinos in Las Vegas.

The un-ruined parts of the hotel complex are quite nice.

And they have parrots poolside.

Maybe around seven or so.

They like to squawk, but only during the day. The museums on the hotel grounds -- and there are several -- are largely closed (including the chocolate museum), probably all casualties of COVID. The spa, like the hotel spas in Las Vegas, has very limited capacity. But the birds are open for business.

They sleep at night. So I can, too.

Phot-o' the Day: Craters of the Moon National Monument, Idaho USA

A trail through black volcanic rock leading to a mound of black volcanic rock

Today is the 51st anniversary of Apollo 11 landing on the surface of the moon, shortly thereafter, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin taking those small steps for men, giant leaps for mankind, on the lunar surface.

In all my travels, I've not yet been to the moon. I think, back in 1969, we just assumed that we would be able to visit there as tourists by now. But we're not. I've been to Moon Township, Pennsylvania. They have a very nice airport there. I've been to Half Moon Bay, California. They have a very nice ocean there. And I've been to Craters of the Moon National Monument, which is somewhere near nowhere in Southern Central Idaho. They have a lot of very nice rocks there. Lots of rocks.

I'm not sure why Craters of the Moon, the national monument, was named what it was. The surface is hard black volcanic rock. There are no craters per se. And gravity works just the same there as anywhere else on the earth's surface, so I'm not sure what's supposed to be "lunar" about the place. But I guess it's as close to the surface of the moon as I am going to get this lifetime.

Phot-o' the Day: Tree atop a Volcano; Craters of the Moon National Monument, Idaho

A lone tree at the top of a lone volcano.

This was taken from the top of the dormant volcano (last major eruption: about 200 B.C. or so) whose periodic explosions over millions of years formed this landscape that we now call Craters of the Moon National Monument in southern Idaho, USA.

Visited September 2019.

The Road to Quilatoa

Fresh cuy on the rotisserie. Want a leg quarter?

Today I did an organized tour. A trip to Quilatoa, the caldera of a (semi-) active volcano that has filled in to become a lake. Ecuador's version of Crater Lake, Oregon. Only at a ridiculously higher elevation, this being the Andes and all. It is about a three hour bus ride from the City of Quito.

But, as they say, it's not about the destination, it's about the journey. So here are scenes from the journey.

Some of the roads were better paved than this.

We ate breakfast at a hacienda along the way. Pork sausage (tasted like a kielbasa, which is a good thing) and eggs (which were very fresh and actually good).

The next stop down the road a piece was for restrooms and souvenir-shopping.

And what was on the menu? Cuy!

Guinea pigs all on the rotisserie.

The art of this local artist is sold nearby.

He must be good if he gets roadside statuary in his honor.

And I got to see my first llama of the trip.

There would be more.  There also was this friendly guy:

Sadly he (or she) was very emaciated. There were other dogs roaming around that looked well fed, so I'm suspecting a horrible amount of worms or some other parasite. I post the picture because this dog was incredibly friendly and loved to be petted and scratched.

Back on the bus.

You know it's hard taking pictures from the window of a bus rolling down a bumpy road. But the mountain scenery was awesome.

So was this.

Whatever it is, it guards the entrance to the viewing platform for the Toachi River Canyon.

This is the Toachi River Canyon.

The canyon was formed from the lava flows from the most recent major eruption of the Quilatoa Volcano, about 800 years ago.

And speaking of Quilatoa, here we are the viewing platform in the indigenous village of Shalala.

Ride my llama?

And there were more llamas, some with saddles.

These being baby llamas, they would be ride-able by only young human children. You might be able to see that all of the indigenous women, here, at Toachi River Canyon, at the cuy rotisserie, wear fedoras.  Every single one of them. And they all look awesome.

And now we have reached our destination.

The lake in the caldera of the still active Quilatoa Volcano (gas still bubbles up through the lake).

And here I am posing for a picture in front of the lake.

She was sad when her mother asked her to get away for my picture, so I pulled her into the picture. Just to spite that Mom!

This is the viewing platform to see the lake at Shalala.

And another more difficult-to-access viewing platform:

And another llama.

It costs a dollar to take pictures of the llamas, but, hey (a) the community needs to support itself somehow, and (b) they are llamas! Llama pictures are worth a dollar tip!

This, llama, however, posed for free:

As did this statue of I don't know what. A puma? They have them in this area.

You don't just have to view the blue-green waters of the lake safely from high above on the rim. You can hike down into the volcano. It's only a little more than a mile hike. Straight down.

What I didn't realize at the time was that almost meant a hike of about a mile. At 12,000 feet in elevation or so. Straight up. But that part of the adventure will be another post.