Mahalo to Hawaii

Monday, October 14. Volcano Village and Kona International Airport, HI

On air travel days, I pull no card, but instead imagine the Eight of Wands.

We got up around 4 A.M. and put the finishing touches on our packing. Orion amazed me with how high in the sky it was, and Aldebaran was in the zenith. Then were on the road from Volcano, via Hilo, to gas up at Costco, return our rental car, and then shuttle to the Kona airport. We didn’t see any goats until we got near Kona.

The airport once again impressed us with how open air it is. I suspect that during a monsoon it might not be quite as fun. I’m pretty sure that somewhere around here, as we were playing with language, Mark came up with the phrase, “Hakuna Mahalo.” 

Singing "Hakuna Mahalo" to myself helped me to deal with the upset infants on the plan ride home.  

I am fairly certain we'll be back to Hawaii sometime in the next few years.  I did briefly entertain the fantasy of moving to Hawaii; between the snorkeling and the astronomy I could spend a lot of enjoyable time.  But then I think I'd want to do things like make a version of Stonehenge (which seems colonial), and then I'd start missing the trees and birds of the Pacific Northwest. So I guess I'll just visit.

Volcanoes, Petroglyphs, and Sea Turtles

Sunday, October 13, 2024. Volcano Village, HI

Oh no! Today’s card is the Three of Swords! I’m interpreting this as Last Day of Vacation Mentation… or possibly having to choose which fun thing to visit first. The strategy that I should adopt for future visits is to have a coin to toss to expedite the decision making process.

Rising early (again!) made visiting steam vents rewarding, as the dawn air is cool and the vents are more dramatic. 

This morning, we visited vents that go deeper into the Earth and hit pockets of sulphur.  The rising vapors contain sulphur dioxide, which forms bright yellow crystal needles near the vents. I suspected and was rewarded when I looked under the wooden railings of the boardwalk we were on and saw very tiny crystals criss-crossing over the wood grain.  I was lucky enough to get a nice close-up of the vent where larger crystals grew like lichen. 

We visited an old-growth forest in Kīlauea park specifically to bird watch, but only sited pheasant/feral ground fowl. I think we had more fun than the bird-watchers from Connecticut, who had come specifically to sight a checklist of birds and had only found one.

9:30-ish, we med it back to Volcano House (more parking this time) for the buffet breakfast—shockingly, our meal only cost $50.00 instead of the usual $60.00.

We did more caldera site-seeing before returning to the Funky Motel for a nap. Mark saw a Hawiian hawk and other native birds outside on the (dirty) veranda. And also a sign encouraging folks to kill any tree frogs they might see.

In the afternoon, we drove to the end of Seven Craters Road and visited a petroglyph site at Pu’uloa. The site, a short boardwalk loop, was about a half-mile from the road, at the end of a wind-swept trail over a dusty lava flow. Families would chip a hole in the lava stone hills and place an umbilical cord there for a child’s long life. There were many geometric designs, and a few turtle and anthropomorphic signs as well.

I had expected the petroglyphs to be on canyon walls, like ones I’d encountered in Arizona, but these were mainly horizontal or on slight rises in the lava flow. I suspect the photography would have been better if we’d arrived closer to sunrise or sunset, but I still managed to get some interesting pictures of the designs.

We walked along the boardwalk above the markings and tried to fathom what they might mean—did thirteen holes in a row indicate a lunar cycle? What about nine holes around a circle? The strong wind clutched at my hat and blew the seed pods of a yellow, pea-like flower back and forth, which sounded like hundreds of wooden sistrums clack-clack-clacking in a mysterious language. The wind-borne sound ebbed and surged with the gusts and worked its way like a chant into my mind.

The mid-afternoon sun was frying Mark, and he endured my photographic questing for as long as he could before announcing that he needed to head back to the car. I admitted that the sounds and the wind were driving me into an overwhelming altered state (i.e. “freaking me out”), and after one more photograph, I followed him back to the car.

In the evening, we drove back to the Black Sands Beach for more quality turtle time. When we arrived at the beach, a tour bus was just leaving. The three turtles we’d see basking before were in about the same position in a closed off portion of the beach as they were on Friday.

The basking turtles were high up on the beach—we didn’t see their tracks in the sand and surmised they’d come ashore during high tide. Two more turtles were in the retreating surf and we watched them work themselves over boulders as the sun sank behind Kīlauea. Their shells were shaped like the builders—sometimes they looked like rocks; near sunset they looked like waves. I wondered how heavy the turtles were as they leveraged themselves by their flippers over the jumble of rocks between the shore and the open bay waters.

