The Big Island

This story makes up the third part out of a series of four about my trip to Hawaii and Baja, Mexico

After camping for a month, I was pretty ready for sleeping in a house and in a bed. Our friend David had arranged the rental of a house with three bedrooms in Hilo, on the east coast of the Big Island. David was born and raised in Hilo. His girlfriend Sophie came over around the same time we flew in. Also David’s longtime friend Alan and his Dutch girlfriend Claire had planned to be on the island for a few months. Jeroen also knew Alan from his time at uni Utrecht. This was bound to be a fun time with a bunch of friends, sharing a few weeks of their lives together in a house on Hawaii. A pretty good prospect if you ask me.

The eyecatchers on the island are the two biggest volcano’s, that make up most of the landmass. Mauna Kea is a 4207 meter tall sleeping volcano, that has a snow covered summit most of the time during the winter months. Measured from its base at the bottom of the ocean, it is the tallest mountain on earth at 10203 meters. Mauna Loa is almost as tall, reaching 4170 meter up from sealevel. This shield volcano is the largest active volcano on the planet.

It was really eager to see my friend David again. We have shared many adventures together. I met him on the beach in Bloemendaal where he was teaching surflessons for Surfana back in 2014 or so. The next time I saw him was on Bali. We randomly ran into eachother at a warung in Canggu. My surftrip friend Carine decided to ask him to join our trips as a surfteacher. We spend months together in France, Spain, Portugal, the Azores and the Netherlands. We partied until our bodies couldn’t party anymore at Into the Great Wide Open on Vlieland. We explored Brittany in campervan. Memories to cherish forever. But it was time to see the guy in his natural habitat. In the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

The surftrips guests and crew on Sao Miguel, Azores, 2018

We flew into Kona on the western side of the island on the 28th of January. Alan was there to pick us up and take us to the other side of the island which takes about 90 minutes. The Big Island is super diverse. The west side is dry and the east side is wet, just like on the other islands. But between these two climate zones, there are another 6 different climate types. The island felt different from the others from the get-go. The road to Hilo took us right across the middle of the island. Covered in thick clouds, the islands volcano’s were not yet ready to show themselves. The road took us up to 2000 meters, before dropping down to sealevel on the Hilo side. It was pretty unreal to see David again, so far from where we had last seen eachother. I cherish our friendship big time, so this moment was pretty special.

Jeroen and I settled into our room, which was nicely decorated with Mickey Mouse stuff. Just how we like it. The next day we drove down to Honoli’i, which is the local surfspot. Pohoiki, another popular surfspot nearby, got covered by a lava flow in 2018 and is now unsurfable. This makes Honoli’i more crowded according to David. I’ve seen the spot during our Facetime calls, so it was cool to see it with my own eyes. The little bay is situated around a river mouth. Whenever it rained a lot, the water would be murky and brown. Sharky. Whenever the it didn’t rain for a day or so, the water would become crystal clear. Turtles would pop up on the regular. I grew very fond Honoli’i and I had my most fun sessions of the trip on this spot.

Honoli’i has three peaks. The point, breaking to the left in front of a cliff. Mids, breaking left and right. And Privates, also breaking left and right. We mainly stuck to Mids and Privates. I surfed the point once, but I found it usually too crowded and I felt out of place. Jeroen got yelled at once surfing the point too. The swell usually came out of the east. I found the spot really consistent; the waves were always around 3ft at 10 seconds. There were a few bigger days and I didn’t bother going in on the biggest day when there were only a few guys out. The wind was mostly pretty light in the mornings and evenings, but could get pretty strong when a squal was approaching. The line-up consisted of pretty much every surfer a line-up can consist of. Softtoppers, longboarders, shortboarders, fishes, bodyboarders, the occasional bodysurfer, men, woman, grommets, grannys, natives, imports, grumpy surfers, happy surfers. Just a wonderful mix of people overall doing what they love most.

I’ll get back to Honoli’i later, when I tell you about swimming with my waterhousing. The days turned into weeks. We got to know Hilo and its habits. Bulk groceries were done at Cost-U-Less (we never managed to finish the giant bags of oats we got in the first week). We found great peanutbutter in the Foodland on Kauai and luckely it was also available in Hilo. We averaged two big jars a week. Normal groceries were done at Sack ‘N Save. A good hummus was hard to find anywhere btw. We bought fresh fruits and veggies at the foodmarket once a week which was great. We managed to get our weekly costs down by cooking big meals so we had leftovers for another day. I found my coffee spot in town, where Argentinian Matthias made us nice espressos from his homegrown coffee beans. We would usually drop by after our morning surf. Sometimes I gave my body a day of rest and I would take my book, drop Jeroen off at Honoli’i and get a coffee to spend some time with myself.

