The Stay in Kona, and the Big Island   On the map, the western “Kona” side of the island has three points, north, central, and south, projecting out to sea, with two coastal strips between them. Kona is on that center point, and the Kona Coast south of it, up to and including South Point, are of great interest.

The north point, known as the Kohala District after the nearby volcano, has several places of interest, but the coast between it and Kona, called the Kohala Coast, has nothing but big resort hotels meant more for vacationers and less for travelers, and does not attract or interest me.

The eastern “Hilo” side of the island has only one point, facing east, leaving two rather long coastlines as well. The northeast coast, including Hilo, is of little interest, but the southeast coast is the constantly growing volcanic coast, which is fascinating.

The island’s greatest dimension is 73 mi / 150 km across the center. You can drive completely around the island. Highway 11 goes from Kona around the southern end, then over Kilauea Volcano to Hilo; Highway 19 goes from Hilo around the northern end back to Kona.

KONA COAST Once I arrived at the attractive little Kona airport and got my rental car in the early afternoon, I spent the remaining half-day exploring the Kona Coast before settling into my hotel in the late afternoon.

I started with the town of Kona, at the northern end of the Kona coast. Except that’s not its name, exactly. Just as there is confusion with the name of the island, so that it’s usually called the Big Island, there’s also confusion with the name of this town, which has three variations. This town is actually named Kailua. Although there’s a lot of duplication of names in the islands, this is the only one that’s significant, because you’ll remember that on O‘ahu, Kailua is the name of the town you see from the lookout. Since the Kailua on O‘ahu has a population four times bigger than this one, this one was given the post office designation of Kailua-Kona. But everyone shortens that to just Kona, so once again, something loses its identity because of duplication, with the town de facto taking the name of the coast that it’s on. Nevertheless, the TOWN of Kona is the major commercial and tourist center of West Hawai‘i, just as Hilo is of East Hawai‘i, and here I don’t have to say “Big Island” because the context is clear.

Once you drive through the outskirts of town with its big-box stores that look like any other suburb, you come to the ingratiating center of Kona, its main street with small shops and restaurants running along the small harbor, near a historic church and palace. One evening I came down from my hotel on the mountain to the funky Kona Brewing Company Pub & Brewery. It’s on a back street and popular with locals and haoles alike. I sat at the bar for some interesting conversations, had their Thai pizza with curry, that was so good the guy next to me ordered it, too. Their home beers were great, and I had a sample of an almost-black porter (but aren’t they all) that was outstanding.

Leaving town to the south along the harbor, I stopped by Huggo’s, where months ago I’d made a reservation for this very night for dinner. I was seated right on the water above the illuminated oncoming waves, and had a pleasant time. But now in the afternoon, leaving Kona to the south, it was nostalgia time. How often does one visit a hotel one had stayed at just for old times’ sake? I had wonderful memories of the Kona Tiki hotel, where each room was right above the water, and you looked down onto the waves, and heard them all night. With these pleasant memories, I found the hotel again. It’s on a postage-stamp sized piece of land on the makai side of the road. There’s a tiny parking lot, a tiny garden, a tiny pool, and then the three-story building with balconies above the waves. I just had to go into the office and talk to the manager, and tell her we’d stayed there for two nights in 1970 at $16.64 per night. She told me that the current rates were $80-96 (not too bad, considering) and that the same owner still ran the place, having bought it just 1-2 years before we’d stayed there. It was a nice nostalgia session.

I continued south on the Kona Coast, to the point where highway 11 moved a bit inland, and higher on the hillside. The towns were early 20C and quaint, including the town of Captain Cook, named after you-know-who. Right after that came the turnoff to the winding road down the hillside, that ran for 4 mi / 6.4 kilometers down to the shore and Kealakakua Bay.

Kealakakua is the largest bay on the Kona coast. Since it’s so far off the road, it was sparsely visited. There were a few houses, a few snorkelers, a few people sitting in chairs, but it had a totally local feeling. There was no beach, just rocks under the shade of the trees to the water. You could look across the substantial bay and see in the woods on the other side a white obelisk, which is the Captain Cook Monument, only reachable by water. Kealakakua Bay was where Captain Cook was killed by the Hawaiians in 1779 during his third voyage around the Pacific.

