Saturday was a loooooong day...
We left Volcano Park, stopped for breakfast at Ken's Pancake House in Hilo where we had pancakes with coconut syrup, papaya or mango syrup, and passion fruit syrup. Yum. We continued up to Rainbow Falls (B on the map). That's Rex and some guy that we ran into a few times on top of the waterfall. Look closely...
A few miles past these falls is Pe'ePe'e Falls and the boiling pots (also B on the map). (peh-eh-peh-eh) Again, Rex was a little monkey climbing all over the place and having a good time with the camera. I left out about 70 photos of the boiling pots...
The next stop was a bit north, after a What's Shakin' smoothie, at C on the map. This is Akaka Falls...
...and Kahuna Falls.
Back in Hilo at Ocean Sushi for lunch. That's a Rainbow roll, I can't remember the name of the middle one, and a Mermaid Roll on the right.
Pana'ewa RainForest Zoo, between Hilo and Puna.
Rex spent about 10 minutes talking to the bearcat.
The crazy white bird was screaming and wouldn't stop until some man came up and started talking to him. Then the bird noticed the strap on Rex's camera and wanted it.
Since he was chasing the camera I had to pull out the iPhone to get a picture.
After we left the zoo we kept going south toward Puna. We drove around a bit then went to the New Kahena Black Sand Beach. Andrew Doughty talks about this place in his book "Hawaii The Big Island Revealed," 5th ed. This was the book we used to plan our trip. Evidently, there was a town here that was destroyed in 1990 by lava flow. The shoreline was pushed out quite a bit. Over the last 19 years the waves have been crushing the lava into this black sand. There was a woman who decided she wouldn't let there be total devastation so she started bringing coconuts out to plant and tons of people started to follow suit. Now it is a black beach surrounded by lava and fields of young coconut trees.
Because of the lava shifts and road closures at the park, the only way to view the active lava flow is by helicopter, boat, or coming in from the east, where people used to come in from the west through the park. Here you can see some of the twisty-ropelike lava we walked on to get out to the viewing point.
While we couldn't really see lava directly from this vantage point we did get to see the steam resulting from hot lava flowing into the ocean. There are 2 large plumes here.
The left plume would cause steam vortexes above the water that were visible when the wind shifted.
Once it got dark and the tide began to rise we could see the steam glowing bright red and sometimes flying rocks and sparks. My camera couldn't really capture it very well.
After the lava it was time for a late dinner. We found a Mexican place, Luquin's, in Pahoa. After that long day we went home and PASSED OUT!
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