The Big Island, March 7-14, 2021

I flew from Maui to Kona on Sunday, March 7th, marveling at the hardened black lava as the tiny Mokulele commuter plane cruised in over the hardened lava fields. I hadn’t realized Mokulele flew into what was called the commuter terminal, but really, was just a small shelter with a few desks and a sign that read “Call the below numbers to request the car rental shuttles.”

I could have just walked, I learned in a short while. I showed my negative covid results of a few days ago, picked up a Ford Fiesta (the car rental agent ominously told me most people prefer SUVs for the rough roads), turned on my GPS “Shaka Guide,” and headed north. 

A “Shaka Guide” is a Hawaiian audio guide for phones. You plug it into the car audio via USB, turn off the Bluetooth, choose a tour, and then the guide talks you around the route, pointing out what to see and explaining Hawaiian history and culture along the way. There isn’t much cell service along these routes, but GPS coordinates trigger the talking points. These GPS tours have gained popularity this past year, as no one really wants to sit in a vehicle with a stranger for 4-8 hours while they explain the sights.

I loaded up the Kohala Coast tour and set out, passing through Hawi and Waimea before returning to Kona to check into my lodging for the week.

The condo at Kona Makai was disappointing. I’d had such marvelous luck so far in Hawaii, but this place was pretty tired, but not as tired as I was after trying to sleep in a bed that smelled like someone put Febreze all over the pillows and bedspread. Yuck.

But the wifi worked and there was a breakfast bar I could sit at for my endless meetings on Monday to Friday. This was my last week of starting work at 7 am. Hawaii is close to the Equator and has no reason to change time, so was only two hours behind my work hours in California. Once the time changed in a week, I’d be three hours behind, and so had booked a one-way ticket from Kona to Los Angeles for Saturday night. I didn’t want to start work at six in the morning. 

Kona got a lot of rain over the week I was holed up there. I only managed to use the Kona Makai swimming pool after work once, and one time rented a share bike to go to town. The town itself is a touristy beach town with too much traffic for the infrastructure, but due to low number of visitors at the moment, this wasn’t the big inconvenience I imagine it normally is. One night I followed a different Shaka Guide route, and another I made impulse buys of Hawaiian-print clothing at Hilo Hattie’s. I visited a ukulele store and a fabric store, of course, because those are my things now the way camping stores were my thing when I was driving across the US or backpacking around the world.

One down side of having so few visitors in Kona is the activities were limited. If I’d wanted to go whale watching, for example, I’d have had to take time off work, since the boats were only going out in the mornings. But it’s okay, I like whales but I’ve been on a lot of whale watches. The best I’ve personally experienced was that trip a few years ago in Baja, and a 2004 journey to Antarctica. 

I finished up work on Friday, and packed up thinking I might just leave Febreze-condo a night early and head to Volcano Village next to Volcanoes National Park, but I ran late and then it was dark and I didn’t want to miss anything along the way, so I headed out early on Saturday, Shaka Guide pointing out sights along the way, but I didn’t stop at many of them as rain was pelting down pretty hard.

Volcanoes National Park is of course, where one goes to see steaming vents on volcanoes. Some of the sights were closed, but I was able to see the big ones before I stopped at an art gallery for a backyard lunch (under umbrellas in the rain), and then headed down to the windward side of the Big Island. 

As I approached Pahoa, where I planned to stop to visit a college friend, my Shaka Guide startled me.

“We won’t be stopping in Pahoa town due to the damage from the 2018 lava flow.” 

Annoyed with my Shaka Guide, I turned it off and followed the directions my friend had given me, driving over a road newly cut into the 2018 lava flow. 

The black lava is still hot, and steam rose all around me as I drove across the lava fields. 

Susan met me at Four Corners, which is more like a T with the road blocked off now, and led me to her house. This was when I thought back to the car rental agent trying to upsell me to an SUV. I could’ve used it here in rural Hawaii in the rainforest. Plus, I was thinking back to a flat tire I’d gotten on a dirt road in Perth…I took it slowly. I’m not going to share details about my friend’s house or tag her—that’s up to her if she wants to do so—but it reminded me of where I once lived in northern New South Wales. After a few hours, I headed out. 

“Don’t go out the way you came in,” said Susan. “Turn left instead. It’s a nice drive.” 

Instead of going over lava fields, I left through a beautiful rainforest, bursting with plants nestled up along the ocean.

I got to Hilo about an hour-and-a-half before I needed to check in for my flight at Kona. I might have just made it, but I might not have too, so I instead tried to drop off my car in Hilo. “The drop-off fee is…let’s see…a thousand dollars.” 

Oh.

I guess I should’ve planned ahead for that. 

Instead, I canceled my flight altogether and found a hotel room. Which sounds easier than it was, since Hilo is not Kona and doesn’t have zillions of hotels. I sat parked in the Long’s Drugs parking lot in the rain, getting more and more frustrated as I clicked around on my phone seeking a room. I finally gave up in frustration and just showed up at a mid-range hotel and overpaid for one of their last rooms designated “For walk-ins only.” 

Relieved, I fell asleep that Saturday night to the chirping sounds of the invasive coqui frogs of Hilo. And on Sunday morning, I checked out the town for a few hours, and it was a charming, ramshackle frontier-like town that felt as much like Hawaii as it did like some of the towns in other parts of Polynesia. I’d tried to book a room at a Hilo place called the Lotus Garden, but they hadn’t had a room until Wednesday, so I drove back to Kona on Sunday morning, dropped off my Ford Fiesta (still intact), and caught a Southwest flight to Honolulu, to give the six a.m. workday a try.

Photos are here.