Hawaii - The Big Island

At one of the concerts for the Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles, I bought three tickets for the Hawaii raffle - and won. A week stay at a private house on the Big Island just south of Kona.

The house was perfect - private pool off the bedrooms, small lawn with a hammock between two palm trees, leading right to the bay. You can see more about the house at www.alaulakai.com. The first day we saw the whales passing right outside of Kealakekua Bay and the dolphins came and visited us a couple times.

The Captain Cook Monument was across the bay and we kayaked over for great snorkeling and jumping off the small cliffs into the water.


Here is a little view from the back yard and Jorge on the lava rocks leading down to the water.



The dinning table was outside - perfect view of the bay for breakfast and dinner.

Every night, we had a beautiful sunset. I think Jorge took about 500 pictures of the sunset every night.




While we did a bit of snorkeling, kayaking, shopping (Andy), and seeing the local sights, there was a lot of time to enjoy the beautiful views, eat and nap.

When Jorge wasn't on the phone or computer with Roger, this was one of his favorite things to do:

One day, we toured the local area.

Small coffee farms litter the area and we sampled coffee at every farm and co-op we could find. I am not a big fan of coffee, but the Peaberry and macadamia nut coffees were very good.

We also visited the Painted Church - Andy still has part of the steeple.

Little pineapple plants grew everywhere.

We visited the Place of Refuge, now part of the national park system - where if you broke one of the kapu you could go to be obsolved of your crime by the local priest.

If was also the private vacation area for the king.

We didn't get to see the lava tube here, because it was damage during the recent earthquake on the big island. But we did see many sea turtles and came the next morning to go snorkeling with them.

I swear, you can't take some people anywhere.





The turtles were so close to the edge of the shore. You can just make out the turtle in the water right in front of Jorge.

We took a day to go to the other side of the island to see the volcano - Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. The crater is huge, but the lava flows from a side fissure a couple miles from the crater.

Around the crater, there are sulfer and steam vents.

The yellow is crystallized sulfuric acid.

It was much cooler and windy around the crater, so the steam vents actually felt nice (warm).

I don't know why you aren't allowed to build rock piles -- of course, I was tempted.

Everywhere on the island where you saw lava flows - it was just black. You can see Andy next to a fracture in the lava flow.

Below is a picture of me just before we went into one of the lava tubes. Nick and I went down the "natural, non-lit" part of the tube. Andy and Jorge chickened out rather quickly.

The last night, we (Jorge was scared and didn't go) went snorkeling at night to see the manta rays. Kole, a female ray, showed up. She was 12-13 feet wide and about 2,000 pounds. The water was pitch black, except for flashlights held by divers and snorklers. Kole [not actual picture, but you get the idea] came out of nowhere, swimming right below us, to feed on the plankton that were attracted by the flashlights.

Amazing.