Continuing on with the tale . . .

Monday, the 10th: We headed off for the new day’s adventure . . . Volcano City. It was time to make a pilgrimage to Pele at Kilauea Caldera. We paid a park fee to enter and went to the Visitors’ Center. Need I say again that it was H•O•T? I thought not. We carried bottled water with us EVERYWHERE while in Hawaii.

Took a guided walk around the crater rim – well, part way around. The Ranger (Brian) told us of the trees and flowers, telling what was native to Hawaii and what was not, and how they try to combat naturally the ones not native. He was full of information and had a great sense of humor and a true story-teller’s soul.

We heard the legends of Pele and several people were asked to portray persons in the stories. At one point hubster was chosen the pig-man. Quite appropriately, according to even the hubster. Heh. Later at the Jagger Museum we found a mural with the Pig Man portrayed – here’s a shot of hubby in his current state next to his “natural” state:

Drove out and around the Crater Rim Drive – LOTS of steam vents due to the rain the night before and the slight drenching we got just before lunch while on the nature walk. The rain goes down into the vents and the heated rocks and lava then steam. These shots are of hubby letting off steam and me letting off steam. Yup.

At one point in the drive we were able to walk about a quarter mile back to the caldera and see down into it. Natives leave offerings to Pele on the other side of the barriers from where we were allowed to stand. We saw bundles of flowers, fruit, leaf baskets, and leis. Next to one rock were a couple of leaf head circlets, maybe a wedding offering?

Walking to and from the rim we passed numerous steam vents – the temperature raised by several degrees near each of those. I’m sure I must have appeared quite lovely to everyone as I “glowed” heavily (ladies do NOT sweat, they glow).

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Tuesday, the 11th: the early morning wake up came even earlier than the 4:30 rooster calls. At 1:30 I heard a loud chirp, which sat me up straight in the bed. It was raining gently outside (a nearly nightly occurrence.) Nothing more, so I lay back again, only to sit up quickly as the chirp occurred again. What in the world? Off to investigate – into the hall, turn on the light, CHIRP! Jump!! Peek down at the floor expecting to find a critter . . . nothing . . . Turn light on in another bedroom . . . CHIRP!!! Good grief!

Sigh . . . the smoke detector battery was yelling to be set free. So, I decide to ignore the chirping and crawl back into bed next to still snoring hubby (who had not even stirred with lights brightly shining on his face). I began to count between the chirps (nothing better to do and could not get back to sleep) Every thirty seconds . . . CHIRP!!

Call of nature (not chirping) finally awoke hubby at around 3 a.m. Huh? Snort! What tha? "It’s the smoke detector battery, dear. It goes off every thirty seconds, I’ve been counting."

Call of nature taken care of, hubby grabs a chair from the kitchen and disables the battery. (We bought a new one later in the day. Gotta love a Wally in Hilo. We also had to buy some 60 watt light bulbs as the one over the front door had burnt out – or so we thought. It turned out to be some sort of electrical short. After a call back to AK to the home owners it was decided that we would disconnect that breaker anytime we were not at home, so as not to have an electrical fire. They will fix it the next time they are there.)

We tried to get a couple more hours of sleep as we were headed to Kona side that morning after breakfast for our anniversary celebration. I’ll share the stories and pictures of that tomorrow.

But today I will tell you of our unexpected delay in getting to Kona. Remember the rain I mentioned? Well, apparently it was quite heavy in some areas. . . heavy enough that the road ahead of us was under more than 6 feet of water in at least one place. So, the road was blocked for about 2 ½ hours.

It was a good thing that we had planned to turn at that juncture anyway – we wanted to go and see the black sand beaches at Punalu’u. So we made a left and drove down to the beach hoping to see some of the turtles that lay their eggs in the sand. No turtles, but what a gorgeous place!

We went back towards Hilo to a small town, Pahala, to pick up some more (colder) water and some lunch snacks. I also called ahead to our hotel and to the luau folks to let them know we were held up, but that we should still make it to our reservations. The luau folks were much nicer about it than the hotel folks (more on the hotel tomorrow) and expressed genuine concern for us. We were asked to call them again once we were on the road if possible.

Okay, friends – that is enough for this day. I will fill you in on the rest of our day tomorrow. And, remember, “You asked for it.” (anyone remember the name of the show’s host? Hmmm?)

Posted by Purplemoose at May 20, 2004 12:29 PM