Hands-On Lessons in Geography

We finally went to Volcanoes National Park this weekend. It was quite an adventure getting there (and back), but it was a very rewarding trip. We left Konacopia at 8:30 a.m. on Saturday morning, knowing that there was a possibility that we’d have to walk 2-3 miles before we got a ride. Not many cars passed us, and nobody stopped, so we ended up walking the 3 miles up to the Belt Road.

Volcanoes is on the southeast part of the island, about 80 miles from Captain Cook on the Belt Road. The Belt road is the main road that goes around the Big Island. It’s often windy and narrow, and is extremely scenic because it follows the coastline the entire way. There’s actually not a whole lot of livable land in the interior of the island due to the size of Volcanoes, which is 330,000 acres and includes Kilauea, Mauna Loa, and Mauna Kea.

It was pretty easy getting to our destination. Our first ride was a guy who looked like he was on his way to work. He drove us about 30 miles and dropped us in a little town. The ride was pretty quiet, other than the country music blaring out of his radio—and when the station turned to static, we listened to the static. The only thing he told us was, "I'm Mexican, so I no can speak much English."

The next ride came along in 15 or 20 minutes. It was a guy out for a drive with his dog. We jumped in the back of the pickup and told him where we were headed. After running some errands in Na’alehu, the southernmost town in the U.S. (more about this later), the man continued to drive us…all the way to Volcanoes. I don’t know if he just felt like doing a good deed or what, but after he dropped us off at the park, he turned his truck around and drove back the other way.

We’d already planned out the hiking route we wanted to take through the park. It’s a 6-7 mile loop that starts at the Visitors’ Center, runs through Kilauea Caldera, to the edge of Kilauea Crater, and through the surrounding rainforest. Kilauea is the most active volcano on earth, and is surprisingly accessible. In the past 15 years Kilauea alone, has added more than 600 acres onto the park due to its lava flow.

On a day where there are active eruptions, you can see red-hot lava flowing into the sea. Unfortunately it wasn’t visible from any safe trails, so we weren’t able to view the lava. Mauna Loa, also active, requires a hike up to 14,000 feet, where you’ll find arctic weather. Obviously we weren’t prepared for that.

Here are some pictures that Pete took of the caldera, which is basically the area around the crater that collapses when the lava drains and hardens.


It looks like a sea of hard lava. The volcano has been erupting since 1983. In that time, it has buried the visitors’ center once (in 1988), and buried the entire village of Kalapana in 1990.

Walking into the caldera was surreal. I felt like I was in a Martian landscape or in the center of a vast dessert. The only visible life included 2 or 3 plant varieties that grew up between the cracks, and some active steam vents.


About 3 miles into the caldera, Kilauea’s crater became visible. Pete and I veered off the path, which is marked by stone cairns every 5-10 feet. The stones, however, are lava rocks, so they tend to blend in with the surrounding, and navigation can be tricky, especially given the ankle-twisting nature of the terrain. I imagine it’s similar to walking on asphalt that’s been broken into small pieces and are piled on top of one another.

Looking into the crater about two feet from the edge was scary. It took me a minute to inch myself that close—you have to straddle fissures in the rocks to get to the edge, and each time I looked down I kept picturing myself falling as the fissure cracked and sent my piece of ledge cascading to the bottom. We also saw a bunch of tour busses parked nearby. There is an 11-mile loop around the craters of Mauna Kea and Kilauea, known as Chain of Craters Road. It’s paved, and lazy tourists from all over the world can simply drive the perimeter and hop out to see the same views that Pete and I were able to see.

We both made sure to spit so that Pele would know that we weren’t happy with her, and we also took some of her porous rocks as ransom. Some of them are brilliantly colored, as if someone had thrown rainbow glitter all over the ground. I think it’s against the law to take geologic souvenirs, but who could resist?
picture to come

The final 2.5 miles of our hike was mostly uphill, bordering the caldera, but up higher in the rainforest that surrounds Volcanoes. We ate some wild berries and saw lots of cool flowers and giant ferns. Here's a Hawaiian Kahili Ginger Root flower:

They're super frangrant and abundant in Volcanoes. Pete also took this awesome picture of a fiddlehead:
picture to come

By the end of our day exploring we were exhausted, and Pete had a bunch of blisters on his feet. We spent a total of probably 40 minutes hitchhiking to Hilo, divided between two different cars.

Hilo is “the other city" on the Big Island (Kailua-Kona being where the tourists go), 28 miles from Volcanoes. Because it gets such constant rain it’s not the most popular travel destination, but the two days we were there it was beautiful. Going through Hilo, it was immediately obvious that they preserved both the look and feel of the 1940s and 50s. It’s still known as “Old Hilo Town,” and is populated with locals who have been around for generations due to the thriving sugar plantations that once outlined the thriving port.

Hilo is also a very resilient town. It was completely devastated by tsunamis twice, once in 1946, and again in 1960. Even though it has a rundown feel to it, there’s a lot of evidence of growth, though I’m not sure the locals see it as “growth” so much as “invasion.” We walked past some art galleries, trendy boutiques, dyoga studios, and a coffee shop, alongside an old diner, a $1 cinema showing outdated movies, and buildings that resembled fishing shacks. Here's a picture of the city that I took from the bay.


We stayed in downtown Hilo at the Hilo Bay Hostel, a building from 1911 that doubled as the entrance to a speakeasy. There are still small windows built into the staircase as you walk in the building, which look into where the speakeasy used to be. It’s an amazing space to stay in, kind of set up like a boarding house, with very tall ceilings, and a large communal area in the center. Unfortunately we were too tired to appreciate it for long, and went to sleep after a late dinner.

Neither Pete nor I had much interest in spending more time in Hilo aside from walking around the bay, which we did after checking out of the hostel. We also stopped along Banyan Drive so that I could take a picture of Peter under one of the Banyan trees.

These trees are seriously large, as you can tell by the scale, and grow throughout Hawaii. The trees on Banyan Drive were all planted in the 1930s by famous people which included Babe Ruth and Amelia Earhart, according to a guide book that we picked up at the hostel.

And then began the 110-mile hitchhike home. We weren’t having much luck standing on the side of the highway, but at least Pete started sticking his thumb out with me, and making me laugh a lot by grumbling crazy things every time a car whizzed by and waved or gave us the “hang-loose” sign. I suspected he was only trying to make me smile when cars drove by since he usually complains that I look too scary.

Three back-of-the-pickup rides and nearly 2 hours later, we found ourselves again at Volcanoes. A nice young man with a (rather misleading) scorpion tattoo on his neck, and a pickup truck with tires as tall as me, stopped on his way home from work at the park. He was really sweet and dropped us off in Na’alehu, where he lived.

We found ourselves drawn to the sign, “Eat at the Southernmost Restaurant in the United States!” Sure, why not? So we sat down to eat at Hana Hou Restaurant in the tiny town of 1,200 people. It turns out that it was also about the most disgusting food and the worst service in the United States, but we choked down as much as we could and carried our regret with us the rest of the way home. With one final ride from a friendly young guy with a dog named Rusty (who laid with his head in my lap the whole time) and a one-mile walk down Middle Ke’ei Road, we were home. I think I’ve had my fill of adventure for the week.