Days 7-10, Pahoa, The Big Island

Accommodation: Hedonesia Sustainable  Community aka hippy junkyard 

Travel companion: Helen

45 minutes in the air and we landed back in the 1970s, tiny Hilo airport. We headed straight to the Budget desk expecting to pickup our Ford Focus, the woman at the desk announced she was all out of them so we’d been upgraded. To a red convertible Mustang. We looked at each other in horror – surely we can’t drive that?! But as soon as we got in and put the top down we were hooked – this is what we’ve been missing out on!

We hit the road south to Pahoa and got thoroughly lost enroute to our next lodging, which was obviously another (former) Junkyard, known as Hedonesia Sustainable Community. Booking this seemed a good idea at the time. Turning up in our Mustang next to a flower power van, not so much.

A fake hippy showed us to our ‘luxury bungalow with sea view’ – obviously before the jungle grew up, and the outdoor toilet WITH NO DOOR. In the light of day I realised there was indeed a toilet door, it’s actually really cool showering in nature and the gaps in the windows just that meant Lizzy Lizard could come in and eat the mosquitos – we were warming to Hippyville.

The community has a lot people living here, apparently volunteering. But what they are actually doing we had no idea apart from sitting around downloading movies – the veggie garden was tiny and the kitchen was filthy. “Man I get so HIGH when a scene is shot to perfection!” “Oh my GOD so do I, like sooo high man!!” A girl lectured us on not rushing around to see things, take your time.

First expedition was to Volcanoes National Park to get our geography geek on. Wow – driving the Chain of Craters through black volcanic lava rock from eruptions in the last few decades. Very eery and Mordor like. This is the world’s most active volcano and we were walking on it. The plume of gases was clearly visible – complete with American ‘don’t sue me’ death warnings at every corner. People like me with asthma will apparently die on the spot.

Lots of stuff to learn – this is the youngest  island in the chain that makes up Hawaii. They are gradually drifting over the hotspot, rising up from the ocean, erupting and eventually sinking back down again. There is a baby island that’s still under the sea. And Pele is the goddess of the volcano.

Next day we hit the rock pools for some snorkelling –  not the ankle deep pools we expected but vast pools leading into the ocean and big colourful fish. We didn’t know that the effect of the water currents and temperatures blurs your vision from time to time – freaky experience! 

The main event was to see ACTUAL LAVA. You may have seen it on the news recently- the lava ‘tap’ has opened and lava is currently pouring into the ocean. To see this you need to do an 8.5 mile round trip hike. The death warnings said we needed four litres of water per person (I couldn’t actually stand up the weight of more than 2), we need to keep downwind of the sulphur gas or we’ll die and we shouldn’t put our belongings on the ground in front of a lava flow. I spent a while pondering if this would be a lot of effort for a barely visible sight and maybe we’d be underwhelmed. But we’d come to see Lava and Lava we would see!!

We set off before sunset and hires bikes from the amazingly named Kimbal Trump, who explained bike mechanics that went over my head. Eventually he put it into gear and said just don’t touch it. Kitted up with headlamps and helmets off we went! It turned out to be an easy ride for us although it’s over the thick gravel of the Evacuation Route from a previous eruption. As the sun went down we gathered on the black lava rocks which are so fresh some of them crumbled under our feet, and watched red hot lava pouring out of the earth into the ocean. Here is a video with Helen’s commentary … disclaimer BAD LANGUAGE’ 

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 After watching for a while we ventured out to look for lava underfoot but with the rocks moving and crumbling in pitch black we reluctantly located our bikes and headed back past all the Middle Ages Americans huffing and puffing and wheeling their bikes. One family of four complained they had run out of water – well they clearly hadn’t brought the mandatory 16 litres!! 

I discovered that I love mountain biking in the dark – the night sky was incredibly clear with Venus and Mars and as we rode the moon was rising. My favourite moment of the trip so far.

That night we saw the girl who had told us to not rush – she’d fallen off her bike and broken her arm and was now stuck there. Valuable lessons to be learned – don’t fall into the trap of imagining something isn’t worth the effort or that you have all the time in the world – just do it!