Hawaii,
Saturday, 2012-2-2
We checked out from the hotel very early this morning,
and the driver came to pick us up at 6:00 to go to the airport to catch a
flight to Hilo in Hawaii. We arrived at
Hilo at shortly after eight and met our tour guide. The rest of the tour group
had already waiting in the car, and the only seats for us to take were at the
last row.
The airport in Hilo was very close to the city, and we
drove east on Kalanianaole Ave to Richardson Ocean Park. We passed the port
which had the facility to accommodate a cruise ship. The area around Hilo had suffered many lost in lives and
damage in properties by tsunami. Some of the major tsunami occured in 1946,
1957 (8 m high), 1960 (12 m), 1975 (9 m), and in 2011. Some houses were built
on stilts against the possible threat of flooding from the tsunami, but the
majority had no stilts.
Richardson Ocean Park was just about 5 km east of the
airport. The shore was the rugged volcanic rocks, and in many places along the
road, waves broke at the rocks not far from or right on shore. The park had
many coconut trees and a beautiful garden like lagoon at its entrance, and
there were many kayaks on the ground. All of them had a single rig to prevent
it from flipping in rough sea. There were many surfers in the water and the
wave was about a man height. Most of the surfers laid on their boards and
paddled with their hands, and only one surfer used a row. I assumed that one
could surf better without having to handle the row.
There was a small black sand beach, and unlike the black
beach which I had seen in Indonesia, the sand on this beach was very large, as
large as the size of small bean, due to its young age. There were some pahoehoe
lava, and it had the appearance of smooth, billowy, undulating, and ropy. It
really looked like the intestines or brain. The other lava was rough and rubbly and was called a’a
locally. We also saw large boulder of volcanic origin. There were many tidal pools
and we saw the flipper of a sea turtle sticking out from its hiding place under
a rock.
We then returned on the same road toward the city, and
stopped at Big Island Candies Factory south of Honolulu Park to see the making
of chocolate coated macadamia nuts. The nuts were poured into a bowl of melt
chocolate and a worker would then scoop them up one at a time and put them into
the packaging tray.
Our next stop was Rainbow Falls in Wailuku River State Park
in the northwest of the city of Hilo. There was a grove of very tall mango
trees and African tulip trees on the parking lot. We also saw the Hawaii state
tree kukui in the parking lot. Its nut had high contents of oil, and in the old
day, the local used it as a candle and therefore the tree was also known as the
candlenut tree. Later I learned that this tree was very common in Indonesia,
and its nut was known as kemini. Like it
was in Hawaii, the nut was used in cooking or used with other vegetables raw.
The parts of the tree had many uses, and right now the nuts were turned into
Hawaiian nut lei.
The falls was not far from the parking lot, and it flowed
out of the rocky bed of Wailuku River over a natural lava cave. It was only
about 24 m high. During a high flow season of the river, the falls was as wide
as the river, but when we were there it was just a narrow falls and was not
very spectacular. However, a narrow section or a whole of a rainbow could
always be seen in the mist thrown by the falls. We went up a short trail to see
the source of the falls, and saw large and pretty yellow flowers on vine in the
shape of trumpet. Later, I found it to be cup of gold (solandra maxima).
Farther on, we saw a grove of tall mango trees and large banyan trees. These
were trees we saw from the parking lot. The fallen red flowers of the African
tulip covered the ground and the trail.
We then have lunch in a Chinese restaurant in Joint
Astronomy Center west of University of
Hawaii. It had limit number of choices on its menu, but the price was high. The
price for a simple salad bar was $16. We had to make another stop for shopping at Akatsuka
Orchid Garden on our way to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park which was the reason
that I came to Hawaii. We saw many beautiful orchids there but none of us
bought anything. We wasted half an hour of our precious time there. In my view,
half of a day had been wasted on things that were not why I came to Hawaii. We
had gained an altitude of 900 m, and I could feel the change in temperature.
