Hawaii - October 06, 2003

I was not feeling much better when I awoke in the morning, but I couldn't lie around another day. I had set a personal goal of at least making a complete circuit around the island and possibly catching a tour up to Mauna Kea. Geographically this presents a bit of a problem as no road completes a circuit around the island. The main highway completely circles the island except for a few short miles in the northeast corner which has apparently proved too difficult an engineering feat to complete.

There's one cross-island road called the Saddle Road, which runs roughly from Waimea in the northwest to Hilo, on the southeast of the island, just north of Volcanoes National Park. The saddle road was forbidden by our rental car contract, but I was considering taking it anyway as we have only one other option to make it around the island on the Hilo side and that is to retrace our entire trip to Volcanoes National Park before proceeding up the eastern coast.

The Saddle Road is called that because it travels across the 6,500 ft high saddle between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa and is the only way to get up to those mountains. The mountains, at 13,000+ ft, would be inadvisable for my in-laws, whose age and lifetime of living at sea level could be problematic. If I crossed the saddle, I'd sure as heck want to go the top of one of the mountains. (Never mind the fact that none of us had clothing appropriate from that altitude in the winter, where it does snow.)

Because I had been resting yesterday, I had now pretty much given up on the idea of driving myself to the Volcanoes National Park for some hiking without the others. If I was going to get a single day excursion on my own, I'd just bite the bullet and pay for a guided tour up to Mauna Kea.

Not ready to make the longer trip down south and around the east of the island, we opted for the shorter northern arc. From Kailua-Kona, you can either travel around the coast the whole way, or you can move somewhat inland for part of the journey towards Waimea. We decided that we'd travel into Waimea first, then head north towards the coast and catch the coastal highway until the end. On our return we'd travel the coastal route which would take us past the best beaches on the island.

Waimea (at least the one on Hawaii, because it seems like there's one on every island) is not a town you'd expect. It's the heart of the 225,000-acre Parker Ranch, the largest cattle ranch in the United States. Sitting at over 2,000 ft, the weather is cooler and there was actual rain and fog being pushed across from the east side of the island. Cactus and pine trees stood side-by-side amongst tall grasslands, which explains why it is used as a cattle ranch. Once again the diversity of Hawaii surprised me.

I was fading fast and we stopped to eat at the Parker Ranch Steakhouse. I really needed a large meal to try to shore up my flagging energies. As far as I could tell the food was ok, but I couldn't taste much, which made it somewhat disappointing. I'd really been looking forward to a steak here in cattle country.

As an aside, I'm told that the cattle raised on Parker Ranch are shipped back to the mainland from slaughter and processing. That means virtually all the meat on the island is still imported from the mainland and therefore very expensive. The steaks at Parker Ranch were actually Hawaiian-raised beef.

We headed north on the Kohala Mountain Rd. which rides along the western side of Kohala mountain, the oldest and deadest volcano on Hawaii. The road crests at over 3,000 ft before dropping down towards the north coast town of Hawi. As you begin to head downwards suddenly a new mountain in the north appears but as you get closer it become obvious this new mountain is actually the island of Maui 30 miles across the water.

Once you turn east from Hawi, the island rapidly becomes more traditionally tropical-looking with jungle trees and streams running into the sea. In fact, there are no permanent, nor much in the way of apparent temporary, waterways anywhere on the west side of Hawaii. There simply isn't enough rainfall that gets past the mountains. Once on the east, all that changes and the soft, volcanic mountains are in the early stages of eroding into the bizarre, fluted shapes we saw on Oahu.

The road runs out at Pololu Valley, the first in a series of obstacles preventing the completion of a highway circuit around the island.

Pololu beach is a black sand beach, a somewhat rare sight. We'd passed another one between South Point and Volcanoes National Park on our southern excursion, but by then it was getting dark and the detour would have set us even farther behind that day. I also wasn't sure just how much of a black sand beach you could see in the dark.

Pololu beach isn't nearly as accessible. The only access is by trail which takes 15 minutes to walk. Energized by my steak lunch, annoyed because I didn't get to hike to the lava and tired of sitting in the car, I sat out for the beach on my own.

I pretty much had the beach to myself, only one or two other people were down there. The beach was beautiful, but the water was completely hostile.

I had reached the beach and was feeling a certain triumphant satisfaction that I'd gotten to do something that I specifically wanted to do, but knowing the family was waiting back at the car, I headed back up the trail as fast as possible. The guidebooks say the trail is 15-20 minutes down, but I had made it in 10. I was determined to make it back in 20. The trail is steep, but conditions were good. I beat the 20 minute mark on the way up (just barely) but as I approached the car, my energy from the steak lunch failed me. I turned the responsibility of driving over to Chu-Wan, curled up in the back of the van and went to sleep.

I woke up briefly at some moment of decision when everyone was deciding if we should go down to some beach - I don't know where. They didn't (I think) and next I awoke as we entered Kailua-Kona. I popped my head up from the back of the van and discovered we were in rush hour traffic. I also realized I was riding unsecured in a vehicle and hid back down again so the police wouldn't pull us over because I wasn't wearing a seatbelt. There I stayed until we got back to the timeshare.

On to Day 9 ==>

Hawaii - Pololu	Hawaii - Mr. Huang @ Pololu	Hawaii - Pololu	Hawaii - Chu-Wan and Michelle @ Pololu	Hawaii - Pololu Valley from above
Hawaii - Pololu Trail	Hawaii - Pololu Beach - Note the rough surf	Hawaii - Pololu Trail	Hawaii - Pololu Trail	Hawaii - Pololu Beach
Hawaii - Pololu Beach	Hawaii - The surf at Pololu Beach. Safe to look at... not much else.	Hawaii - Pololu Beach	Hawaii - More surf at Pololu beach	Hawaii - Pololu Valley from the ground floor