We're up early to try to avoid rush hour on the way to the airport. It takes us a little while to realise there isn't any traffic on the roads. Of course, it's a Sunday, and Easter Sunday at that. Ah well.
We pull into the first gas station and I head in to pay my five bucks. We've got no gas.
Um, none at all?
That's right.
OK. The road winds its way up the waterfront past all the docks and piers. A huge `Norwegian Star' liner looms above a building in front of us. We run just yards away from it. A little surreal. We have a map showing the route to the rental car dropoff but I decide to drop Helen off with the bags first. Following the signs for Aloha Airways we wind around some elevated section and arrive in a oneway section to a ticket barrier. The guy there is no help, once again explaining things seems to give Americans the wrong picture so we take a ticket and run round the car park twice trying to get out. We have to pay a dollar for the experience and just go to the car dropoff.
Aloha are operating a system whereby they don't check the weight of your luggage and post-tagging you have to lug it to security to get scanned. You have to indicate any camping gear so I politely inform the woman It's a tent.
She doesn't seem to impressed but better safe than sorry. At the carry-on luggage security desk they spot something suspicious with my bag -- a complex sequence of packed items -- and decide to open it up. Almost everything comes out. They run it through the machine again. Spot the same thing, check a side pocket and OK it. The man looks at the large pile of items and the now very small bag. I'll do it.
I suggest and am left to pack in peace.
The flight is quite pleasant though we were only in the air for thirty minutes. Kona airport is an open relaxed affair. In fact very little is undercover including the conveyor belts of the X-ray machines of security. You just amble across the tarmac from the plane, through a gate and you're off. Fortunately baggage is under a roof (it might rain, I guess) so we pick up and amble over the road to see about a car. Helen has an Avis free upgrade voucher from the inflight magazine and with a little toing and froing we have a `MonteCarlo,' whatever that is. It turns out to be a bit of a bourge machine, not bad for US$33 per day. Helen inched it across the car park to where our bags were then let me drive. Having never driven an automatic before, and omitting to pay close regard to the Echo, she got it into first as there were no labels on the stick, there was no handbrake and she was too nervous to do much else. It's a huge 2+2 [coupe] -- the people in the back have good legroom -- and for the first time I have cruise control to play with.
Not having a plan we decide to head through the sunshine to Valcanoes National Park and camp the night there. It's a long way, though. only 100 miles but the first two thirds are largely 35mph as we zip past towns rather than obviously through them. So much for Kona itself. The airport is built on an old eruption and looks like a large area of dried mud from the air. That quickly gets replaced by lush scenery as we wind along the coast. A couple of hours later and we've started heading upwards through heavier rain and the scenery has become a bit less plush and occaisionally desolate. Ears-a-popping the roadsigns note we've climbed three thousand feet and the rain is pretty constant but we're in the National Park.
We turn into the visitors centre and pay our US$10 fee, good for seven days. We get out of the car in the rain to get some details and there's a bit of wind too -- hadn't noticed that [in the car]. It's cold, it's very wet and it's blowing. Camping doesn't seem like such a good idea. As we're stood there we get caught up as a guide gives a twenty minute lowdown on Hawaii's birth and even a little on the native trees. There's a twenty minute video on the park as well before we nab some free info and head off into the nearby town of Volcano for some much needed food, just sneaking in before the 4pm close on a Sunday.
We head back, chocolate in hand, to the campsite up the road but we don't feel too confident about our US$35 tent standing up to the wind and rain, indeed, at all. We head back into Volcano and try one of the B+Bs which turns out to be a huge summerhouse built for one of the Japanese managers of the old sugarcane plantations. Wow, did they do well. We have a huge room with a huge bed, it's a shared (huge) bathroom, shared (huge) living room with 50inch (or more) TV, free tea, coffee, snacks etc. etc.. It is US$75 though which isn't good for the budget but looking outside it's somewhat better for us. The word on the street (from rangers and locals) is to head down to the lava flows for just after sunset for some of the best views. We buy some soup and bread for tea on the way down then re-enter the park.
The park is centred on Kilauea, a large crater (there's an 11 mile circumference road) fairly dormant now. One presumes. Off the southern edge the 19 mile Chain of Craters Road winds its way through several previous outbursts from Kilauea and an otherwise foresty landscape down 3000ft to the sea where the coast road has been lost due to the 1990 and subsequent outbursts of another mini outlet. The real Hawaiian hotspot is currently creating an undersea mountain, Laihi, which should become the ninth island in about 60,000 years about 20 miles off the coast.
Having parked the car alongside the 50 odd other vehicles we plodded down the road. Halfway down the remains of the road there was a ranger's car and a trail leading off to `red lava.' Well, that sounds good. The weather was intermittently bad with heavy showers and a strong wind. The trail was small yellow plastic stickers leading over broken lava (from previous eruptions!) to one of the red glows in the distance. Not a ridiculously easy task especially with the light almost gone.
You spend the journey watching your feet until suddenly you're 100ft from the red glow. There's a huge swarm of people a lot closer and, foolish as we are, we joined them. There was a notice at the start of the trail noting a high risk of methane explosion as the lava reaches vegetation but most people were much too consumed by the lava to worry about a bit of an explosion. As we are. The lava here is good gloopy stuff. Really thick treacle. 
It's not moving a great deal and I think this is the remnants of a `breakout' that started a couple of days ago. We watch and take some pictures -- often of people standing two feet away, posing. Then we realise the rain has been blowing in for the last twenty minutes and despite the warm breeze, we're soaked. The heat from the lava isn't drying us and we head off.
Uh, oh. Where's the trail? Having gone beyond the end of it we (obviously) can't see it anymore. We head towards the end of the trail of flashlights and realise that to get back we have to cross a bulge of rock which is glowing, deep in the cracks. Hmm, we must have come this way and not seen anything. Now it's clear, this rock's hot. We skip across and make our way back, grateful for the loan of the guesthouse's powerful torch. The twenty minute walk back to the road and another ten to the car are in near constant driven rain. We're wet, now.
We sit on our coats on the way back to reduce the mess. Soup and bread for tea and an early night. Partly because it feels bloody cold though the computers say 19C we're wearing jumpers and happily hiding under blankets in bed.
Aloha Junction, Volcano, Big Island N19.42928 W155.23705 Elev. 1110m
Copyright 2003 Ian Fitchet. All rights reserved.