After the sun set, we left the three formerly-basking turtles on the moonlit shore. Venus came out, but no other stars were visible. We drove back up to the steam vents. 

By the time we arrived, it was very dark—I think I saw the end of the comet’s tail over the summit of a volcano, but it looked too big, so maybe it was a sun column. Venus was about ten degrees off of the western horizon with Scorpio chasing after. Not where I was expecting it at all, and tilted ninety degrees sideways, was the Teapot; I realized the zodiac was arcing overhead through the zenith instead of floating over the southern horizon. I’m pretty sure I was saying, “Whoa!” for the rest of the night. 

Mark still thinks it’s pretty funny that I think seeing stars in a different position from a lower latitude on the globe is the coolest, most mind-blowing thing ever.

Kīlauea and The Curse of The Hula Girl

Saturday, October 12, 2024. Volcano Village, HI 

Today’s card is the Four of Swords, reversed. This seems like a reference to the actual process of vacationing and rest. I will admit that at times, usually in the middle of the night or at stray points, I would find myself fixating on work.


Earlier in the week, we had texted The Child to remind him that we were actually out of the state and in Hawaii. When Mark asked him if there was anything he especially wanted from Hawaii, The Child texted back, “Bring me back a Hula Girl.” While I was smacking my hand to my forehead, Mark was laughing about the Burridge Hawaiian Curse. About this time, The Child texted, “Can I use the car while you’re gone?”

We’re staying in a funky motel; it’s clean and dry and has odd amenities (limited hot water and no screen door). The grounds are cluttered with unused, overturned flower pots. The covered porch area needs sweeping. There apparently used to be a hot tub, but we can only see the impression where it was on one end of the porch. It’s possible a hot tub used to be in an empty rundown shed at the end of a little path. The motel is overpriced, but staying in Volcano Lodge would have cost more, even if we wouldn’t have had to buy water and good coffee. The Hilton condo, with its kitchen, dining area, and living room, was nicer—if a little Disney.

Today we visited the steam vents of Kīlauea at dawn; I felt like I had seen them before, especially the concrete lined vent with the pipe railing around it; but maybe there were similar vents somewhere in Oahu back in the 1970’s. Then it was a six mile hike along the crater floor; I couldn’t help but think of Frodo and Sam’s march along the plain of Mordor as we walked along a dusty trail between lava rock cairns leading over lava flows. This was like hiking into (and out of) Crater Lake, only without the water. There was lush vegetation on the crater slopes: yellow iris-like flowers—Mark enjoyed the red lehua blossoms especially.

Then we toured through a lava tube, which was lit dramatically, but overrated. And filled with school children. The most interesting feature was near the end, where you could see how high the lava had gotten within the tube before it drained out.

Parking for lunch was an adventure in itself. There weren’t any open parking stalls next to Volcano House. The secondary parking lot filled. The rangers redirected us to a third lot, which was also filled or reserved for tour busses. The rangers there told us to park at the vents, which was about a half-mile away. Mark drove back to Volcano House and cycled through the first half of those. “You’re hungry, and it’s hot; you wont’ survive the walk from the vents back here. I’ll drop you off.” I protested a little that I could make it. Then a stall opened up as I was getting out. “It’s parking karma!” Mark proclaimed as he nabbed the stall.

We ordered lunch, which continued the meal trend of costing about $60.00. Mark asked every staff person he met if they had seen an eruption and they all had.

There was a gift shop in the Volcano House, in which we successfully found a dish-towel with an image of a 1950’s pin-up style Hula Girl. (Yes, there was a discussion about getting an image of a totally ripped Hula Dude, but oddly, there didn’t seem to be any for sale.) Due to strategically placed hair and arms, it was only a day or two later that I realized—hey, wait a minute!—that this was a topless image.

Afterward, we walked over to the Volcano Art Center (https://volcanoartcenter.org) filled with tasteful and expensive locally produced art. Mark liked a pyrogrphic piece; I saw a wonderful rendition of Pele, “Pele Sleeps” by Nelson Makua. And there were more of the birds from the restaurant (https://volcanoartcenter.org/product-category/prints/marian-berger/ ).

The Place of Refuge

Friday, October 11, 2024. Waikoloa Beach and Volcano Village, HI

Today’s card is the Eight of Cups, which seams appropriate for our visit (by land, this time) to Pu'uhonua O Honaunau National Historical Park, the Place of Refuge.