The view northward across the backwards-C of the bay from the shaded grove where I was standing on the water-lapped rocks was memorable. Having come right from the plane I was wearing regular shoes, so walking into the bay was not a good idea, especially with no beach available, but I knelt down and put both hands into the water, all while humming about My Little Grass Shack in Kealakakua, Hawai‘i, although I failed to see any humuhumunukunukuapua‘a go swimming by. But then I have trouble seeing any nenes, too.

HOLUALOA INN While highway 11 runs through Kona and along the Kona Coast as its main artery, highway 180 gradually cuts off of 11 on either side of Kona and runs parallel to 11, but instead much higher on the mountainside, which is the slope of the Hualalai volcano. Midway, pretty much right above Kona, is the town of Holualoa. Again, it’s an early-20C town, and like so many rural towns in these islands, its wooden buildings—a library here, some art galleries there--make it look a little like something out of the US Wild West.

The name Holualoa comes apart into two pieces. Loa, as in Mauna Loa, means “long”, and a holua refers to a sled. This had nothing to do with snow, but was a sled meant for sliding down the grassy slopes of this hill in earlier times down to the Kona area. I had made a booking at the Halualoa Inn that I’d discovered online, for which I had great hopes, and these hopes were completely fulfilled.

The directions to the Inn on the website were prosaic. They told you that once you saw Paul’s Place General Store and the Post Office, you should turn down the next driveway. Don’t those sound like small-town directions? They do, except that the Inn was a very upscale place.

As I approached, the post office was on the mauka side and Paul’s Place was on the makai side, and the driveway was next to Paul’s Place. I didn’t spot the small discreet sign for the Inn that first time, and as a matter of fact, several times afterward coming home I drove past the driveway and had to turn around, so discreet was it.

Down the driveway and through the garden areas one comes to the main building. It’s a long building situated to get the best of the view. It had been a private home before becoming an inn, and is constructed to maximize the view. The main level consists of a dining room and a number of sitting rooms and living rooms, all with picture windows. To the right are bedrooms, and stairs to some upper bedrooms. From these, there is a catwalk on the roof of the living room wing to a central rooftop gazebo. Below the living room level are a few more bedrooms next to a pool and hot tub. I had paid extra for one of the bedrooms where even the bed had a view. I think next time—and there will be a next time—I’ll take one of the cheaper bedrooms down below, because you can get the view 24/7 from all the living rooms and the rooftop gazebo.

I did mention the view, right? Highway 180, the town of Holualoa, and the Holualoa Inn are all at about 1400 ft / 427 m above Kona below. The panoramic views from all the windows and terraces go from HERE to THERE. You see up the Kona Coast. You see down the Kona Coast. You see Kona below, and there is a direct road nearby connecting to it. This is the area that I’d been admiring the previous week from the ship. Sunsets should be magnificent, except while I was there, clouds formed on the horizon each day hiding the sunsets. But the view!

“Pastoral” is a good word to describe the grounds, which extend to 12 hectares (30 acres). The inn is actually the center of a Kona coffee estate. Kona coffee is a variety of the prized arabica coffee cultivated here on the slopes of Hualalei and Mauna Loa. You can walk to the edge of the garden to inspect some of the coffee bushes, each with clusters of green olive-like coffee berries. Break the not-too-thick skin of a berry and the two halves of the very white and moist coffee bean will fall into your hand. But some of the berries have ripened and are bright red, now referred to as a “coffee cherry”. These are handpicked and sundried, then sent to a local mill that roasts and grinds the coffee, returning it to the estate for sale. Morning coffee everyday comes from coffee that was only recently grown right on the estate. This is accompanied by a gourmet breakfast, and in the late afternoon, there is a beverage and cookies. Copy and paste these two links into another window to see illustrations of the above:

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http://cdn.c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000Z20xGSg3j78/s/750/750/coffee-galapagos-66.jpg

On a slope between the inn and the coffee bushes is a pathway. This turns out to be a public right-of-way, and was the ancient sledding slope from Holualoa down to Kona, but is now just a grassy path. Given its length, you see why Holualoa means Long Sled(ding Path).