We made trips with the house too. David and Alan were happy to show us around. The river behind David’s parents house was an epic playground. We spend hours climbing our way upstream, jumping off cliffs and waterfalls along the way. The north side of the island was quite windy. A lot of cattle is being raised here, first brought to the island in 1793. This part of the island has a countryside feel to it. On the northeast coast, there are beautiful lush valleys, like Waipio, which have been inhabited by Hawaiians for centuries.

Mauna Loa, as seen from the northwest side of the island

The south is pretty barren due to the many lava flows. Even footprints can be found embedded in the lava and ash flow dating back to 1791 when an army of Hawaiian chief Keoua was trapped by a sudden eruption of the Kīlauea caldera. Not many people live on this side of the island nowadays. The Big Island is scarcely populated anyways, with just short of 200.000 inhabitants. The Big Island is almost twice as big as all other Hawaiian islands combined. There’s a lot to explore, so that’s what I did. Me and J rented the smallest and cheapest car we could find on Turo, a Chevrolet Spark. I took it out on trips several times, when J would be surfing or hanging with the others. One day I decided to explore the slopes of Mauna Loa’s south side. A beautiful road brought me all the way to 2000 meters. I came unprepaired and that frustrated me. Although I didn’t plan on doing any big hikes, I should have brought water and food. I gave myself a limit of hiking 90 minutes in, so I wouldn’t push it too far. The weather was great and it was probably around late morning when I started hiking. After being accompanied by a couple from Colorado for fifteen minutes, they turned around and I was alone with the volcano. The silence was deafening. I have seldomly been in an environment with such stillness. I tried to set myself a goal, of reaching 3000 meters. The trail was marked by cairns, which turned out to be pretty hard to find after a while. Still I managed to make good progress. The terrain was super rough, with sharp lava rocks sticking out in all directions. My ankles got pretty messed up, also because I didn’t bring my hiking boots. I wore sneakers instead.

I felt like I was walking on the moon at times. When I was an hour into the hike, I could see some clouds starting to gather to the south. I knew I had to turn around soon. But wauw, this volcano! What a place! Half an hour later I finally decided it would be stupid to continue and so I started to make my way down. The clouds had almost reached me by that point. The wind picked up and soon enough I was surrounded by really thick clouds. The temperature dropped dramatically and I started to put my layers back on. The cairns which were already hard to spot in clear conditions, were now even harder to spot. After walking down for fifteen minutes, I got lost. I battled panic. My phone had no reception, but the GPS was working. My battery was at 30% though so I decided to save it for when shit really hit the fan. My gut feeling knew where I was, but the terrain was so monotonous that it scared me a little. There were no reference point what so ever, and visibility had dropped to about 15 meters. I started running, just to get down faster. I tried to stay calm. I knew where I was more or less, I just didn’t see the trail. I found a cairn after I had been lost for about 15 minutes. A weight fell of my shoulders. I consider myself a sensible hiker. I always keep my bearings straight, take enough supplies and make sure I have appropriate clothing. But nature humbled me right away when I got too confident. Lesson learned. I got back to the car, drove home and gave my feet a well deserved rest.

I drove up the other side of Mauna Loa on another occasion. The road is in perfect condition and driving there was true bliss. It takes you all the way up to 3397 meters, where there’s an observatory. I watched the sunset until I was too cold to stay outside any longer. I watched the stars come out on my way down and stopped to take photos. I thought about spreading some of my dad’s ashes on Mauna Loa that day, but it didn’t feel right. The environment was too hostile, the air too cold and windy. And so we drove back to Hilo together, overheating the brakes on the winding road down.

