Honeymoon: August 5th

The Big Island, Hawaii

MAP

It was time for a trip around the eastern / windward side of the Big Island. The diversity of the habitat that one drives through while in Hawaii continues to amaze me. The leeward side of the island near and north of Kailua-Kona is like a black lava desert; the area between the Kohala Mountains and Mauna Kea is characterized by landscaping that is rather common to much of the central US (green grass, deciduous trees, etc.); the windward ("wet", east) side is what you'd expect in tropical forests. Personally, I love the area near Waimea best.

We were planning on eating lunch at Cafe Presto, so we didn't make too many stops between Waimea and Hilo. That said, we stopped at Akaka Falls (which was impressive). Lunch was very good, as was the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden at which we spent an hour or more exploring. We drove back through Hilo before driving through the Puna District, where we stopped at Lava Tree State Park. Long ago, lava flowed through this area, smothering everything in its path, including trees. Lava encrusting the trees hardened, and, over time, the tree itself decomposed, leaving a hollow, slender shell of lava. Just after we got out of the car to walk around the area, it started raining, so out time there was quite short. We continued the drive around Puna before making our way back into Hilo for dinner at Pescatore. Dinner was quite good, though, again, not incredible. We were both a little disappointed with the food we'd eaten thus far, particularly when considering the price paid (dinners averaged about $80). Of course, we expected to pay more for food in HI, but, up to this point, I think we both preferred the food at Deep Fork (in OKlahoma City) over what we'd eaten in HI. There was one gross exception to this, which was the dinner at David Paul's back on Maui. But hey, even "pretty good" food in Hawaii is better than most food on the mainland! :)

The drive back through the northeastern part of the island was interesting. By the time we made it past Honokaa (southeast of Waimea), it was quite a bit after sunset, and there was some light rain nearby. As we ascended towards Waimea, however, we quickly got into extremely dense fog (actually, "cloud"). There was some ongoing construction in the area, so there was nothing in the way of lane markers, and the pavement was largely fresh (so headlight didn't work too well on the wet pavement). The combination of darkness, near-zero visibility, a complete unfamiliarity with the roads, and no lane markers made the drive to Waimea one of the most trecherous I've ever had. I think I averaged about 15mph for several miles, some of the time just hoping that I was not going to drive off the road or into oncoming traffic. I tried to find a place to pull over so I could let someone pass me (much easier to follow someone in a situation like this than to lead!), but I couldn't find a place to pull over safely. After we made our way through Waimea, the clouds/fog ended abruptly (which is to be expected in that area), and we quickly emerged into clear skies and bright stars.

Pictures

Click on any photo to see a larger version