Hilo, Hawai'i (Big Island) - Flew east to the Big Island yesterday, on a propeller drive plane that was smaller than most buses I've been on. I sat on the back seat, feeling naughty. Half an hour later I was in Kona, on the west side of the island. I picked up my hire car and drove three and a half hours round the bottom of the island to the hostel in Hilo. I later found out that you can fly it for $19. Arse.
Along the way I visited Keakula Bay, where Captain Cook met his death, foregoing the cake option. This was a bit of a pilgrimage for me as I was born in the same place as the good captain and christened in the same church in Marton, near Middlesbrough. I'm following his major exploits as I travel round the globe, not least in the Cook Islands and Australia.
Newly installed in Arnott's hostel I met up with a couple of Brits on who I will comment no further as they may well read this. Would love to be rude about them but can't. So, along with them and five other of my new best friends we went on a hostel tour to the lava fields of Mt. Kilauea. It was astonishing.
Quick bit of background. The (seven) Hawaiian islands are slowly being augmented, and the most eastern (The Big Island) is growing, to the equivalent of 316 football fields since 1983. A new island is forming to the east, but has yet to break surface. The Big Island is growing courtesy of Kilauea, which is not only active but has been erupting since the early 80s. This meant that the landscape I hiked across today wasn't there when I was at primary school, which I can't quite get my head around. Indeed, much of it was only a handful of years old.
The six hour walk was a bit unusual. We mostly went single file, with the leader carefully picking the route. This is because the crust on top was often brittle, and underneath was hot lava. Occasionally you would walk across some land and hear it crack as you passed over it. I was a bit blase about this until we reached the first lava tube and could peer inside and see it bubble away. You don't get the feeling with Lake District walks that at any point you might plummet to a fiery death.
We were walking between the flows at the top of the hill and the point where it deposited molten lava into the sea, and eventually stood right next to active lava flows. It was a bit warm. I've just listened to a gentleman on the phone behind me saying he got with 25 metres. We were pretty much on top of them. Seemed fine at the time but looking at the photos it was something else. Oddly no one else was there.
So, today, I saw mountains and islands being formed, in realtime, and with the geomorphology changing in the brief the time I was there. Here's a photo:
One other amazing Big Island fact is that it has 60% of the population of Reading but receives 2.2 million tourists each year, half of them Japanese.
I am still completely staggered that I was standing on top of all this molten. Bed, I think, where I will dream of lava and cracking sounds.
P.S. Jamie - if you're reading this, join Southampton University Caving Club next year. Ruth, if you're reading this, be nice if someone called Jamie joins next year.
