I seem to get more and more tired as sleep seems to escape me for much of the night. However, now that my meeting with Tom has been put off until tomorrow morning I know that I cannot rely on getting much help from the crew's technical department to prepare the power point presentation as there will not be the time. I shall have to do it myself and relearn from scratch how power point works. In the meantime I still have an excursion to do starting at 7.30 in the morning. Unfortunately, Albina's belated attempt to join a helicopter tour of the Hawaii Big Island has not worked. I promised to meet her for a shopping trip after the end of my excursion.
The vessel actually docked at Hilo harbour just after 7 in the morning. The island looked rain soaked as we disembarked into a waiting coach. We encountered no immigration control at all and did not even have to show our passport photocopies.
We again had a luxury coach waiting for us, as in Honolulu, with a guide doubling up as a driver. It is an uncanny feeling as he rattled away with information and anecdotes that we were listening to somebody who was simultneously driving and watching out for hazards on the route. He explained that the island has the same name as the archipelago that stretches more than a thousand miles to the west to include Midway Island. This occured by the main chieftan at the end of the XVIIIth century had inherited guns from Captain Cook and with the help of that he was able to be the first to conquer and unite all the islands, which then took their name from his native island. Then he crowned himself King Kamehamaha the First. Although Hawaii Island, or just the Big Island, is bigger than all the other islands of the archipelago put together, the population of the island remained low at some 300,000, while the Island of Oahu which included Honolulu has more than a million inhabitants. In fact, the largest township in the Big Island is the port of Hilo, and to my mind it is barely more than a large village.
As we started are journey towards the Kilauea peak and adnaced along a slowly rising road with lush green vegetation our guide explained the difference between similar size modest housing on the right and left habd side of the road. On the right were residences with an average price tag of $400,000, while those on the left could be purchased for $100. Why? Those on the left could only be purchased by people of Hawaiian origin. The only way a non-Hawaiian could purchase such a property would be by marrying a Hawaiian, even if such a person had lived on the island and paid taxes here for more than 30 years, as was the case of our driver guide who came last century from Wisconsin. If the purchaser should end up as a widower without children he would have to surrender his rights to the house in 30 days. It seems like a racist policy but on the other hand it prevents young native Hawaiian from being priced out by U.S. mainlanders oin seeking to own a house. Perhaps there is something in that policy that could help those natives of Wales and Cornwall who complain of their children being priced out by wealthy Londoners seeking a holiday home.
I mentioned the lush vegetation. Hilo is supposed to be statistically the wettest town in the United States. Every year, or sometimes twice a year, houses have to treated for mould. However despite frequent rains and the visible lushness of the trees and the ferns, the island has a serious water shortage. The reason is that the fertile soil is only a few inches deep and underneath it lies volcanic rock which is still porous and absorbs the rain without reurning it to the soil above. The Big Island is the youngest of the islands that arose from volcanic activity in the last million years and therefore had the least time to develop enough soil on top of the lava floes which once created the islands. Because of the recent emergence of this island there were few actual native plants in all this dense tropical green jungle. Most of what we see is imported, either by human settlers, in the case of sugar cane, or ironwood or eucalyptus human settlers, or by birds from Polynesia which eventual evolve in the Hawaiin landscape. These include, for instance, red ohala berries evolved from blueberries, or white strawberries.
For those reasons the once propserous sugar cane plantations were eventually abandoned as they required a considerable amount of water and eventually exhausted the thin layer of soil. A similar fate befell the cattle imported here as early as the 1790s by Captain Vancouver. Within a hundred years they had trampled the soil down to the rock face in many places and now are largely limited to the high country where they are less damaging to the soil but likely to be the earliest victims in case of any volcanic eruptions. "Fancy any hot sizzled beef?," asked our driver.
We continued to drive upwards through the tropical vegetation but in a straight road without any steep curves.Almost without noticing we had driven into a sparser lanscape with fewer trees and passed a notice advising us we had clambered up to 4000ft. (1230 metres) above sea level. Despite some palm trees and an abundance of fern the most common tree iis a tree or bush with little but fiery red spiky flowers and on the more mature trees downward stalks which are a pparently budding roots ready to embrace the earth in order to continue sustaining itself. Apparently they are called Ohia trees and their red flowers are called Lehua by the natives/ They have the ability to withstand the heat and toxic smoke that accompany volcano eruptions, so much so, that they are the only remaining form of life on the bare lanscapes surrounding the craters.