We woke up earlyish and went out again to the Hilton Coffee place… which took longer than expected, but did enable us to see another sea turtle and a native Hawaiian heron. We rushed through the museum path, got back and packed, then we said said goodbye to the Hilton Club House #4 . We headed south along the southwestern coast. We didn’t see any wild pigs, but we continued to see wild goats along the side of the road.

Pu'uhonua O Honaunau is a place where defeated warriors or Hawaiians who had broken social rules, or kapu (punishable by death) could flee to for sanctuary. It was also a place where the chiefs could hang out at, once they made it through a gauntlet of defending warriors. Mark had downloaded a walking tour from the US Park Service and we learned about a Go-like game, and lava tree castings, and the importance of stories of families’ relations with the local land.

There is an active shrine on the site that features several large, carved wooden ki’i (an image representing an akua, or Hawaiian god); the ones within the shrine’s sanctuary are different manifestations of the god Lono (responsible for rain and fertility). I tried to photograph the images, and the lighting was not cooperating, so the ki’i were washed out or underexposed. I’m always impressed by the texture of the carvings.

Under a kind of A-frame, we spoke with a woman as she wove palm fronds into baskets, roses, and fish. The fish gave me a Proust Moment, and I suddenly recalled a mobile made of small, black and golden woven fish, hanging in my sister’s upstairs bedroom in the house my parents rented in the late 1960’s.

Mark asked her how long her baskets lasted and she pointed to the first basket she ever made, thirty years ago. The fronds were trimmed to narrow strips. They started out green, and turned yellow-brown as they aged. The fronds were soft and not difficult to work with. She seemed pleased with how interactive we were and we had a nice conversation with her.

We ran into a park ranger and Mark asked about the carvings—they were too large to have come from the local palm trees. The ranger said that a wood carver would work with a priest, climb the volcanos where the rainforests were, and select a tree; the type of tree chosen would depend on which akua was being represented and also what relationship the carver had with the tree. These were guides more than rules, and the ranger indicated that tree selection could be pragmatic.

I can’t help but want to contrast and compare Hawaiian sculpture with ancient Egyptian sculpture. Hawaiian sculpture is wood, spans a shorter time period, and doesn’t have any words or written spells on it. My sense is that Hawaiian sculpture is more textured with bold geometric patterns, whereas (aside from linen clothing) Egyptian sculpture is more smooth. I am supposing that some of these differences come from the Hawaiians not having ready access to metal tools.

If I had to come to a conclusion after an hour and a half of touring Pu'uhonua O Honaunau, I would that Hawaiian religious sculpture is more about the stories between a place or natural phenomenon and a person or person’s family, and that Egyptian religious sculpture is more grounded in a magical tradition. Exploring the similarities and differences between kapu and ma’at is a whole other essay.

Next to the park was a place folks could enter the surf and snorkel, so we did. This was the second bay we had snorkeled in on our Tuesday snorkel tour. Yellow fish swam right at the stepped rocks where one entered the water. There were fish (and people) everywhere. While we were there, dolphins cavorted in the surf.

After snorkeling, we drove through the twisty highway to Shaka Tacoz (the more southern one), a fish taco place where geckos came out of the woodwork to lick up the guava sauce. The food and geckos were great, although the music was bad pop from 1980 (at least our cashier liked it, because she sang along with every tune).

More driving. We made it to a black sands beach where sea turtles basked in the sun. The beach is very black and like Yachatts, Oregon, only with much more lava and less basalt. The sand is more course lava pebbles than actual sand. There were folks in the surf, but it looked much more rough than the other sites we’d visited. I took photos of sleeping turtles. Mark got some excellent mahi-mahi from a food truck; I got an ice-cream bar.

Still more driving. We did not see wild pigs or goats. In the town of Volcano Village, 4000 feet above sea level, we made a food run during the last ten minutes of operation of a quirky market. The market reminded me of Capella Market in Eugene, which is a bad sign: the aisles were even more narrow, and the layout more haphazard. I had low blood sugar or something, so I apparently walked past food I would have purchased and could only find things like nails, hinges, laundry detergent, and third-tier-Hostess-knock-off pastry pucks. There was some sort of episode at the cash register with cheese sticks of insanity that I don’t recall very well.

We had fine dining in Volcano, which included newly discovered Mai Tais. The restaurant was filled with very large portriats of birds. Which looked varying degrees of angry or judgey.