KA LAE / SOUTH POINT On my first full day, I drove around the island, first retracing the route down the Kona Coast, then coming to the turnoff to South Point. By this time, highway 11 was somewhat inland, and the turnoff involved a 12 mi / 19 km side road, one way. The first half of the road was through lush countryside, then you entered US government property, and the road deteriorated considerably to bumps and potholes. This was where I saw the sign saying it was kapu to drive off the road. It was windy enough so that there were a number of windmill farms here.

Whichever government entity is in charge if this place needs to fix it up. I don’t want a tourist site, but I want directions and an easy visit. The paved (?) road ended at a big, bouncy step down to a dirt parking lot. There had to have been at lest 20 cars parked there, so the place is not that out-of-the way. At least there were porta-potties there, but nothing else. The lot was not quite at the point but on its western side and without signage, most people seemed satisfied to enjoy what view there was there, particularly back up the Kona Coast. But I saw a meteorological tower on the left, so I went up the path along the rocks for about five minutes, and there was the actual point itself. A few other couples had walked there that I chatted with, but without adequate signage, most people didn’t know, and weren’t curious enough, to walk the extra distance to get the best view. Actually, only after I left the area did I find that a bit up the east side of the point was a green sand beach, but since it was unmarked, I didn’t know to go there.

I was at Ka Lae (The Point, or The Cape), known in English as South Point. This was the first landfall in the Hawaiian Islands by Polynesians in about 700 CE. No sign pointed that out, although some stone carvings had some minimal signage. The view down the slope to the point was impressive, especially as you watched waves coming from the southeast to the east side of the point clash with waves coming from the southwest to the west side of the point. You got an end-of-the-earth feeling, considering that Tahiti was way down there to the southeast, and Samoa and Fiji were way down there to the southwest.

Ka Lae, at 18°N55”, is the southernmost point in the US. Key West, Florida, is further north at 24°N33”, and is the southernmost point in the continental US. Sort of. There are those who argue that the Keys, being islands, aren’t part of the continental US, and give the distinction to Cape Sable, further north still at 25°N07”, in Florida’s Everglades National Park.

Continuing up the volcanic southeast coast from South Point, I did stop at Punalu‘u Black Sand Beach, where the sand color has been determined by the color of the lava it had once been.

The road then rose perceptibly between Mauna Loa on the mauka side and Kilauea on the makai side until I was at the top of Kilauea near the crater. But on the way, I saw a sign that made me laugh enough to pull over to it and stop. I’d seen deer and moose crossing signs in my travels, even polar bear crossing signs in Spitsbergen, but I had to stop and look at a yellow sign that said, believe it or not: NENE XING under a black silhouette of a goose . But there wasn’t a single nene in sight. When I was at Kilauea itself, one sign said “Don’t Feed Nene”, and another said “No Dogs: Nene Territory”, but still I had no luck. Maybe next time.

THE DISCUSSION OF KILAUEA WILL TAKE PLACE BELOW IN THE SECTION ON VOLCANOES. After Kilauea I drove up through Hilo and around the north side of the island on highway 19 back to Kona.

KOHALA DISTRICT On my last full day, I wanted to spend time later in the day relaxing at the inn, but earlier in the day I drove north to the Kohala District. On the east side of that point is the well-known Waip‘io Valley (Wai, again). It faces north out to sea, and you view it from the sea end of its eastern wall 2000 ft / 610 m above the valley floor. It’s wedge-shaped, and is 6 mi / 10 km long and 1 mi / 1.6 km wide. Access is so steep (a 25% drop) that if you want to go down into it (I didn’t) you’re required to hire a four-wheel drive car with driver, who sit there waiting at the side of the road.

Over on the west side of the Kohala District, I went up to Hawi (how would you pronounce it?), which looks even more like a Wild West town than most, with its wooden sidewalks and false-front wooden buildings. (Remember, W after a stressed vowel is V, like in Ewa, so Hawi is HA.vi.)

Leaving Hawi I had a startling surprise. With my sense of geography, I should have known better. But once the trees cleared on the makai side of the road, there was Haleakala, over on Maui, almost like you could touch it! The channel there is only 35 mi / 56 km, but when you think in terms of individual islands, it’s hard to fit them together. So, from the helicopter on Maui I saw Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa here, and from here I saw Haleakala. Cool.

The Volcanoes   The Big Island of Hawai‘i is rightly named, having 62% of the state’s land area, and, while all the Hawaiian islands are volcanic, the Big island consists of little more than five volcanoes that erupted in sequence, thereby overlapping each other.

