(Continued from Day 4, Part 1)
After climbing up out of the Kilauea Iki crater, our next adventure was at the Thurston Lava Tube.
Walking inside a cave made by flowing lava was impressive enough, but the real fun began after this sign:
Hawaii, even in the National Park, lets you be as foolish as you like. They put up the warning signs, and you make the decision. Actually, this was quite safe, but I was a lot happier knowing we had not one, but two flashlights. My favorite part came after we had walked far enough that there was not the faintest hint of a glow of light from the entrance, no matter how long we kept our lights off to let our eyes adjust. It was dark. D-A-R-K. Thrillingly and palpably dark. The second best thing was that most tourists were scared off by the sign—or unprepared with lights. We had turned around and were nearly back at the surface before seeing another person. Having that experience all to ourselves was awesome indeed.
Our next walk was above ground once again. Devastation Trail is a pretty accurate name, but it has a great view of the path across Kilauea Iki.
Cinder fields from the 1959 eruption.
After that we took the Pu'u Huluhulu / Mauna Ulu trail, but on the advice of a ranger did not walk its entire length. The sights were interesting, but with time passing rapidly, we couldn’t afford another two- to three-hour hike (or maybe four at our pace), and really, after a while all that lava starts to look alike.
Or not. This is a wall of a'a', a handy Boggle word, since the game doesn’t insist on the apostrophes.
And this is pahoehoe, which is described as “smooth”—but those soft-looking striations feel like parallel razor blades.
We continued down Chain of Craters Road for a while. Our intent had been to take it to the end, but that was still a long way away, and it became clear that many of the stops were more interesting to those who had not bothered to take the Kilauea Iki hike. So we headed back to the Visitor Center for one more, short trail: Sulphur Banks. The name pretty much says it all.
Soon we were back on Route 11, leaving Volcanoes National Park behind, taking with us lots of pictures and a memorable experience.
Click on the map for more detail. You will be able to zoom in and out, and move around.
Our next stop was South Point, the southernmost spot in the United States. A quarter of a century earlier, we had stood at the southernmost point in the continental U.S.
Here’s the southernmost point without qualification.
Tourism, as might be expected, is a big industry for Hawaii, but that doesn’t mean they make it easy for strangers. In stark contrast with Florida’s Key West, South Point makes no effort to attract tourists: it is poorly marked, and the road, though recently made much more automobile-friendly, is single-lane and rather desolate. Getting down to the parking area was, shall we say, interesting—and we couldn’t help noticing that anyone who knew anything about the area had come in a four-wheel drive vehicle. I’ll save the suspense and let you know that Porter rose to the occasion, making it up the steep, rutted, and rocky grade on the first try.
That was not sufficient challenge for him, however. He deeply regretted not having brought his bathing suit, as some enthusiastic local teens (the term “Hawaiian” is properly given only to those with native Hawaiian blood) were jumping off the cliff at the end of the road and climbing back up a blow hole. Porter would love to have had me take a video of him doing likewise. Me? I’m very glad he had no suit. He made me nervous enough by standing near the very edge, with a stiff and unpredictably gusty wind threatening to blow him in, bathing suit or no.
Oh, and the guidebook, which doesn’t hesitate to suggest risky adventures, recommends not swimming unless you know what you are doing, because the currents there take you directly to Antarctica with no stopovers.
Did I mention it was windy?
After that adventure we made a beeline for home, saving the remaining sights for another day. We would like to have visited the green sand beach, but it is only accessible by 4WD from South Point, unless you're up for a five mile hike, which we weren't.
It was well after dark when we elected to make one more stop: at Walmart, for water shoes to replace the ones we had neglected to bring from home. Why I bothered to get some for myself when my Vibrams would have worked just as well, I’ll never know—but at least they were inexpensive, even in mainland terms.
It had been an exhausting and exhilarating two-day tour of the island’s perimeter, and I don’t think I’d change a thing—including the part about Porter not having his bathing suit.
We crawled into bed, anticipating a lighter day the morrow.