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Hawaii or the Big Island was made up of 5 shield
volcanoes, and they were all the product of the upwelling of the molten lava
from the hotspot deep in the mantle of earth core. The volcano that we would
visit was called Kilauea. It was located in the southeast part of the island,
and was the youngest and the most active volcano among the five. It emerged
above the sea in about 50 to 100 thousand years ago. It lacked any prominent
topography feature, and was seen only as a shield shape dome feature on the
flank of the adjacent larger volcano Mauna Loa. It had a distinct and large
caldera measuring 4 by 3.2 km and its wall was 120 m high. This caldera was
created during the many recent eruptions of Kilauea. During an eruption of a
shield volcano, the floor of its caldera
would be pushed up by the pressure of the emerging lave under it. It was then filled
with the emerging lava and formed a lava lake. The lava might overflow the
caldera or flow out through breaches in the caldera. Toward the end of the eruption,
the lava would drain back underground through pit craters or vents and a giant
whirlpool of lava might be formed in the lake. The molten lava would eventually
returned to the deep underground reservoir where it originally came from, and
left the floor of the lake with weak and little support. The floor would
eventually collapse under its own weight.
Within this caldera, there was Halemaumau Crater at its
southwestern corner. It was almost a circle with a diameter of 920 m and a vertical
wall of 85 m high. It was a pit crater of Kilauea volcano and also the center
for many of its recent eruptions. The Hawaiian Volcano Observatory was located
at the mid-western side of the Kilauea Crater, and the Kilauea Overlook was very
close to the observatory. The overlookt was right at the edge of the crater,
and was just over a kilometer from the closest edge of Halemaumau crater.
Just outside the eastern ridge of Kilauea Caldera, there
was another pit crater called Kilauea Iki. It was a little smaller than
Halemaumau. In 1959, a new lava shield called Pu’u Pua’i was formed by the
upwelling molten lava under the ground. It erupted and shot up fountain of
molten lava hundreds of meters high. The lava flowed into Kilauea Iki crater
and formed a lava lake. The lava in the lake eventually drained back
underground toward the end of the eruption.
A road called Crater Rim Drive had been constructed
around and enclosed Kilauea Caldera and Kilauea Iki Crater. It had a length of
18 km and had several overlooks. There were several long hiking trails on the
lava floor. Halemaumau Trail started from the northeast corner of Kilauea
Caldera and transverse the floor of the caldera, passed the eastern edge of
Halemaumau Crater and ended at the nearby parking lot on Crater Rim Drive at
the southwestern corner of the caldera. Another trail called Byron Ledge Trail
went south along the eastern wall of the caldera, and then turn west to join
the Halemaumau Trail at north of the crater. Kilauea Iki Trail started from the
eastern end of the crater, transversed its floor, and passed the foot of Pu’u
Pua’i and reached the western end of the crater. I then joined the Byron Ledge
Trail by climbing up the wall of the crater and then down the wall of the caldera.
Another interesting thing to see in the park was the lava
tube. During Kilauea eruption, the molten lava found their way pouring down the
volcano into Hilo Bay. The outside skin of one branch or asection of this lava flow gradually cooled
down and harden, but the lava inside the core of this flow remain hot and
continued to flow until it ran out of the supply of molten lava and became a
tunnel. There were probably many of such tunnels transporting molten lava down
the volcano to the sea during an eruption.
We arrived at Hawaiian Volcano Observatory in the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park at 13:40, and
immediately we walked to Kilauea Overlook to see Kilauea Caldera. The overlook
provided an unobstructive view of the surrounding due to the lack of any trees
or tall vegetations. Kilauea caldera was huge. Steam was coming out of
Halemaumau crater. Like other pit crater, the floor of this crater collapsed
and sunk after the molten lava had returned to its chamber, and left a vertical
wall around the crater. The Thomas A Jaggar Museum in the observatory had many
good exhibitions explaining the characteristics of Kilauea volcano and many
related subjects. I knew that there was not enough time to study each one of
them, and busy myself just to take the photo of those I found interesting. By
the time I left the museum, the rest of the tour group had already anxiously
waiting in the car.
