Life Over The Hills: A very belated Big Island post part 1!

Soooo it's been quite a while since we actually went to Big Island now, but I've had a ton of things to do and haven't really gotten around to editing the massive amount of pictures I took. Soo.. Here! I actually have time off to write things now, so this will be wordy and Im actually going to split it into two posts. Im also not posting all of my pictures here, most of them are going to be on Facebook so if we aren't Facebook friends, hit me up I guess?

So the thing about the Big Island trip was that we were supposed to go during Spring Break, but I messed up Big Time (hurr hurr).. When I ordered our tickets, we agreed that we were going Monday to Thursday, giving us 4 nights in the hotel and 2 whole days to explore, but what I didn't notice, was that Expedia starts their week on Sunday. So, we trooped up on the airport on Monday evening, and couldn't check in.. To my horror I discovered that my printed itinerary said 'Sunday'.. I was crushed! After talking to the company flying us there, we also discovered that they were going out of business the next week... We could change our tickets so we could leave the next day, but that would mean we would literally arrive at 8pm and leave 7am the next morning, not much use in that. And the hotel was sold out.. But after a few days of checking prices and working out some way to not become totally broke (credit cards, hurray!) we ordered new tickets the last weekend before Martin was leaving, and I'm very glad we did!

The interesting thing about the Big Island is that one of the two volcanoes is so tall that it actually has snow on it! It's not that easy to tell in this picture I took while we flew into Hilo, but even in late March it had quite the snow cap. This is, I believe, the Mauna Kea volcano, which we didn't go to. It stands over 13,000 feet (4207 meters) over sea level, but because most of the volcano is under water, it is actually larger than Mount Everest in height, more than twice the size!

We got to the Big Island, or Hawaii as its actually called, around 5.30pm on Saturday, and went to our hotel and had a nice dinner by a small lake full of fish and ducks. I ate an extreeemely tasty white fish dish, and we could tell the chef had free reign over the kitchen and could do whatever he wanted, which is always a huge plus!

After dinner we taxi'ed back to the airport to rent a car, as we wanted to rent one for 24 hours so we could keep it right up until our flight back the next day. When we had asked them earlier, we got told they were out of smaller cars, and Martin, the car geek, was scared he'd end up driving a mini van all day. But when we arrived back, to his enormous pleasure, we got a Mustang!

After a night in the hotel, which was a very cute and quaint hotel, with a huge Koi pond right outside our window. And also some quite loud frogs! Apparently the Big Island inhabitants have big problems with these tiny yellow frogs called Coqui frogs, which sound much like a bird singing. I noticed them straight away when we landed, and certain places, like right by Hilo airport, have so many it's straight up cacophonous. Fortunately, living in a big city has all but erased my issues with sleeping over noise, so I slept easily. So yes, we started our venture towards Kilauea volcano, our main goal for the day. We didn't know how long it would take or what we were going to do there, so it was all a bit "take it as we go". We stopped by Walmart for some breakfast and lunch (not the best idea in the world, but oh well) and drove on!

The drive took a lot less time than we anticipated, and in no time we were on the volcano! The island is surprisingly very flat, and the incline up towards the volcano was so small that we were kind of surprised to be that high up that soon! Obviously, we had to use the opportunity and put the top down, so we cruised with the music blaring and enjoyed ourselves!

For introduction to this post I'm going to post a map that I gracefully nicked (read: screencapped) from the state park's site to show where we drove. You can click on it to make it larger.

We started out at the visitor center, marked with a black flag here.

Originally the plan was to drive around the caldera, but as of a few months ago they had closed the southern portions of the road due to the volcanic gases. So instead we drove to the Jaggar Museum, the furthest south you could drive at this point, and also the closest vantage point for the caldera crater!

Had to take a selfie of course, which the gentleman on the left there pointed out, 'Oh gotta have the selfie!'

The gases from the volcano come out constantly, and apparently the lava level in the crater varies, and you had at one point been able to see it. We couldn't see the lava, but the massive cone of gas was pretty impressive! After walking around inside the museum, and creating our own mini earthquake on the earthquake monitor, we drove back to the steam vents, which is an area where water hits warm rock under the soil, causing lots of large steam clouds to rise to the surface.

Click on that for a (really bad, thanks camera) panorama of the caldera.

After the steam vent exploring we drove back to the information center, parked the car and went for a hike!

First point on the agenda was the sulphur banks trail.

Upon entering the area, this warning was posted! I joked around about me having a bad cold and all that, but we didn't notice anything in the ways of breathing issues!

In addition to the fumes, there were also signs all over warning you to not leave the wooden pathway, because the earth around the sulphur vents is brittle and can crack, and the sulphur gas is extremely hot and can scald you should you fall in. One sign even told of a young boy who slipped into a crack and sustained severe burns. Not for the light of heart.

Sulphur crystals covering rocks.

Sulphur stinks.

So this part of the park was an area where, obviously, sulphur leaks through the earth. The stones in the picture above was part of a large cemented cover over a measuring hole, and the sulphur had eroded the rocks and cement to a point where only a few of them remained.

Martin enjoyed himself, clearly.

After the sulphur banks, we followed the road back to the steam vents, where we entered the crater rim hike, which follows the crater rim around back to the information center. It was a wonderful hike, with proper rain forest vegetation at places. Not much to say, I took a lot of photos and we both spent most of the hike craning our necks in all directions trying to see it all and take it all in.