The last tourists making their way down the summit

We had heard of a snorkling tour with manta rays by night. It sounded like something we needed to do. And so we did. Me, J, Amber and Isabel (two other Dutchies joining the Hawaii party) drove to Kona for a nightly adventure. The tour wasn’t really done by night but just after sunset to be honest. The boat took of well before sunset though and after a 20 minute ride we arrived at the spot. The sea was pretty rough and after we had anchored, seasickness started to kick in. More and more boats gathered and more and more people got seasick. We waited for about two hours for the light to fade. A surfboards with lights shining down into the water was tossed in. This was done to attract plankton which, in turn, attract the manta rays. The sea was still very rough and the whole scene was a bit chaotic, with tourist frantically trying to get into wetsuits everywhere. We swam towards the surfboard and held on to its sides. When the first manta did a full backflip inches from my face, I was screaming with joy. I love rays, for their ability to fly graciously through the water. In Bali and on the Maldives I’d encountered them before, but this was definately the closest encounter.

As you might now, Im always intrigued by the weather. One evening I decided to chase a thunderstorm that caught my attention. Its intensity was decreasing when I finally found a good spot to take some photos, but I managed to snap a few. The moon joined in as you can see on the photo on the right.

The weeks flew by and I grew more accustomed to Honoli’i. There is always some anxiety before I enter the water swimming. I think its because Im still pretty new to swimming with a waterhousing. On a decent-sized day I decided to go for it and prepped my camera gear. I borrowed David’s fins for swimming power (pretty necessary when swimming in surf). It took me a while before I reached the point, where J and Alan were planning on catching a few. Some sets rolled through and I tried to take my position, just wide of the peak. I was shooting with my 50mm lens, which means I dont have to get crazy close to the surfers to get the shot. The current was relentless and I was constantly swimming to stay in position. After 30 minutes my body was exhausted and I started swimming back to shore. The river was pumping out water so I was fighting strong currents and it took me another 10 minutes before I reached the beach.

When I went through the photos back at the house, a lot of them were out of focus. It’s pretty hard to make the auto-focus function properly in a waterhousing, but this session was below average. There were still some usable as seen below.

After the first somewhat dissapointing session with the waterhousing, I wanted to get my revenge. A week later, we stood at the parking lot looking at small waves. It was late in the evening and the light was fading rapidly. The light was beautiful though and waves were clean. I prepped my camera and swam out at Mids, where David, Jeroen and Sophie went in to surf. As the sun set, the waves started to pick up a little bit. Just enough to make it into a really fun session to shoot. The sky showed turned pink and the light was just amazing. In these moments, I feel very fortunate. I took photos until all 64gb were filled up. These were the pics that came out.

Although sleeping in a bed was pretty nice at first, I started to feel a bit restless in the house after a while. A small house, with thin walls and six people. I think I missed camping after all and so I pitched a tent in the backyard. It improved my sleeping time and I managed to get a bit of the old rythem back: up at 08:00 and sleeping time at 22:00. During the end of our stay on the Big Island, we got more rain. It was so loud on my tent that I had to move back into the house one night in order to get some sleep.

The summit of Mauna Kea had been on our bucketlist ever since we arrived in Hawaii. We needed a 4x4 though and the weather had to be good enough to drive up. On one of our last days on the island, David’s friend Kekai took us up the Mauna Kea. The weather was looking promising as we started our ascent. It started to become really cold at 3000 meters. When we reached around 3700 meters, it started to snow! Even Kekai had never been up there when it was snowing. We threw some snowballs along the way and finally arrived at the astronomical observatory only to be send straight back down by the rangers, because the road was icing up.

The atmosphere above Mauna Kea is extremely dry and the proportion of cloud-free nights is amongst the highest in the world. There is very limitied (light) pollution too making this one of the best locations in the world for the huge telescopes. There are plans to build a new thirty meter telescope on the volcano that the native Hawaiians hold sacred. Protesters have build a camp at 2000 meters, where the road starts that leads up the mountain. They believe the mountain should be left alone and only visited on special occasions. While we were there, the conflict was on hold.

We watched the stars come out on the way down. I’m glad we had the opportunity to get to this special place. Not only Mauna Kea, but the whole of the Big Island felt special to me. There is more harmony between the people, the difference between rich is and poor seems somewhat smaller than on the other islands. It’s peaceful, the vibe is generally really nice and I loved the diversity in nature. We said goodbye to our friends and prepared for the last part of our journey: Mexico. The Corona virus had already started to spread fear across Europe and were about to get sucked into the COVID-19 mania as well. The Big Island had been really good to us though, giving us five weeks without a care in the world. I hope to get back some day to this gem in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Read about Mexico in my next journal.

Tomas Grootveld8 May 20203 Comments

Journal

The Big Island