I woke about 6 and it was a lovely clear day. And promptly fell asleep. At 7, not only was it too hot but the sky had turned a malevolent grey. Time to get up. Even this simple act took us ages and we hit the road just before 9. We went further into the bush to the Halina Pali Lookout where you get a reasonable view of this 15 mile stretch of coastline that's fallen 1500ft to near sea level under its own weight. 
Avoiding an enthusiastic US Government 4x4 we go back and down to the lava. We head straight along the road towards the steam plume where the lava meets the sea. Well, where we think it should be given the interminable rain showers. At the start of the month a fresh spurt of lava covered the trailing 1/4 mile of coast road so the trail became a difficult hike much sooner. 
We trekked on over the crispy shattery surface, up and down, left and right for about half an hour before a high point suggested that we were not especially near nor was there any steam plume to speak of. The lava's good though, smooth rippled or densely packed rope-like features and everywhere where the crust is broken revealing strong spectrum like layering. We plod back, it's surprisingly warm given the regular dowsing and cool sea breezes.
The `red' lava has moved so it's a long trek over increasingly hot rocks to where the lava is visible. The terrain changes so quickly it's hard to tell where we were last time. Today they've `chosen' a spot where the lava is filling up a huge bowl left by previous eruptions. It does this in a pretty imperceptible way. A blob of sticky marmalade will break out and ooze for a few minutes. Then another somewhere else. Once in a while you'll get a slightly bigger one maybe relatively fast flowing over two or three metres. 
In the meanwhile the lava has been adding to its mass elsewhere where you've not been looking and over the course of half an hour has filled a 10x5x1m hole with black hot rock. They reckon the eruption is still spewing enough lava to pave a highway four times round the Big Island every day, which is somewhat more than we're seeing here.
Eventually we run out of tape and films -- caveat vidor(?) -- Helen having previously announced that she wouldn't require more than four films for the rest of the trip. Gone in three days. Luckily the rain held off for most of that -- unlike the walk over which was wet -- but that just meant it was hotter still, a good job we refilled the water bottle.
We headed off for some accomodation, it being late afternoon. Aloha Junction was full -- and the bloke didn't recognise us -- the next place, My Island Inn, was also full but the blokey kindly gave us a very useful local map indicating all the other B+Bs (and who owned what). He did have a US$135 (minimum two nights) suite but we declined. At his suggestion we tried the Chalet Kilauea where the very nice man sized us up -- dirty, smelly, wet from the ever present rain at this altitude -- and decided we weren't going to be paying US$399 for one of his suites. It should be said he did own two other houses in town which were B+Bs but they were all full due to the Merrie Monarch Festival (hula) in Hilo. They booked up a year in advance! He phoned around for us and we found a room way back up and down the coast at a motel.
We stopped at the Lava Rock Cafe for more simple nutrition and then provisions from the local store before we hit cruise control down the highway. I'm not surprised the blokey [at Chalet Kilauea] raised his eyebrows, it was a clean but basic room with private bath for a mere US$38. Not only less than a tenth of one of his suites but less than half the US$80 discount he offered someone over the phone for being a member of such and such. We settle in and separate out our laundry, an urgent task for tomorrow.
Shirakawa Motel, Waiohino, Big Island N19.06691 W155.60954 Elev. 327m
It was about then I discovered my face arms and legs had picked up a bit of sun.
Copyright 2003 Ian Fitchet. All rights reserved.