We're up quite early, for us, and hit the long road north through Volcano National Park and onto Hilo. The primary objective is so that we can get a phone signal so that Helen can phone her brother to arrange a surprise homecoming for her mum. A phone signal is required as we don't have much change for the pay phone, think it would probably eat quite a lot and because Helen can't dial an International number. Should I have started `001'?
she asked. Probably.
Luckily this out of our way trip lets us clear another couple of items off the agenda. Firstly, I need another journal notebook -- with only two weeks left it seems a bit silly -- and Helen needs yet more film. Quite how you can reel four films off while stood next to the glowing rocks is anyone's guess. I, of course, have a mere hour or so of film...
WalMart, which sells everything, doesn't sell AU$0.06 64 page stapled exercise books. I should have bought that extra one in Adelaide and hung the expense. In fact, it doesn't sell stapled books at all. The choice seems to be 95% of exercise books are spiral bound. 1% are `wireless' by which they mean down the side gummed, the remaining 4% are legal pads which are gummed at the top. Presumably staples have proved too attractive to American students for other purposes and have been outlawed. Further, being American, the pads are in stupid sizes, none of which are a handy A5-ish size. I finally select a spiral bound tall thingy that doesn't fit neatly in my bag but at least won't require bending in half to do so.
We decide to investigate the helicopter trip option, the day being remarkably clear. So clear we saw the shield of Moana Kea on the way here but despite commenting on it we failed to record its image. Our chosen operator is Tropical Helicopters, or something, because they're the cheapest. We assume this is because they don't waste money on US$1000 Bose noise cancelling headphones and the latest multi-million dollar helicopters etc.. We approach the empty desk and loiter. The woman at the next desk comes over and in between sentences to us, takes care of another couple (just landed?) tells us the literature we picked up is two years out of date (we picked it up in Kona airport on arrival) then goes back to the other desk. Good service, not. We shuffle off to check our situation. At the end of the day the cheapest helicopter flight will be US$99 plus tax (everything is plus a variable amount of tax in America) for 30 minutes or so, not confirmed as they need a full chopper. Oh well, we go back and sign up for tomorrow. The first woman's gone for lunch and there's another guy rushing around at the other desk and one of the pilots stumbles into sales person mode. Amiably incompetent with the computer he hits keys until each unanswerable field goes away before his colleague jumps over to patch things up. Tomorrow at 10:15 for 11, maybe.
Helen's had another mental lapse (when asked to spell her surname, Fuller, she got as far as f-u-l then stopped. I thought she was mucking about) so we head off into town for some lunch and a sit down. We find an OK coffee house and the refreshments bring Helen back to life. Time to head back to the campground to pitch the tent. This morning had been glorious but things have taken a turn for the worse since. We arrive at the campsite, a place so dry compared to the sub-tropical parts of the park by Kilauea caldera that we assumed it was part of the Kau desert. Part of the attraction of the Big Island at least is the rank change in climate over a few miles not to mention that about six times a day we change altitude by 4000ft (park entrance to sea level). The other night's rain shower wasn't a one off. We waited snoozing in the car park for an hour hoping the rain might pass but not a moment's let up. Our tent won't stand for this so we decide at 4ish to head back towards Puna to look for some accomodation.
Puna is the south eastern corner of the Big Island currently being most accosted by lava. Real estate is apparently quite cheap around here... Pahoe is the central town and we have some accomodation lists but it is a funny little place. Almost like a mini timewarp from the sixties, dreadlocked hippies stagger about, shops have simple wooden fronts with badly handpainted signs and often no windows. No sign of any of the accomodation and its quite hard to figure out what road you're on -- though American road signs are pretty hopeless, they like to place one-way road signs inthe middle of several parallel roads (eg. a main road and an access road) so you've no idea which it refers to and the pedestrian crossings are bordered by solid white lines and cause you to panic when they appear unannounced ("was that a stop line?").
We decide to head back to Hilo. We have an address of 1492 for one B+B on a road that goes from 155 to 391 in [the space of] about twelve houses then runs out. We try a small hotel but they're full tonight (we book in for tomorrow) and take a recommendation back out towards the airport but they're full too. Finally we get a room at the Wild Ginger Inn just down the road from the first (d'oh!). The place appears to have a pet peacock.
Fiascos [the restaurant] lived up to its name for dinner, an `Available for lease' sign in the window and so we tried the Cafe Pesto in town which wasn't too bad. Back to Wild Ginger to try to avoid the mossies that seemed to be attracted to the place.
Wild Ginger Inn, Hilo, Big Island N19.72944 W155.08937 Elev. 31m
Copyright 2003 Ian Fitchet. All rights reserved.