Hawaii, Day 5, On the road to Volcano NP

Day 5: On the road to Volcano National Park

Hele mai

Pics: Hana Ho (3), black sand beach (5, including one of THB’s new flip flops), bird (bonus points again for id’ing the bird), 11 of the caldera (many of the plants/flowers), and lastly, a shot of a different caldera with lava in a non-glow daytime spout

Weather: Semi-sunny in the morning, overcast with drizzle in mid-day, drizzle to light rain in afternoon, high 50s in afternoon and evening, more drizzle to light rain after dinner, 57 degrees

As you can tell from the weather report, something is going on and you don’t know what it is!

Breakfast of toast, lilikoi and coffee at the condo, then we head south for snorkeling at Pu’uhonua o Honaunau again. DB stays on land, THB drifts to the left this time and is amply rewarded with another great set of coral and a larger variety and size of fish than yesterday.

THB dries off, and we continue south and east, towards Volcano National Park (#3 this year?). For lunch, we eat at the southernmost restaurant in the US, Hana Hou (see pics). We decide to eat indoors because it looks like rain and the temp is all the way down to the high 70s. We share a massive open faced grilled cheese sandwich topped with veggies and sprouts, katsu chicken (breaded, fried thighs) with brown rice and slaw, lilikoi lemonade and a rather large oatmeal raisin cookie, $37. The cookie and lemonade best of the meal….

Along the way, we stop at what is now a deserted resort on a black sand beach, where THB has a picture taken of his feet and a turtle resting on the sand.

Get to VNP around 1:30, it is now in the 60s and still overcast, and opt for a hike along a rim trail through a rain forest and then down into the caldera of a semi-active volcano (it is hot enough that steam from rain water hitting lava is hissing out in a few spots), then back up the side of the crater to walk through a “lava tube” of about 400 yards, finally back to the car after 2.5 hours: heat on the rim, rain in the caldera, cool in the tube, and then cooler still at the rim again.

About 5 minutes from the park entrance, we are staying in a cottage at the Kilauea Lodge, probably our nicest place to stay since the cottage in Omaru (that’s on the South Island of NZ for those of you that haven’t memorized every blog entry). It’s a two bedroom, giant living room/kitchen place, all to ourselves. Even comes with heated towel rack!

Dinner at the lodge: bean puree with white pepper soup, duck broth with veggies soup, seared ahi, rare rack of lamb, oreo cake, two STRONG lilikoi martinis and one glass of NZ sauvignon blanc, $125, and the best meal by far we’ve had on the trip. And, the staff is having a contest on who can make the most popular bird house. DB and THB pick the same house as #1….ahhhhh, the joys of a long time spent agreeing on art pays off tonight.

And, for those of you expecting sign-off of the blog, tres disappointing, no? After dinner, in a driving mist, we take off back to VNP and a view of the glow from the lava-filled caldera near the museum. Quite a sight, and no matter what setting we try to mojo the camera into, there are no pics. Take it from THB: worth a detour!!!!!! Oh, and even though it is “misting” out, we can see the moon interspersed between the clouds. Hmmmmm……

Okay, now we’ve come to the end of this blog entry, time to cheer up again.