Since we know that the Pacific Plate, and the islands with it, has been moving over the hotspot in a northwesterly direction, then we’d expect the oldest volcanoes to be on the northwest side, the next oldest in the center, and the youngest one on the southeast, where the coastline is still being extended by lava falling into the sea—and that’s just the layout we get.

KOHALA In that northwest point on the Kona side is Kohala, the oldest of the volcanoes, which is extinct. It’s 5480 ft / 1670 m above sea level, and last erupted 20,000 years ago.

HUALALAI In that west point on the Kona side is Hualalai, at 8271 ft / 2521 m. Its most recent eruption was in 1800-1801. and it’s considered dormant. It forms a backdrop for the town of Kona.

MAUNA KEA As the two oldest volcanoes line up on the northwest coast, the next two volcanoes cut across the center of the island, and are much more massive and impressive. In order of age, Mauna Kea fills in the entire north-central part of the island. It is dormant, and was last active 4000-4600 years ago. Kea means “white”, and this volcano is called White Mountain because of its snowy summit in winter. At 13,803 ft / 4207 m above sea level it’s the highest mountain on the island, but now we get into that tricky field of statistics again, as when we discussed which of two areas was the wettest. You see, Mauna Kea is the highest mountain in the world. What about Everest, you say? Well Everest rises out of Asia, and its height has to be measured above sea level, but Mauna Kea isn’t located on a continent--its base is on the ocean floor, and from its base to its summit, it’s 33,476 ft / 10,203 m, which makes it over ¾ mi / 1.2 km taller than Everest, so when quoting a statistic (Wettest spot? Southernmost US point? Highest mountain?), statistics often need to be clarified. In any case, the summit of Mauna Kea offers exceptionally good astronomic conditions, and is the home of several observatories.

MAUNA LOA Mauna Loa looms. It’s vast, and has that gentle slope that seems to on forever from HERE to THERE as you look at it from a distance. Loa means “long”, so Long Mountain is a good name for it. Its 13,679 ft / 4169 m of height mean that it loses out to Mauna Kea in its official height only by some 124 ft / 38 m, yet, measuring again from the ocean floor, it’s the second tallest mountain on earth. But it beats Kea in mass, since its bulk makes up half the island, at the island’s center and southern end. Loa is an active volcano, true to form, since it’s the fourth oldest volcano as we move our descriptions closer to the southeast coast. It is the largest volcano on earth, and the earth’s most massive mountain. It erupted 33 times between 1843 and 1984, 15 of those times in the 20C, its last three eruptions being in 1950, 1975, and March-April 1984. Its eruptions are less frequent, but more voluminous, than neighboring Kilauea. It is so large, that, while most of the flows fill the southern end of the island, it can also send lava up to the northwest coast north of Kona and the northeast coast south of Hilo. Most of Loa’s eruptions begin at the caldera at its summit, but frequently migrate instead to the SW or NE rift zone, a rift zone being an area where lava bursts out of the side of the volcano, rather than from the top, something that is very typical in Hawai‘i. This happened in 1984, when lava burst out the NE rift zone at 9200 ft / 2804 m and moved 8 mi / 13 km the first day. Over 22 days it came to within 4 mi / 6.4 km of the outskirts of Hilo.

Highway 200 is unique in that it not only cuts across the center of the island about ¼ the way down from the northeast coast, but it crosses the graceful saddle (Joch) between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. I was tempted to drive it the whole way, as well as to drive up to the observatories on Mauna Kea, which someone had recommended to me for the view, but I really didn’t want to cross the island again, and I’d been warned that it was a difficult road. What I did do on that last day that I went up to the Kohala District was to turn off first on highway 200 and drive up and down over some foothills, again through a lush agricultural area, for about 15-20 minutes up to where I came up on a rise and had an unimpeded view. How graceful the two huge mountains looked connected by their saddle. Highway 200 was a bit winding, but decently paved, and rather underused. I think it’ll be on my list for a later visit.

KILAUEA I want to talk about Kilauea and my experiences there out of sequence, since it will tell the story more clearly. As a matter of fact, I didn’t understand some basics even as I was experiencing them. I’m still no kahuna on the topic, but I know a lot more than I did, and think I have a pretty good lay understanding now.

