Honeymoon - Island of Hawaii

Skip on to Kauaii or Maui

We thought long and hard about where to go for our honeymoon. There are a lot of places around the world where we still want to go. However, Susan had a pretty good claim to having traveled to or thorugh 49 of the 50 states, and Hawaii would finish the list. And that was a good enough reason to go with Hawaii. It helped that Susan was still looking for a job while Terran was up to his eyeballs in his first semester as a new professor, so she had both the time and the energy for decisions like this. Susan had three goals for a trip to Hawaii -- see a black sand beach, see real flowing lava, and go diving. After much consultation of travel guides, we decided on three islands: Hawaii (called by tourism "The Big Island" now), Kauaii, and Maui.

We scheduled our honeymoon over winter break for UNM classes. We really wanted to be married in October, but that ruled out any honeymoon of significance directly afterward. We wanted an active vacation, but one that was low-stress. Packing up camping gear and checking it through two layovers each way did not count as low-stress. So the plan was for packless day-hiking and short chartered adventures with guides. We got our SCUBA certification in December at Blue Hole (SCUBA diving? In the winter? In the snow? -- We caught a cold and knew that we'd earned it) , so we also planned a day of diving for each island.

We stayed in bed & breakfasts rather than hotels. It turned out to cost no more, and it was a lot more personal. It's hard to find a true "bed and breakfast" in Hawaii, though. The term bed and breakfast tends to apply to a wide variety of privately owned, non-hotel lodging that may or may not offer breakfast. A lot of research produced three places that did, in fact, serve a full hot breakfast in the morning.

A bit of photo gallery guide: The pictures are all thumbnails, so you can click them to see larger versions. And if you don't care for the commentary, you can click a thumbnail and then just browse through the pictures one-by-one.

Day 0: Arrival

We flew directly from Susan's cousin Roy's wedding in Kansas City, which was December 29. At the reception, Susan started feeling a little queasy, which isn't that uncommon in a hot hall where you're dancing right after you've eaten. However, she was definitely sick by the time she got back to the hotel and spent a lot of the night throwing up. This did not bode well for our morning flight out on December 30. Illness during the vacation notwithstanding, it was a six hour flight, and that's not the time to have any kind of stomach problems. Fortunately, she seemed to be past that part, and Terran was very good about handling all the bags, since she could barely carry her purse.

We landed on the Big Island, checked into My Island Inn (more on it later), and got as much sleep as possible.

Day 1: Volcanoes National Park

The morning was pretty tentative, but by midmorning Susan was ready to try walking around. We took it slow, starting with the Thurston Lava Tube in Volcanoes National Park. Then, with some coaxing from Terran, she agreed to take the Kilauea Iki hike (~4mi) down into the crater of of a volcano that was filled with a flat pool of lava in the 60s.

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You can see the trail, worn a lighter shad of gray, going straight across the surface of the 1960s lava lake.
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We appreciated the plants that were tenaciously growing out of the lava field. The people in the right-hand picture are not people we knew, but we appreciated their exploratory spirit. Susan certainly had no energy for climbing at this point
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These are steam vents. The steam, not surprisingly, was hard to capture on film. You can see some steam rising from the vent in the center picture.
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We drove by the Kilauea overlook for this photo opportunity and then headed in the direction direction of the active lava flow, where we stopped at Pu'u Loa Petroglyphs. It was fascinating to compare these with our local Albuquerque petroglyphs.
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Then as we approached dusk -- prime viewing time -- we headed on to the lava flow. The road ended abruptly in recent lava, and the trek continued on foot on a well-blazed trail. What you can't see on the sign to the right is, "September 12, 2000 lava flow."
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One picture from lava-watching. You can't see much of anything, but we know what it means. If you click the thumbnail to enlarge you might be able to see some of the luminescent lava. A little bit, tho not much, made it to film.

Day 2

On the advice of our hosts, we went to Akaka Botanical Garden the next day. It was a fascinating and sometimes breathtaking visit. The center picture above is Susan standing long a path filled with giant bamboo.

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After the gardens, we visited the local hot pond, a volcanically heated bit of ocean where the local community has added breakers to make it a safe swimming hole. Very pretty. We talked to a local who had bought land out on the island. It's a cheap place to live; the downside is that it's cheap because you can't get lava insurance. It was nice to hear some of the practicalities of living in the area.

As evening approached, we made another trip to the lava flow, hoping to hike in past the flowing lava to the place we'd heard was the very best viewing. We didn't make it. It turned out to be a bad lava flow night, and the air was filled with ash. It's also more challenging to hike over uneven lava at dusk than you might guess. We gave up and watched the lava where we were, then headed back.

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Above are pictures of the grounds of the historic bed and breakfast where we stayed, My Island Inn. We found this place by chance, since all of the well-recommended places were booked. This place was a referral from a booked lodge, and it was by far the best place we stayed. The proprietors were old-school entrepreneurs who had been involved in the construction of the observatories on Mauna Loa as well as a commercial ski operation there. They were full of fascinating stories. And they had some self-published guides to the islands, which we bought and read aloud to each other for the rest of our vacation. AND their breakfast was home-cooked all-you-can-eat. If we return, we'll definitely stay there again.
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Day 3

We spent the day migrating west. First, we visited the steam vents in Volcanes National Park in the morning, then the art shop. Then it was finally goodbay to the park.

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We spent lunch time at Punalu'u Black Sand Beach Park. There were supposed to be a lot of Hodgeson's green sea turtles around the beach, but we didn't see any. You may not be able to tell from the picture, but the beach consisted of two sandy beach areas with a rocky outcrop between. Terran saw that the water was shallow over the rocks, and we decided to swim/hop between the two small beaches. Surprise! This is where all the sea turtles were, slyly avoiding the swimmers. We discovered this when Susan put her hand down on a rock that moved. There we were, swimming with the sea turtles. Wow.

We continued on to Kona, where we took the Manta Ray Madness dive. Yes, this is a product-titled dive. It doesn't involve much in the way of SCUBA skill. After dark, you put on your dive gear, weight way up, and let yourself drop to the ocean floor with a large diving flashlight. Then everyone shines their flashlight up toward the surface, and the manta rays in this area have learned that plankton are attracted to the light. A single manta came down and swam over our heads, opening her huge mouth almost close enough to swallow Susan whole. Susan managed to breathe hard enough to use up her air first. When she surfaced, she was bubbling with excitement about the ray. When the guides surfaced, they grumbled about it being a lousy dive. Sometimes they have as many as 20 mantas. Oh, well. One made it more than worth it.

There were pictures taken of this dive, but Susan failed to realise that flash photographs taken underwater at night will produce pictures of bubbles and sea debris, so they're not shown here.

We drove back to Volcano late that night to get up early for our flight.

On to Kauaii