Adventures in the Party Scraper

Okay, back to my last weekend off. On Thursday we got a pretty slow start (it’s tough with six people and one bathroom). But eventually we picked up our rental van from a sketchy corner of Hilo. If you were judging it on its ability to carry seven passengers, then yes, we got what we wanted. However, if you were actually judging it against normal rental car standards, then we may have drawn the short stick. The horn didn’t work and the brakes *eventually* managed to slow the thing down, but the cockroaches in the retractable cup holder were just an added bonus. It was our party scraper. Anyways, we picked up our last teammate in Hilo and then headed over to the sunny Kona side!

The view crossing over Saddle Road to the other side of the island was amazing. Normally we don’t even make it to the peak before we have to turn off for our field station, so this was a nice treat. Our first stop was Kekaha Kai State Park Beach. That one may have been a mistake. From the main highway there was about four miles of unpaved road to get to the beach. In a normal vehicle there may have been some tricky spots, but in the party scraper filled with seven people and our stuff, it was borderline impossible. For reference, we were bottoming out on cracks in pavement, so an unpaved lava rock road… you get the picture. I think it took us over 30 minutes to go 4 miles. But eventually we made it, and with no obviously missing parts!

View of the beach during our treacherous drive

The beach was beautiful – the water was incredibly clear (while the sun was still shining), it was warm, and there was even a sea turtle hanging out right when we arrived. We swam around and enjoyed the water for short while before needing to head out to meet our couchsurfing.com hosts in Captain Cook. Unfortunately, right when we got back to the car we got a message that they were cancelling on us. Dang. Evicted before we even showed up! It worked out for the best, though, because we ended up just getting a cheap (and yet nice) hotel on Priceline using some bidding feature. It was only a 5 minute walk from downtown Kona, so we spent the evening around there and got dinner and drinks. Weird thing is that Kona is dead after 9pm, or at least it was on that Thursday. But we still wandered around and had a good time.

Kekaha Kai State Park Beach

George relaxing at Two Step

The next morning we wandered to a farmer’s market before heading towards Captain Cook for more snorkeling. We went to a beach called Two Step, named because it has two steps to enter the water for snorkeling. That beach was amazing! It wasn’t really a beach, just lots of lava rock. But the snorkeling was great and there were over a dozen spinner dolphins that came to rest in the area. “Resting” means they were just swimming in slow circles and occasionally doing some spinning… all right around the snorkelers! I think I was within 10 feet of 5 of them at one point – it was awesome! The snorkeling was great, too. A couple of us got to see a threadfin jack juvenile (which took a lot of searching to figure out). It looked like some kind of deep sea creature lost in the shallows – luminescent and translucent. Wild! There was also another sea turtle here that was hanging out in an area we called the “hot tub”, because there was only one place for water to come in and out of, so the water inside of it got pretty warm under the sun.

Slo-mo video of my second jump
(Edit: Doesn't look like this is playing properly)

After everyone was done snorkeling we continued around the island until we got to South Point, the southernmost point of the island AND the United States! Even on an overcast day it was still beautiful and the water was SO clear! The cliffs we were on were 36 feet above the water, and you could see straight to the bottom. There’s even a specific platform used for jumping off the cliffs. George, who is here for the third year in a row (working on his master’s), convinced some of us to jump! He went first, then Alex stepped up, and I went third (granted, that all happened over the course of like 30 minutes). Eventually Liza went for it, and finally Matt (with lots of convincing and peer pressure). George and I even jumped a second time. (If you ever do the jump, definitely do it a second time – it’s way easier and more fun.) It was somewhat chilly out because the winds were so strong and it was overcast, but the water felt great! There was also this thing called the “blow hole”, which was a big opening in the cliff that you could peer into and see water (without going to the edge of the main cliff). From the water you could actually swim into it and peer up and see people on the rim. It was super awesome in there, but you had to keep an eye on the wave motion and make sure you didn’t get too close to the cave walls while water was pouring in. It was super cool. There was a rainbow the first time I went in, and it was high tide, so one particularly large wave filled a small little cavern and caused water/air to come shooting out of it like a fire hose. It was a really awesome experience! (And yes, I was definitely terrified before the first jump. But I managed to do it in less than five minutes of hesitation. There was another woman there who hesitated for a good 45 minutes (with her young son holding the camera while shouting “just DO IT already!”) – she didn’t jump while we were there.)

Three turtles on the black sand

Our last stop on our way back to Volcanoes (we accidentally passed the southernmost brewery) was a black sand beach where you can often find sea turtles hanging out on the sand. We got there at dusk so our pictures weren’t great, and after seeing sea turtles swimming around earlier this seemed less real, but it was still cool. We got back and immediately headed to the Lava Lounge at the military camp (we were ravenous after a day of swimming). Cheap burgers, beer, and Sports Center were a perfect way to end the adventure.

Really. It should have stopped there. When we finally did go home we found rat poop all over our counters, stove, and dish rack (full of clean dishes). Someone left a bag of tortillas on the counter which the rats apparently loved (another downside to living with five other people). Fortunately, Matt is a clean freak and went into overdrive scrubbing down the kitchen. UN-fortunately, while we were dealing with the kitchen shit, no one noticed that one of the bags we brought in from the car had extra passengers. Remember the roaches from the van? They found a home in someone’s bag and started escaping into the kitchen. So yeah… that was kind of a buzz kill to a really great trip. But we made up for it with more beer and ridiculous internet videos.

Saturday was a really lazy day. I went into town with Gabby to do errands and take George home, and then we sat around the house until early afternoon. Eventually Gabby, Matt, Rachelle, and I decided to do something, so we headed out to check out the tide pools and warm springs. We got a little sidetracked when the others saw a coffee farm or something that we always pass on the way to Hilo, so they decided to stop. Our quick stop turned into an extended visit, and that, coupled with a wrong turn, meant that we ended up skipping the tide pools and just heading straight for the warm springs. Our wrong turn did mean that we drove past the recent lava flow. It stopped moving in the last couple months, but we could see where it went through a fence right by a recycling center and started crossing the road! People left money, necklaces, and other offerings to Pele (goddess of volcanoes) on the hardened lava. It was pretty neat. Just wish it was actually flowing… I want to see orange, flowing lava! (To be fair, this stuff was still steaming, so there was probably some pretty hot stuff not too far under the surface).

After a lovely drive along the coast (and getting to see a whale back and tail pretty close to the shore) we got to the warm springs at Ahalanui Park. They weren’t hot, but they were warm (which was nice on an overcast day). It was like a large pool with a rock bottom, but the walls of it were definitely constructed intentionally. There was an area where ocean waves could flow in and another area where the warm water seeped in, so it wasn’t stagnant water, but it kind of had a funk to it. It was chilly enough outside that we were just four floating heads doggy paddling around the pool. But it was relaxing (and silty). I think I prefer the ocean on a hot day, but for an overcast afternoon, this worked.

That was the end of our weekend’s adventures! The next day we just did our grocery shopping and hung around the house before our 10-day stint in the field. Hopefully this Sunday I’ll be able to get another post up about this past week and the adventures we’re about to have on *this* weekend!