After dinner, we fall asleep to the sound of about a thousand cheeping invasive tree frogs from Puerto Rico. The tourist book warned us about the frogs and the insanity their song could bring, but we thought they were charming background noise.

Hawaiian Seahorses

Thursday, October 10, 2024. Waikoloa Beach, HI

Today’s card is the Queen of Cups. The Queen represents someone psychic and empathic; someone who sees visions based on their mystic connection to the cosmos. Sometimes it can signify a tarot reading that's on target. I suppose that it could also be a woman who lives on an island and is connected with water somehow.

Thursday started out with a photo safari to The Queens’ Garden area. I wanted to photograph some white egrets and I’d figured out that they hung out there. Mark stayed behind. When I got to the garden, I didn’t see the egrets at first, so I photographed some plants. A groundskeeper was mowing a lawn on a rider-mower and all the egrets were hopping around in the mower’s wake, sifting through the grass clippings and hunter for food. They apparently loved the groundskeeper, because they didn’t mind him so much; they tended to fly away from me if I got too close. I managed to take loads of photographs without being mowed over. Then I managed to stalk close enough to a kind of lily where I was pretty sure a gecko lived and managed to photograph it before it hid among the leaves.

I was slightly disappointed to learn later that these were invasive White African Cattle Egrets, and not native to the islands at all.  This turned out to be the case for most of the really showy plants and animals we saw; the native species typically were in hiding.

Then it was back to scoop up Mark for a walking tour of the Hilton property next door and grabbing some coffee, tea, and a pastry. The resort next door is very Disneyesque—it has a monorail between three hotels and a boat ride (closed for maintenance). Trails wound around a sea-fed lagoon and a covered museum walk featuring Asian Art.

We saw, sadly, captive dolphins in a “swim with dolphins” program, and more happily, wild rays and turtle swimming in the lagoon (along with humans). While we watched the turtles from a bridge, a very woo-woo woman struck up a conversation with us about water and turtles and elemental affinities—I concluded that she was foretold by the Queen of Cups card.

Then we drove to Kona fora tour of a seahorse breeding program and seahorse encounter. The program breeds seahorses that aren’t quite as picky about what they eat and which aren’t so monogamous that they’ll die of a broken heart if they get separated from their partner. This allows them to be sold to the pet industry, sparing wild seahorses a slow, sad death by starvation. Unfortunately, they haven’t made a dent in the Asian Traditional Medicine industry, which grinds seahorses up to use as aphrodisiacs and potions for fidelity.

Our tour guide was Erica.  This was a different Erica from Dolphin Discoveries, but it led us to conclude that all marine-biologist-flavored guides on the Big Island are named Erica.

The seahorses were very cool. At the end of our tour, which followed seahorse development from fry to adult, we had an opportunity to hold our hands in a tank and have a seahorse wrap its tail around our fingers. Afterward, Mark wondered if I had a connection moment with them. I said that were cool, but I didn’t identify with them like I might with dragonflies, hummingbirds, or bats.

Afterward, we drove to an archeological site and a sea cliff where some folks were fishing.  The place was interesting, but what I was really noticing was that the wind had died down compared to other days and that both the temperature and humidity had gone way up as a result. 

We’ve come to the conclusion that driving anywhere on Hawaii is like driving from Eugene, Oregon to Bend, Oregon.  Firstly, one can pretty much reach any point on the Big Island from another point on the island in two hours; secondly, the arid lava fields look a whole lot like eastern Oregon (only not as old). 

Manta Ray Night Snorkel

Wednesday, October 9, 2024. Waikoloa Beach, HI

Six of Pentacles, reversed. I’m wondering if there’s something going on with all of these reversed cards. Reversed, this card indicates a breakdown of maintaining support. This could be a reference to Gollum last night. Or the odd rumination about The Day Jobbe. Or possibly this is a representation of the aspect of our vacation that Mark referred to as "Open Wallet, Shake Well."

We woke early. Mark went for a walk and reported the Orion was at an odd-looking angle in the west. We both went for a walk and I photographed birds and plants. Mark went for a hike on the volcanoes’ saddle and a visit to a coffee plantation; I stayed at the unit and wrote (and napped).

In the late afternoon we drove to a Kona marina for an evening snorkel with manta rays. We had originally planned to take an 8 P.M. snorkel, but we were the only ones to sign up for it, so we got bunched with an earlier tour. The boat took us a little north of Kona to a bay near the airport. The cliffs were more basalt than lava. The sun was just on the horizon when we anchored. Mark and I got into the water for some free swim time before things got started, and saw small mantas skimming along the bottom of the bay.

