|
|
 |
Approaching
Volcano National Park |
 |
The road to
Volcano |
 |
Lokahi lodge |
 |
Summit of the
road |
 |
Tarmac Munro! |
|
||||||
| This is the big one, not far but uphill for
about 27 miles! The first 7 miles are superb, as you whizz down the main road towards the Pacific. There isn’t a shoulder for a while but there’s a layby above the rocky coastline where you can sit and watch the waves crash in from the Pacific and gaze in wonder as the nearest landfall from here is 1000 miles away in the Little Fanning Islands. Down below, there’s a battered old jetty, old wooden beams jutting out into a white frothing sea as the rollers crash in to the lava fields, sending spray high into the air. The road is twisting, smooth and quiet and this part is one of the best on the route. Absolutely stunning as you twist and turn down to the Pacific, before turning inland and the long long straights on rolling terrain until the turn off for the black sand beach. Away up to the left, you can see the hazy, forested slopes of the hills up in the Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park, rising high above a jagged and bleak waste of a’a lava. On your right, the road edge stops abruptly at places to form a 15 to 20 foot drop straight down onto the lava fields. Not a place to lose control. Luckily, the traffic is light and very courteous anyway, as they all move out into the middle of the road, cars and lorries, the lot. It’s well worth the short detour (I did it the next week with Dawn in the car!) to the black sand beach at Punalu’u, fringed by palm trees and washed by the surfing blue Pacific. There’s a perfect campsite (free) with wash rooms and showers and the wind from the sea keeps the flies away. It really is a beautiful spot. You can camp on short green grass almost at the sea’s edge. |
||||||
|
||||||
| The Punalu’u junction is also where the climb begins, all 27 miles of it, up over barren lava fields but at an easy angle. At some points it’s barely noticeable that you’re going uphill and the altitude markers slowly pass by until you’re at 3000ft. The lava stretches as far as the eye can see to the right but you don’t realise that there’s a huge great hole in the ground, 11 miles in circumference, just out of sight as you near Volcano – Kilauea. The forests far off on the left stop abruptly at the line of the eruptions from Mauna Loa and the heat is intense. It gets easier the further you go though, as you slowly climb higher and higher, passing the Kau desert trailhead, where you just catch the whiff of sulphur in the air. I stopped here for a bite to eat and could certainly smell it. It’s also a great walk from here to the summit of a Hawai’ian Munro – Mauna Iki – 3030ft, 10ft lower than the road at the trailhead, passing the wooden structure that shelters the footprints of Hawai’ian warriors, caught in an eruption long ago. | ||||||
| I was feeling the climb on my legs not far
past Punalu’u but after stopping for a rest just after some
tree cutting operations, I noticed the back tyre had deflated quite
a lot and after pumping it up I sped up the hills! It seemed to be
a feature of the otherwise excellent bike – the rear tyre would
deflate gradually throughout the day and the saddle bolt would loosen
too. I put this down to the fact it was a carbon seat post so it was
difficult to get the bolt really tight without cracking the carbon. I stopped for a bite to eat under the shade of some scraggly bushes on the edge of a parched grassy area of lava, the grass waving in the strong wind like wilting stubble on a hard face. Above me, the electricity lines were oscillating in the wind, making a strange wooing sound. |
||||||
| As the altitude markers slowly pass, at roughly 500ft intervals, the air gets cooler and passing the Ka’u desert trailhead you can, if you’re lucky, spot white tailed tropic birds. We saw these long tailed birds soaring gracefully above the sulphurous crater of Halema’uma’u in Kilauea. From the trailhead it’s 10 miles to Volcano, passing through a seismic activity zone, as the road signs remind you and as the gradient eases at the top the scenery changes instantly. One moment it’s rough and barren lava fields, the next it’s lush tropical vegetation as you pop out of the route of the eruptions and onto the tropical Hilo side of the mountain. There’s a nice campground on the left just before the summit at Namakani Paio, a “Paio” being a cliff and there are signs at the edges of the site warning walkers not to venture into the forest for fear of large earth cracks. This is the rift zone of Kilauea after all. | ||||||
| Next port of call before Volcano village and after passing the entrance to the national park, on the left, is the short detour to Volcano winery. Just turn left where the services sign is, cycle up the short incline and round past the golf course, with it’s smell of frying steak wafting from the restaraunt and the buggies humming across the road, follow the tarmac downhill for about a quarter of a mile, perhaps a touch more to the end of the road, turn left and pop into Volcano Winery for a tasting session and perhaps a bottle or two of the excellent local aperitif! | ||||||
