The Big Island

On our first morning on the Big Island we started out with a trip to the local fruit market where Judy bought fresh Mangos, Pineapples, Apple Bananas and lots of local veggies. She couldn't resist smelling all the colourful fresh cut flowers and buying a bag of macadamia nuts.
On the trip back we passed a number of examples of local graffiti along the highway which consists of white coral spelling out a tribute on the black lava rock. I think this started out as a memorial to someone who had died in a highway car accident 20 years ago and has blossomed into hundreds of messages about almost everything. The west coast of the island is a barren desert but is still very picturesque.

This part of the road is also used for the World Championship Iron Man race held every year in October in Kona. They swim 2.4 miles across the harbour where the market is located and then bike 112 miles up the coast, past where our condo is located, to a place called Hawi (pronounced Havi) and back and then run 26.2 miles up to the airport and back. We passed a number of bikes along the way with people training for the next Iron Man and I thought of Roy and I out on the road in Newmarket, not quite the same thing!


So in the afternoon, we drove up to Havi and then at the end of the North Shore road hoofed it down a winding path along a cliff, which led to a black sand beach at Pololu Valley.

It's hard to see the scale in this picture but just outside the surf line is a Seadoo and it's "V" shaped wake. The two white dots are people on the beach and the cliffs we climbed down are at least 500 feet high.

Wednesday we decided to drive out to the south end of the island. The weather varied from bright sunshine, to mist and rain in the mountains where they grow Kona Coffee and back to sun shine again. Close to South Point are four large wind farms next to a number of ranches.

It was raining again by the time we got to the southern most point in the United States (yes it's hundreds of miles south of Key West) so we had to give up on our plan to hike 2 miles to the green beach. Apparently there is a mineral in the sand from the volcanic eruptions called olivine which colours it green instead of black. The Big Island is the youngest of the Hawaiian islands so many of it's beaches are still black lava sand.

The high wind and dangerous surf conditions caused the authorities to close all the beaches but of course, many of the local boys had to show off their Kohonas and test the extreme surf.

We stopped a took a lot of pictures and picked a few to try and give you an impression of just what 15 to 20 foot surf looks like.

You can see a guy inside this wave to the left of the guy on the boogie board.

It was amazing how these guys survived getting pummeled and would then swim out for more. We saw a few surf and boogie boards get smashed on the rocks but no major injuries.

Take a look at this short video clip I took this afternoon.

The day finished with yet another great sunset to provide a perfect end to a great day on the Big Island.