There are 5 volcanoes on this island but we have actually climbed up Kilauea which had a recent eruption as recently as 2018. We emerged from the coach, expecting still to feel the 27 degrees heat at the harbout, but now feeling the sharp cold wind sweeping across the mountainous landscape. We had a good vue of the thinly populated central valley of the island surrounded by three volcanoes at various levels of activity. However it was our Kilauea which had the longest crater or caldera, 2 miles in length. We walked towards the rim of the crater but the fencing provided for our protection was only a temporay structure, easy to pull down for someone immature enough to venture across it. The proper fencing had been swallowed up five years ago at the last eruption when a large section of wall to the crate collapsed inwards. It undermined part of the visitor's centre, which is closed now, awaiting demolition. The only thing still in use is the rest room, When you actually approached the rim and lokd down beyound the temprary paling, you were faced with a scene reminiscent of Mordor from "Lord of the Rings". A vast area of brown and black soil with smoke still billowing out from underneath through cracks in the surface. It was grim and forbidding, like the promise of a future horror erupting from the lair of Pele, according to legend, the terrifying goddess of the volcanoes of Hawaii Island, who rides down the lava flowing down to the sea screaming and growling. It is that very crater, called Kaluapele, which Pele considers her home. Here and there over the crater rim trail lie little bundles of offerings with which superstitious Hawaiians hope to placate the merciless goddess. These include flowers and beer cans, Apparently our overlook into the crater is considerd a sacred site by the older Polynesian population, called Uekahuna, so despite these often sad offerings, the rangers prefer to allow them to lie there.
We drove down a few hundred feet to another area adjoining the vast caldera and surrounded by smoking vents. These are mostly crevices still covered with some vegetation but fenced off to prevent anyone falling in. The driver told us that in fact this smoke is sulphurous and much thicker than is visible. Because we are not downwind from the crater we cannot smell the sulphur, but the true thickness of the smoke revealed itself when he tossed a lighted cigarette down one of these crevices. Suddenly the steam erupted like the head of an industrial chimney, which enveloped me completely, so that I could not even see my phone as I had stretched in front of me. I choked and nearly fell trying to step aside from the smoke. In fact I was downwind of the crevice and that is why I was hit by the steam more than others. One of the other passengers standing on the opposite side of the crevice even said to me after that I had "literally disappeard in a puff of smoke." This cigarette trick was obviously our drivers' party trick. We were told that the temeperature at the bottom of such a crevice through which the steam escapes, can reach the boiling point of water.
We drove down the hill further, towards a small hotel with a shop and arts centre attached. We had free time for 45 minutes here and we were invited individually to walk down another path through the tropical undergrowth leading to the crater rim trail to view the coloured sulphur banks. These are all the effect of the hot steam from the magma below the surface corroding and changing the colour of the rock on the escarpment. This cliff with its brown, red and yellow surfaces is what remains from the collapse of the head of the mountain into the crater about 500 years ago.This area had another of these typical Hawaiian names, Ha'akulamanu, which absolutely drown themselves in vowels and are impossible to remember unless you immediately make a note of them. It is quite a contrast at this stage to see the rich green trees surrounding this section of the rim and the almost bare rock below, in which the ohia trees and bushes with their lehua flowers still survive.
Kilauea is only one of four active volcanoes on the island. They have different characterisitcs. When Kilauea erupted last the smoke and steam went high up into the sky, but while lava flow was considerable, it was slow moving. It has erupted about 50 times in the last 100 years.
Maunaloa, which was visible from the peak of Kilauea has ferocious fast moving lava, which can travel faster than a running man. It errupted only last November but without endangering anybody. All in all it has erupted 34 times in the last 180 years. When it erupted in 1880 he lave flow reached the outskirts of Hilo, some 30 miles away.
Another volcano is Maunakea is the highest mountain and is occasionaly snowcapped. The guide told us that it reached upto 33,000ft, but that it is the highst mountain inthe world. The coach went silent when he made this unbelievable assertion. He hastily explained. He was taking into account the fact that the mountain reached up uninterruptedly from the sea floor, as proportionally only a part of the mountain is above sea level. Like Kilauea it plays an important role with Hawaiian mythology. It was the centre of creation and the high mountain was apparently one end of the umbilical cord that emanated from the heavens during creation.
Hualalai has erupted about three times in the past 1000 years and is considerd effectively dormant. The last of the land volcanoes, Kohala, is actually extinct. There is also an underwater volcano, with the blissful name, Kama'ehuakanaloa, named this way so that nobody can pronounce it until it suddenly erupts one day and forms a new island above sea level.
With this angry ring of fire and smoke how can people on the Big Island feel safe. "Well," said the guide, "There is danger everywhere. Tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis. W've all go to die somehow. At least on Hawaii cremation is free."
We returned to the port. I had time to go on board to have lunch with Albina. Then we left the ship to catch a shuttle bus to the local farmers market. There were a mixed range of restaurants, boutiques and open air food stalls. We bought a few more souvenirs and a Hawaiian shirt, suitably understated for mybtaste. I am no longer up to enjoying the excessive garishness of some of the shirts.
We returned to the vessel and I spent the whole afternoon and evening preparing some 40 slides on powerpoint for my Friday lecture. It took about an hour of frantic messig around to toremind myself how to use this programme. The last time I used power point was 3 years ago. At least then Ihad Sandro close at hand to help me. Finally I got the hang of it and finally spent considerable time to complete one particulare slide that showed the path of circumnavigation by Phileas Fogg placed over the top of the roue taken by Borealis, sothey could be presented as parallel lines. I was pretty exhaisted at bthe end of the day and hope I will be able to sleep better before my meeting with Tom the next morning.
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