Day 7: Madame Pele

Our second (and last) day on the Big Island were devoted to seeing the reign of Pele, the Hawaiian volcano goddess, in all her splendour. We planned to see Volcano National Park and as much lava as possible. In my research for the trip, I learned that the active volcanoes on the Big Island vary in the amount and location of activity. It's been a while since they had any huge or spectacular eruptions of lava, but there's been steady slow lava flows in various places. But, the place where there is current live activity is actually NOT in the Volcano National Park (the lava has flowed out of the park boundaries.) Because of that, and for safety reasons, you can't just hike up to where the lava is flowing and have a look. You can see it where it hits the ocean (but from a distance), or you can take a flight *above* it. It was expensive, but we decided it was worth it to book a helicopter tour over the volcano. On a helicopter, we would have the best possible chance of seeing lava since they could fly us to wherever it happened to be that day.

So, we had planned to take a door-off "feel the heat' helicopter tour first thing Monday morning. When we got to the airport, though, the lady at the desk told me the flight had been canceled and that they'd been trying to get ahold of me on my cell phone for two days. (My cell phone was dead, a casualty of the extreme wet on our hike out of Kalalau--despite the fact that it was inside my shoulder bag which was inside my pack--it still got so wet that I might as well have dropped it in the ocean.) They wanted to put us on a flight in the afternoon, but that really would mess up our plans for the day. So, instead I went from counter to counter asking the many different helicopter companies if they had any open flights that morning and how much they would charge us. We found one that would match the price we had been promised by the original company, and promised us "first-class" seats, which meant we got to sit up by the driver guaranteed, where you could see everything. Not doors-off, but good enough--so we took it.

Since the flight didn't leave for an hour and a half or something, we rushed back to our vacation rental to pack up and check out, then rushed back to the airport. We got there just in time to watch the little safety video and board our helictopter.

The helicopter ride was very cool. It the our first time in one for both of us, so it was a novelty just to fly around really. But it was very impressive to fly right up to the smoking caldera, right over the underground lava flows with the "skylight" vents to the surface, and most impressive of all to fly right above the lava pouring into the ocean. In all honesty, I was a tad disappointed because there weren't any surface flows of lava that day where you could see a lava river type thing. They were all underground until they reached the ocean. So the amount of "red" lava we saw was not huge. I guess it just depends on Madame Pele's mood for the day, so what can you do. But, it was still very memorable and worth the expense.

After we returned from our helicopter ride, we drove out to the Volcano National Park and saw more smoking calderas, steam vents, and the like. We also checked out the Thurston lava tube, which is where lava used to flow underground like 100 years ago but has since stopped. Now, there's just a hollow tube that you can walk through. (For you science nerds out there, the lava forms a tube because it cools on the outside when it's exposed to air. But, the inner lava is insulated from the outside, so you end up with a hardened stone tube that the hot lava flows through without cooling down.) The first half is lighted, but we chose to continue on through the second half with our headlamps. We felt very adventurous.

We also saw the giant caldera where there used to be a giant bubbling lake of lava (like in the 1950's) which people used to be able to walk right up to the rim and look out over. Then one day, it all drained away suddenly, leaving a "bathtub ring" of hardened lava rock on the sides.

By this time, we were tired and running out of time, so we opted not to hike down to the bottom of the once firey lake and just headed back out to the airport for our flight to Honolulu. I started feeling yuckier again around this time--more digestive issues (I know you wanted to know that) and lots and lots of coughing. But, we made it to Honolulu where we met up with my parents who had just arrived from New Mexico and my little brother who had flown in earlier from North Carolina. Together, we drove the 1 hour-ish trek to the other side of Oahu, and checked into our condo in Punaluu (which is close to Laie, which is where BYU Hawaii is.) More on the condo in the next post...but suffice it to say for now, it was beautiful, and we were exhausted and very glad to settle in.