While Mauna Loa is listed as “active”, Kilauea is listed as “very active”. Of course it is. It’s the most active volcano on earth, flows lava 24/7, and has been doing so steadily since 1983. It is therefore the most visited volcano on the planet. You will recall that ki is part of the name Waikiki, making it mean Spouting Water. It’s also a part of the name Kilauea, implying here more “spewing” or “widely spreading”, in reference to the very obvious lava flows down its flanks. At about 4091 ft / 1247 m in height, it’s only about a third as high as neighboring Mauna Loa. Since it seems to emerge from the lower slopes of Mauna Loa, for a long time it was thought to be a satellite of its larger neighbor and not a separate volcano. But recent research shows that Kilauea has its own plumbing system for magma, which comes from more than 37 mi / 60 km below. As a matter of fact, it’s now known that Kilauea is part of the chain of volcanoes coming down from Kohala and Mauna Kea, and not Mauna Loa at all.

As I’d said, coming up from South Point on highway 11, the highway rose between Mauna Loa on the mauka side and Kilauea on the makai side. The bulk of Mauna Loa was very obvious to my left, but you couldn’t really tell that highway 11 was passing the summit of Kilauea because of the trees. Finally, you entered Volcanoes National Park at about the 2 o’clock position on the roughly circular Crater Rim Drive. I used my NP pass again.

On entry, you were given information that about half of the 11 mi / 17.7 km loop road around the rim was closed because of dangerous gas emissions. There had been recent leakages of sulfur dioxide, and motorists were warned to close their windows if they encountered sudden gas emissions while driving. I had no problems, and didn’t feel that I’d missed anything, since you see pretty much the same thing from all sides or the Rim Drive.

Near the entrance is the visitor center and Volcano House, a hotel dating from 1846 that is the oldest continuously operating hotel in the state. It’s on the rim of the caldera and has great views. In 1866, Mark Twain (that name again) stayed at Volcano House and said “The surprise of finding such a good hotel at such an outlandish spot startled me, considerably more than the volcano did.” This is of course Twain hyperbole. At about the 12 o’clock position on the road were steam vents off the side of the road, caused by rainwater and other ground water seeping down and coming in contact with hot rocks, which turn the water to steam that escapes through fissures. Finally at about the 10 o’clock position was the Jaggar Museum, which is as far in the counterclockwise direction that you were able to go. The museum explains a lot, but outside, its terrace is probably the best viewing area of the summit caldera, which was apparently formed as we see it today during a violent steam eruption in 1790.

This part of the rim toward the museum is a bit barren (and was where I saw some of those nene signs). You are essentially standing on the rim of a bowl that’s some 2 mi / 3.2 km across and 400 ft / 122 m deep. It’s believed that the magma at this point is about 2 mi / 3.2 km below the surface. There are trails going down across the caldera for those who want to walk across it.

There is one striking feature in this caldera. Within it, toward its western end, is a crater of considerable size, Halema‘uma‘u Crater, which is considered in Hawaiian mythology to be the home of Pele, the goddess of fire and volcanoes. This crater within the summit caldera is 2530 ft / 770 m by 2950 ft / 900 m, and 270 ft / 83 m below the surface of the caldera. Of course a volcano is a constantly changing “living” thing, and for just over a century, from 1823 to 1924, instead of just having a black lava surface like the rest of the caldera, it had a fiery lava lake. Descriptions from the time described it as “one vast flood of burning matter in a state of terrific ebullion”. During his visit, Twain walked down to the caldera floor and described looking at this lava lake “like gazing at the sun at noon-day”. There were “white-hot chimneys … and up through them were bursting gorgeous sprays of lava … some white, some red and some golden—a ceaseless bombardment, and one that fascinated the eye with its unapproachable splendor.” Over time, the level of the lake ebbed and flowed, then disappeared. Still, this crater is the area of the caldera that is active, and there have been a list of events during 2008, including the current venting of gasses that has partly been closing the drive. Apparently, Pele will want to put on another show to add to the 61 recorded eruptions of Kiluaea from its summit caldera (not counting the continuous lava lake).