|
||||||
| We stayed in Volcano village that night at
Lokahi Lodge, a fantastic wooden house with a large stove, piano and
organ and beautiful rooms. The staff had even left the electric blankets
on, ready for our arrival! It’s at around 4000ft but still warm
during the day and it’s not that bad at night but I suppose
tourists who are used to the tropical heat of the coast must find
it pretty cold up here at night! There’s a good shop in Volcano, with some interesting books and plenty of sandwiches. To get to Lokahi Lodge, I first had to cycle over to Kilauea Lodge, just down the road a bit but having to pass a nutter cutting his grass in the process. He had a couple of rabid dogs which were under control on the way there but running about daft on the way back with the keys, so I had a few choice words for him, which I’m sure he heard as tried to call his dogs back! Back at Lokahi Lodge, there was a Cain spider comatose on the outide wall due to the cold and Red Admirals in the trees. It’s very lush here and I was chuckling to think of what it would be like in Scotland at this height. Basically the same height as Cairngorm. |
||||||
| Up the road, in the national park, Volcano
House has a non stop log fire burning but during the day it’s
absolutely heaving with tourists, a lot of them chain smoking Japs
but the first site of the crater is just overwhelming. We paid the
$10 to enter the park, which is good for a week, drove up to Volcano
House and walked into the carpeted hallway, booked a room in the garden
house for a couple of nights the next week and wandered through the
restaraunt and out onto the terrace. And there it was. A gigantic
hole in the ground, 11 miles in circumference. There were some steaming
vents down on the floor and the light coloured strings of faint trails
across the black lava crater. Green spots betrayed sulphur fumes and
up on the cliff edge on the right, about a mile away, the Jagger Observatory
was dwarfed by the sheer scale of the place. The slopes at Volcano
House are heavily forested, as are most of the slopes near it but
over by Halema’uma’u, the home of the goddess Pele, it
was bare lava and you could see where it had overflown and destroyed
the road, crater rim drive, now restored and cyclable it’s entire
length. The sheer scale of the place is amazing, dwarfing the tour
buses over by Halema’uma’u and the crowds of chain smoking
Japs pouring over the trail to the lookout. Down by the lookout, we
saw later in the trip, the crater walls are collapsing, leaving massive
cracks in the walls at the top. It’s just not possible to get
down into Halema’uma’u but I don’t think it would
be advisable to be down there anyway as it’s the world’s
most active volcano! There are pleny of fumaroles and sulphur vents
down there and contorted white mounds of minerals and vitrified gas
bubbles where ancient lava had burped and splodged a new crater floor.
When Mark Twain was here he described the noises and sights of rivers
and lakes of molten lava in this crater but now it was dormant, for
the time being, with the main action being over at Pu’u O’o.
This cone was spewing lava down to the sea, over Chain of Craters
Road, producing vast plumes of steam and hydrochloric acid into the
moonlit night, which we saw later on. The flow is mostly underground
though and all we could see was the red glow of the lava where it
briefly appeared above ground before being quenched by Pacific rollers. Halema’uma’a is a sacred place for Hawai’ians and on the other side of the fence, at the lookout and dangerously close to the fragile edge, they had left some offerings to the goddess Pele, who is reputed to dwell in the crater. One offering was an empty sherry bottle. Fruit made up the majority of the others. It was a phenomenon we encountered here and there, the slow rise of Hawai’ian nationalism and down at the petroglyphs on Chain of Craters Road, we saw the information sign had been crudely changed to read “where the Hawai’ians do” instead of “where the Hawai’ians did”. As this referred to the practice of creating a small hole in the lava, usually pahoehoe, inserting your newly born’s phalopian tube and covering it with a stone, it seemed a trifle strange practice to maintain in this day and age. One other business in hand, was the thorny issue of access to the summit of Mauna Kea. The Hawai’ians had basically leased this to the University of Hawai’i @ Hilo, who had administered access to other groups who had built the telescopes. Now, the university and the groups wanted to restrict access to the summit, to those who worked there! The court case concerning this issue was due to be heard a couple of days after we left. Considering there was a fair bit of pollution going on up there, from mercury spills and bad sewage management and the fact that they were shafting the locals, the Hawai’ians had finally withdrawn their famous spirit of aloha and had asked for the mountain back. I hope they get it. |
||||||
|
||||||
