Day 4 Part 2 Around Kona

Anyone who knows this man should be amazed by this photo. For one, he's eating Ah'i Poke, or Hawaiian seasoned raw tuna. It's one of our favorites. He says it's not in his top ten. Also amazing, he's using chop sticks. What a team player. And look at the view back there. After our snack we let the boys run around in the grass.

These are some palms in the grass behind the restaurant. I love this picture, I could have laid in the grass until...well, I'd still be laying there.

After our Ah'i, some of us needed a shopping fix, it wasn't me. So, I took Colt and Justice for a walk. This is a huge tree. It's a banyan tree. I think it's one tree, all of the trunks are attached. But, I'm no banyanologist.

This is another monster. I don't know what kind of tree it is.

This is where we turned and walked back. It's a great view looking south of the Kona coast. The second group of palms is where we had our snack. In the distance is a white building that looks like a ship. That's where we went to our luau. I'll cover that later.

Day 4 Pu'uhonua O Honaunau

The "eye candy" post earlier was from here. It's called "place of Refuge" for short and Pu'uhonua O Hunaunau for long. You don't come here for the beach. There's not much more than what little is seen in the picture. This is a beautiful view though. The history behind this place is  interesting. It was said that if a person broke the law the penalty was death, but he could come here and a priest would absolve him of his wrong doing.

This is how and where Colt learned to snorkel. He's only in a foot of water and there aren't any fish there, but he learned. 

There were lots of Ti'i all over the grounds. Some of these were huge.

You could walk freely around the grounds, huge palm trees. It was peaceful.

And then there's this guy in traditional garb. Yeah, that's butt cheek. What he's doing is nothing short of incredible. He's making a ceremonial cape or something. It's made of hundreds, if not thousands of little feathers. Each one is individually woven into a piece of netting and then tied. Very cool. 

Day 3 Hapuna Beach

All we heard the first 2 days was, "when are we going to the beach"? On day three, we went to Hapuna beach. It's not much for snorkeling, but it has great sand, a variety of surf, a great view and all the facilities. We did see a sea turtle here too.

One of our favorite beach activities is "burry your sibling". It was a bit busy here because it's a resort beach, but people walked around our "graves". Edlin's...what are you gonna do?

Nice view looking inland.

We really got into Boogie Boarding on this trip. The waves were just right for beginners.

Colt with his game face on.

Underwater Eye candy

O.K., so this guy isn't underwater. But isn't he cool! Or she. I didn't check under the shell. Anyway, we're at Pu'uhonua O Honaunau (Place of Refuge) National Historic Park. There were lots of turtles here. This one sunbathed here for a while. 

This is an eel. Probably not in the category of eye candy either, but still cool to look at. 

Honu! That's Hawaiian speak for sea turtle. They don't fear you or swim away. They just continue about there business. Sometimes I'd be looking at fish, justing floating, and a turtle would come swimming by. More than once they scared the poi out of me. They're considerable larger than anything else in the water.

This is a moorish Idol and a convict Tang. More to follow.

This is a school of Yellow Tang. They're at about 15 feet deep.

Volcano Flowing into The Ocean Day 2 Part 3

After we left the national park, we drove to a place outside of the park where the lava was actually flowing. We had to walk this "trail" for about 1/2 a mile. This flow was in 1982 and destroyed a subdivision.

This is the trails end and as close as you can get without getting arrested. It's about a half mile away. Occasionally, we could see black chunks fly up into the air. At night, you can see that those chunks are actually glowing lava. 

The conditions where the lava falls into the ocean are so violent that it creates funnel clouds. We saw one, it started close to the base then slowly worked its way out, then disappeared.

My battery died on my camera, and this is the best picture I got of the glow.

I took this video before I knew my battery was gonna die. I'd rather have a better night glow picture. Oh well.

Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park Day 2 Part 2

This is a steam vent with in the park. We stood in the steam  for a bit to warm up. It's about 80 degrees down on the coast, but we're at about 4ooo feet and the temp is in the 50's or 60's. The steam actually got uncomfortably hot at times.

The pillar of smoke and steam is a new eruption that started last March. Because of it, they've had to close part of the crater rim drive. The crater is called the Kilauea Caldera.

This is the Kilauea Crater, it's about a tenth the size of the Caldera. I can't get the whole crater in the picture, but to give you an idea of how big it is, there's two people in the picture. Can you see them?

Some times lava creates tubes from cooling and winds up traveling through them. This is the Thurston Lava Tube. It rains a lot on this part of the island and rain water seeps through the roof and drips down into the tube.

The kids are sitting on a shelf inside the tunnel. It's like a smaller tube was carved out of the side of the main tube.

Punalu'u Beach Day 2 Part 1

I'm gonna have to break this up into more than one blog per day. We did and saw too much. Is there such a thing?

This is a fruit stand and one of the many things I love about Hawaii. They're common on all the islands. We were driving to the volcano and saw this fruit stand. There's a lock box and all the fruit is labeled and priced. You pick what you want and put the money in the lock box. It's a good thing they're labeled, because this haole (pronounced "howlee" and is hawaiian for foreigner, or more specifically, white foreigner) couldn't tell you what half of them were.

So this was our next stop on the way to the volcano, Punalu'u Beach. A black sand beach. It was over cast this day, but you can imagine how hot that would get! It is a course sand and your feet do not turn black. There were turtles floating around just a few feet off the beach.

Dad's holding a coconut we found. We did peel and eat it.

I think I'll call this one, "Alaskan Haole Against Lava Black".  Justice was more than happy to lay down on the sand.