At this point you have to backtrack on the drive, past the entrance station, to continue the visit. The rim drive encircles not only Kilauea Caldera but also the ovoid Kilauea Iki Crater (remember, iki = small), which sticks out like a panhandle on the east side, at the 3:00 position. While I was there, there were periods of sun, then drizzle, so I had to backtrack more than usual to get good views of everything. I mention the drizzle, because, when I reached around Kilauea Iki, the road went from a barren area through the most lush rainforest you could expect. Not only were there many, large trees, but there were absolutely huge ferns filling all the ground space between them. There must be considerable rainfall on this side of the caldera. Looking down from the overlooks into Kilauea Iki, it’s particularly easy to watch the people way below walking the trails.

Near here is the huge Thurston Lava Tube. When hot lava flows through comparatively cool ground, the ground temperature cools the outer edge of the lava, but the center of the lava keeps flowing, which effectively forms a tube. The effect is referred to as a “contained flow”. The Thurston, located a short distance into the rainforest on the side of the road, is particularly large. It takes about ten minutes to walk through its 450 ft / 137 m, and its height varies from just over your head to triple or so an adult’s height.

Clockwise you are now only allowed to follow the rim drive to about the 5 o’clock position, but that’s where the Chain of Craters Road takes off, which is the continuation of the visit. This road goes 19 mi / 31 km down the makai slope of Kilauea, through solidified lava flows, from the summit caldera to sea level. To visualize these black lava flows, just consider a stewpot on the stove boiling over and leaving a huge mess. You can clearly see the grassy areas where the black lava flows didn’t cover the ground. At sea level, the road goes a short distance before coming to an end, due to lava having covered the highway. If you think it’s odd to build a dead-end road that you have to back-track up to leave, well, it wasn’t built that way. This had been the regular coast road connecting Hilo and the caldera, but it now consists of two dead ends with lava in between. You have to park and walk quite a distance to see the lava actually covering the road. I started, but then asked someone coming the other way, and was maybe another 15-20 minutes and no big deal, since the lava you see on the side of the road, just covers it as well, so I turned back. There are signs warning you not to try to enter the sea at this point because of the lava entering it, which may not only include toxic substances you wouldn’t want to ingest or even touch, but also occasional streams of superheated water. Otherwise, the sunny roadside waves looked inviting. So, I backtracked another 19 mi / 31 km up to the summit, got on highway 11, the only road connection that works after this lava flow, and went on via Hilo back to Kona.

But wait a minute. That completed my land visit to Kilauea, and I saw no molten lava or flames. What’s up? Well, we talked about rift zones on Mauna Loa, where the lava leaks out of the side of the volcano. Kilauea has a Southwest Rift Zone and an East Rift Zone, which is where the highway is cut off. It’s the East Rift Zone, high on the hill, about 12.4 mi / 20 km from the caldera, where the volcano began to leak. That’s probably the best way to put it. Picture a large sack of beans on the floor of a general store. You expect access through the top of the sack, but if a tear appears on its side, beans will spill out all over the floor. Essentially that’s what happened in recent decades at Kilauea. Way up on the slope of the Eastern Rift Zone, lava burst through a quarter of a century ago, on 3 January 1983, and has been flowing 24/7 ever since. This is the longest and largest rift eruption in historic times. The spatter cone vent that the lava formed, and that it has continued to come out through since 1986, is called Pu‘u ‘O‘o. From there it flows through a lava tube system about 9.7 mi / 15.6 km down to the sea, where it makes a steamy entrance, referred to as the Ocean Entry.

As spectacular as it all is today, for the first three years, Pu‘u ‘O‘o showed “fountaining” over 800 ft / 244 m high. In any case, that molten rock, being more visible some times, and less others, has a temperature of 2000°F / 1093°C.

This flow in the East Rift Zone has covered 45 mi² / 117 km² of hillside, destroying 189 structures. It has extended the coastline seaward adding 500 acres / 202 hectares to the island. The coastal highway has been closed since 1987, since 8.4 mi / 14 km of it are covered with up to 115 ft / 35 m of lava.

