Aloha from Hilo in Hawaii!! We arrived a couple of weeks ago after 16 days at sea from Anaho Bay in Nuku Hiva. It was a great passage with good wind and moderate swell. We crossed the equator on 17th December and celebrated with a tot of rum (and one over the side for Neptune), we celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary on 23rd with a rum punch and we had a rum and chocolate biscuit dessert to celebrate Christmas. The only down side were the squalls which were particularly bad north of the equator to the start of the NE trades at about 10 deg N.
We had a wonderful welcome when got to Radio Bay in Hilo. Libby and Desire, our buddy boats, had arrived a couple of days before and were there to help us with our lines to moor stern to at the dock. Crews from Kahia and Gratatouille who had left Nuku Hiva a month or so earlier were there and the crew from another boat North Star all came over to welcome us. It was great to see so many smiling faces. We had a grand New Years Eve starting with drinks at Margarita Village, the local bar, then dinner then back to Margaritaville for karaoke, pool and more drinks. We celebrated midnight with champagne and firecrackers – fabulous!
Radio Bay is about 4-5km outside of downtown Hilo and is right next door to the main port area so can be a bit busy and noisy. We have a general store within walking distance (next to the bar!) but otherwise you need transport to get anywhere. The bus is fairly irregular and takes hours so the first order of business was to get a new back wheel for Neil’s bike, the last one having been stolen in Hiva Oa. Last week we share hired a car with Libby so that we could re-provision and get several jobs done. We also found time to spend a couple of days with Terry and Dena off the boat as tourists.
The first day we drove up to Kilauea, the most active of the five volcanoes on Big Island (Hawaii). The caldera is quite broad, about 3km across, floored with smooth flat lava known as pahoehoe. The tongue-tying Halema’uma’u Crater is where all the action is, it’s fuming and probably releasing some noxious gases as the Crater Rim Drive was closed to traffic. We went for a walk in a lava tube which was interesting. It is a conduit through which lava flowed, the lava cooled and formed a crust on the outside but stayed molten and flowed on the inside. Once the eruption ceased the lava drained out from the inside leaving an empty tube. Fascinating – huh? After lunch at the Volcano House restaurant we drove down to have a look at a 1974 lava flow. I won’t bore you with the differences between a’a and pahoehoe lava but I did get a nice picture of a praying mantis.
Hilo and the east coast are the windward side of Hawaii and are renowned for their high rainfall with 140” per year. So far we have had wonderful sunny weather but on the only day of rain we drove across the island to the Kona Coast for our second tourist day. What should have been a remarkably scenic drive with views of the Moana Loa and Moana Kea volcanoes turned out to be like a bad day in Scotland but on the west side of the mountains the sky turned blue and the sun shone as we descended into the tourist town of Kailua-Kona.
We visited a beautiful old church built in 1836 from lava rock mortared with coral, and did some coffee tasting of the famous Kona Coffee. We drove down to Kealakekua Bay which is the site where Captain Cook finally met his demise. After having travelled in his footsteps around Australia, New Zealand and French Polynesia it was interesting to close that out. There is a memorial in the bay which I’d like to visit but we did not have time on this occasion.
On January 5th the crews from all the boats got together to celebrate Neil’s birthday. Neil and I had a lovely lazy day, we went for lunch in a nice restaurant on the bay then had a wander around the old part of Hilo which has some interesting historic buildings. In the evening we all gathered for a pot luck, Terry and Dena brought a bbq so we cooked up some bangers and steaks and everyone brought a salad. We had a couple of bottles of bubbly and a cake, some good music and singing and it was a lovely relaxed evening.
We expect two more boats from French Polynesia to arrive next week so we are looking forward to welcoming them. I guess we’ll be here for another week or ten days then we’ll think about moving on. More soon!
Cheers for now
Suzy and Neil