Bored in the Rainforest, Part 2

Before we explore more of Big Island, let’s back up a bit and introduce you to our home for the second week, which we’re about half way through.  It’s another VRBO rental called Heaven’s Door.  The owners live on Oahu, and I recall them saying they plan to retire here.  It is a very private gated property, nestled in the jungle around Ninole…

Out front, there’s a tilapia pond…

Out back by the bedrooms, a Koi pond (Anna loves feeding them a scoop of Koi food at night)…

…and the best of all - EXCELLENT SLEEPING by our own private little waterfall, heard in stereo with the windows open in the bedroom…

 The gate is about 75 yards from the house through lush vegetation…

Inside, the place has fully tiled floors and pine tongue and groove walls and celing.  It’s nice and cozy…

We do notice that when motoring around inside, you get the sensation of walking up and down slightly.  Considering the only foundation seems to be concrete blocks on which the house’s stilts are sitting, we can understand the wavy floor…

So, it was another rotter today, weather-wise.  (Basil Fawlty, anyone?  Anyone?)  Evidently, it’s a lot for these guys too!  Beaches have washed out, places are closed, the roads are covered with palm fronds, coconuts, and bigger limbs.  Even dirt banks next to the belt road have given way in some places and there are lava-boulders out in the middle of 60 mph traffic.  The stream next to the tilapia pond and driveway has been raging  since last night, and the little waterfall behind the bedroom has quit running.  (The little dam that diverts water to the Koi pond has washed completely away!)  Here’s the stream, near the front gate…

So what have we done since being on the Hilo side of Big Island?  We started out Wednesday with a meal at Sombat’s Thai restaurant.  Sombat grows her own veggies at home, and cooks up phenomenal chow.  Anna’s starting into an order of stir-fried veggies and mahi-mahi in oyster sauce, and the bowl in front of it is mine: pineapple curry with pork.  There’s also one of Sombat’s basil spring rolls left on the plate (which didn’t make it home).  It was the best Thai food I’ve had, ever…

Thursday, we spent the morning checking out Akaka Falls, just five miles south of us.  I saw it last year, but Anna didn’t.  It was crowded, but a nice walk anyway.  Check out the huge bamboo, too (that speck is Anna!)…

Now it’s time for a map.  After Akaka, I thought we might take a drive out to the lighthouse at Kapoho Point on the eastern tip of the island, then head south-west to where the lava is currently flowing into the Pacific and making Big Island bigger…

The lighthouse was a bit of a disappointment, for a guy who loves Mainland USA lighthouses.  This was more like a lamppost…

Anna noticed that I found email on my Blackberry much more interesting…

From Kapoho, we traveled down the coast as planned, and found a place where the surf was crashing into volcanic rock…

Just after that, another little cove yielded a gorgeous scene…

The road finally ended where we thought we were supposed start walking toward the active lava as it meets the surf.  With no flashlights (the guidebooks mandate flashlights!), we headed south-west across the older stuff…

It is wicked landscape, full of interesting patterns and a surprising amount of color!

After hoofing it more than a mile, it was almost dark.  We were getting close, as we could see and smell the plume of steam and smoke as Madame Pele birthed more land…

Unfortunately, we started to rethink the whole “hiking over lava and ankle-breaking cracks in the total darkness” thing, and turned around at this point, just shy of our goal.  By the light of the Blackberry screen, we made it back to the parking lot and were thankful for it! 

Sunday, WX-permitting, we’ll try it again.

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