As interesting as the Kilauea Summit Crater may be, that’s not where the action is. So how did I get to see the action? Let’s go back a week before to my helicopter ride from when the ship was docked in Hilo, which is why it’s clearer to tell this story out of sequence. It had been booked as the Circle of Fire tour, and, not knowing what I know now, I assumed it would go to the summit. It was only after the copter left the airport that I learned we were going to the East Rift Zone, a name I’d never heard before. Live and learn. We overflew all that black lava, and the pilot pointed out where most houses were gone, but a few had been spared. Pu‘u ‘O‘o wasn’t doing anything particular spectacular, but we overflew it a few times cocked at an angle to see it better, and it was like looking down into a blast furnace flaming red and white. Even in the bright sunlight, the red lava was impressive. We then went downhill to the Ocean Entry to see the lava hitting the water in clouds of steam, but mostly, you saw the steam. Here is a YouTube video of a copter flight. Kilauea East Rift Zone, Big Island

The above video didn’t show you much of the Pu‘u ‘O‘o vent. This next one is extremely short—just four seconds—but shows the vent exactly as I saw it, as a red hole, with no fountaining. Quickly pause the video at 0:03 for the best view. Pu‘u ‘O‘o Vent

Sailing out of Hilo on the Pride of America, there was more, and this time the nighttime sailing was to our advantage. We were told to be on deck at 9:30 on the starboard side. There was a full moon, which was nice, but not necessary, as for about a half hour we sailed by the East Rift Zone of Kilauea. We also pulled considerably closer at that time than our usual offshore route.

The first impression as we started to pass the dark hillside was of myriad little glowing lights all down the hillside, presumably where some lava had reached the surface and burst into flame. But then we passed the Ocean Entry, all white steam and red and white lava, which was particularly impressive at night. This YouTube video shows what we saw, but this is MUCH CLOSER than the ship was. Still it was very impressive from the ship. Lava Ocean Entry

The next day I flew back to Honolulu, to connect to the flight back to Seattle. At the Honolulu airport, I learned a new Hawaiian word. Instead of signs for the shuttle bus between terminals, there were signs to the wikiwiki. I looked it up. Wiki means fast, and the reduplicative meaning seems particularly appropriate here for a shuttle bus. Also, still in the meaning of fast, the word is part of the name Wikipedia.

We’ll end the discussion of Hawai‘i with one more piece of music. There was a Hawaiian song written for an operetta in 1926. In 1958, it was translated into English and given a new name. It was sung by many people, including Elvis Presley, but the most famous version is by Andy Williams. Here on YouTube is the "Hawaiian Wedding Song".

The Statistics   I do keep personal travel statistics, and I’ve mentioned some updates in the past. As it turns out, without fully realizing it, I broke a personal travel record in 2008. I knew I moved around a lot this year, but the total surprised me. And as it turned out, the four extra days I had to go on a business trip in mid-December to the Dominican Republic brought me over the six-month hump for a new #2, which is a personal record.

#1) 1961-2: 308 But that needs explanation. #1 was the “year” we spent studying in Germany in 1961-2. The time in Mainz was 308 nights, or 10.3 months. That’s a special situation, and is not going to be surpassed, which is why I count this new # 2 as a personal record.

#2) 2008: 185 I count nights away from home in New York, including time at my Florida place, as travel time. In 2008, for the Louisiana-Florida trip I was away 76 nights, Africa-Switzerland 48, and NW US-Hawai‘i 57, plus those 4 in the DR totaled 185 nights. Half of 365 is 182.5, meaning I was away just over a half-year, 6.2 months, which is a new personal record, but at #2.

#3) 1971: 140 This was the first half of our joint sabbatical (1971-2), when we went to France and Southeast Europe.

#4) 2006: 121 Florida, Scandinavia, NE US, Antarctica.

#5) 2004: 118 Caronia around South America, Central Europe, Dutch area, Caribbean.

#6) 2007: 109 Mexico, Portugal, SE England, SW US.

#7) 2005: 96 Around the World by Rail via Siberia.

Since a quarter-year is 91.25 days, I’ve decided to list all totals above that figure. To me, two things stand out. Only #1 and #3 took place decades ago, and both are academically connected. All the other high years are from 2004 to 2008. You may think I started traveling a lot again once Beverly was gone, but that’s not so. We both started major international travel again in 2000 after a decade of staying domestic, but the point is that in 2004, which was Beverly’s last year, she was fully involved almost to the end in this stepping up of travel, for which I remain grateful.

And now, “I’m a Travelin’ Man”, who’s “On the Road Again” …