We returned to Crater Rim Drive and drove counter
clockwise. We stopped at an active small Steam Vent not far down the road
puffing steam. The steam was produced by water sipping down on the hot rock
underground. Regretfully, the guide didn’t take us to the Sulphur Bank which
was not far away. According to the literature, the volcanic mineral deposits
and smell in Sulphur Bank was similar to that in Yellowstone. We continued on
the road and stopped at Kilauea Iki lookout. We could see clearly the lighter
colour trail and the specks of hikers on the floor of the crater. The cracks of
the lava near the foot of the wall looked similar to the pressure ridge of ice
on a lake. We could also see very clearly the broken surface of Pu’u Pua’i
liked the broken crust of a cake.
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We continued on the drive and stopped at Thurston Lava
Tube not far away. This tube was discovered in 1931, and was located at the
bottom of a crater presently filled with jungle. We walked down a trail and saw
many fern trees along the trail. The singing of song birds filled the air but
we could not see them. The widest part of Thurston tunnel was about 3 m in
diameter, and it was big enough to walk for its whole length of 200 m. Unlike a
regular cave, its cross section was uniformly circular all the way from start
to end. The wall and floor were wet. It was lighted with electricity but the
light was not strong enough to show the texture and features on the wall of the
tunnel. And I felt like walking in a giant underground storm drainage pipe. At
the parking lot, I saw a tall tree, and a bunch of brown colour fine roots about
50 cm long and 25 cm wide at its widest section was hanging on one of its branch
like the aerial prop root of a banyan tree. It was also like a giant Chinese
brush. I saw a similar tree when we passed near the southeast corner of Ola’a
Forest Reserve on HW #11 on our way to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. And it
had several bunches of this roots hanging on the branches of the tree. I wondered if it was a parasitic plant.
Chain of Craters Rd branched out south from Crater Rim
Drive at south of Kilauea Iki crater. It ran initially through forest and then
mostly in the barren land of lava field all the way to the coast for a length
of 30 km. It would pass many craters, lava flows, and offered many beautiful
vistas. This was one of the major attractions that I wanted to see on this
trip. However, the guide took us only up to Lua Manu just a short distant after
we turned into this road. Lua Manu was a small pit crater, and the road had
been covered by lava but now had been re-paved. On both side of the road one
could see a large field of lava. Surprisingly, we saw ohi'a lehua trees stood
up in the black lava field. The guide had repeated many times to warm us not to
pick any rocks on this tour or else it would bring bad lucks. However, many of
us could not resist the temptation of picking some for souvenirs. This was the end of our tour to the national park,
and we took the same road back to Hilo.
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On the way, we passed the huge macadamia orchard and stop
at the store of Mauna Loa Macadamia Nut Corporation. For the first time I saw
the real macadamia tree. It was about 25 m high, and looked like a lizhi tree.
Its flowers were produced in a long raceme 5-30 cm long. Its fruits were round
like large dragon fruits and were very hard and woody, and took 3 months to
develop. The first crop was produce 5 years after planting from graft, and it
took 15 years for a tree to mature. A mature tree produced as much nuts in
kilogram as much or more than its own age in years. When the fruit was mature,
the outside husk would dry and split, and the nut would drop to the ground. The
harvesting was therefore consisted of collecting
nuts falling on the ground. The tree was brittle in nature and must be
protected from strong wind. We saw rows of narrowly conical trees had been
planted as wind breaker.
We check-in at Hilo Hawaiian hotel at 17:30. It was
located on Banyan Drive in a peninsula in Hilo Bay in Hilo where row of large banyan trees
were found along the drive. The hotel faced the bay and the Coconut Island, and the view was very pretty. It was also next to a beautiful Liliuokalani Garden and
Waihono Pond. The whole set up had strong flavour of a Japanese garden. It was a nice
place to relax and enjoy the beautiful scenery.
More photos could be viewed in Picasa photo album of lku99999 in Google.
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