The captains gave us pool noodles which we were to tuck by our feet. Then we were supposed to hang onto a float board decked out with 1000 lumen lights on it. The lights attracted plankton, and the mantas and other fish would come for the plankton. The idea was that one would float flat, breathe through the snorkel, and wait for the large mantas to come and barrel roll underneath one.

At first all I saw was a cone of light with plankton in it. It was a bit like meditating, although I had to stay aware of the water collecting in my snorkel so I could remember to blow it out, and a line connecting the float board to the boat that kept brushing against my foot. I’d say that many of the folks there were not in a meditative mood, and sometimes it was difficult to ignore them. Then mantas glided out of the murky waters and into the light.

They move so gracefully, and at the same time they look more like some kind of airplane than a fish or bird—or they look like a flying cloak or mantle, which I suppose is related to their name. Their horns are actually fins. At one point five mantas came up and barrel rolled underneath us; we could see their white undersides and radiator-like mouths and gills.

Then they’d swim back into the darkness, only to re-appear who-knew-when.  During their absence, I would breathe and watch a whirling spiral of silver fish dancing in the cone of light underneath the float-board.

When we got out of the water about an hour later, there was a smudge of red on the horizon where the sun had been, the moon was out, and Scorpio was chasing after Venus. My teeth chattered as I got out of a wetsuit and rash shirt—I warmed up quickly enough once I toweled off and put on a hoodie.

This really was a meditation on the creature of the deep (despite the idiotic antics of some of our more distracting fellow snorkelers), and I came away from the experience with a sense of having made contact with representative of the waters.

Afterward, we asked the crew where they went to get soup or chowder and they reacted like we were extraterrestrials. Apparently soup isn’t a thing in Kona.

Sunset and Raving

Tuesday Evening, October 8, 2024. Waikoloa Beach, HI

The layout of the resort is passive-aggressive towards pedestrians. The different centers are about ten minutes apart from each other by foot. One can walk, but I think they want you to take shuttles or drive. Or golf.

Since Mark slept through Monday night’s sunset, he offered to walk to the beach to watch tonight’s.

We walked along a golf course and then down some steps to Waikōloa Anchialine Pond Preservation Area, a lava flow filled with brackish ponds. Feral cats live here and we saw ten (at least): tabby, Siamese, calico, white, tuxedo, and black cats. There were very likely more hiding in the underbrush. The Sun was about ten degrees off of the horizon and the Moon was a waxing almost quarter. We got to the shore, which was a collection of dark lava, white stones (coral), and coral chunks. The sky shifted to purple and rose hues. I spotted Venus about a third of the way fro the Sun to the crescent Moon.

The rocky short was spiky and offered few comfortable places to sit. Some sandpiper-like birds took a bath in the shallow water around the rocks. The sun sank some more and I watched for the green flash (didn’t see it). About this time we realized the Marriott Luau must be happening across the bay because lilting guitar and a tenor’s voice echoed over the waters and strings of cantina lights lit up on the far shore. What appeared to be a sunset “booze cruise” sailed into the bay. We looked but didn’t see any fire dancers. About halfway between Venus and the Moon, Antares appeared. The clouds around the sun continued to put on a ruddy show.

About this time we heard someone, apparently on the path behind us, channel his inner Gollum and start to rave in an wrathful and frenzied manner. I think it was one person, but it sounded like a sad person was having a screaming match with an angry person, possibly about tourists and the environment. By this time the sun had completely set and it was dark enough that Mark started using the flashlight on his mobile. I wasn’t quite sure if Gollum was coming any closer or not, but Mark and I agreed it was time to move along.

After some stumbling off of and back onto the path, we made it to Lava Lava Beach, which was lightly populated. As we watched, a skiff, presumably from the Booze Cruise, discharged a gaggle of bridesmaids onto the beach. By this time Scorpio was bright and undulating through the sky.

We navigated around a large zooey Hilton pool, around a pickle-ball court, through a parking lot, and back onto the main pedestrian loop. Mark wanted to see the milky way, so we sidetracked back through the feral cat sanctuary at Waikōloa Anchialine Pond Preservation Area. Mark found a patch of unbroken pavement between the lava flows that was on a dark part of the path and we traced the Milky Way fro Cassiopeia through the Summer Triangle and Delphinus. Scorpio was still up, so Orion wasn’t.

We made it back to our unit and contemplated spas and day-trips for the overmorrow.