The room is next to the lift so all night all we hear is zooooooooom, ping, ping, zooooooooom, ping and people having a good old chat as they wait for the lift, or loud voices as folks come back from having dinner and a few bottles of wine. We're here for six nights - I'll not survive this.
Decide to try the awkward guest bit and ask to change rooms - "'no problem' just pack all your bags before you go out so we can move them to another room" - at the end of the corridor farthest away from the lift.
No problem to them but big problem to us, we'd unpacked everything and we leave for the trip in 20 minutes. A million brownie points to Val as she packs things up into either suitcases or plastic bags before getting changes to go out. We make it to the lobby and departure with seconds to spare.
What a wonderfully warm sunny day as we set of with Alaskan cold weather gear of wind and rain proofs with fleeces.
The transport is Arnotts Lodge and Hiking Adventures and they are our hosts for the day's outing. The trip is "shadowed" as a film crew film the trip to show passengers on cruise ships what is available to them. On this trip "this is what you do":
Rainbow Falls: Ordinarily there is masses of water flowing over these falls generating a rainbow as the spray disperses around the base. The Island is experiencing something of a drought at the moment so not much water flows and no rainbow is visible at the foot of the falls which is the outlet from a lava tube of years gone by, so lets just call these Falls.
Boiling Pots: Further up from "Falls" are the boiling pots. These are eroded holes in the river which in wetter climes the gushing water cause them to resemble "boiling pots". However with water being a bit scarce we shall just call these "pots". The observation point where the guide took us looked up stream to another nice waterfall. In, fact you couldn't see the "pots" from where we all stood and the guide was discouraging everyone from going down the track nearer the river - which is the only place to see what we've supposedly come to see. A few of us disobey and get to see the "pots".
Kipuka Pu'u Huluhulu: The Hawaiian language has only 12 letters, 5 of
which are the vowels A, E, I, O, U and the others are H, K, L, M, N, P and W.
The apostrophe is described as a glottle stop designed to help pronunciation
of the words which, we are told often have repeated letter groups - e.g. Huluhulu.
Back to the Kipuka, which is an area of land that got left out by the flowing
lava. Usually elevated as the lava frows around it but it is also possible for
a Kipuka to be sunken as the lava continues to flow round but raise the ground
level, too. Many Kapukas have their own mini eco-system as they are often very
isolated and the insects and plants have to go in for a bit of "in-breeding"
to sustain life. Many different species exclusive to individual Kipukas evolve.
This particular kipuka is located at the junction of Saddle Road - the cross
island road - and the road up to the observatories.
This junction has special significance to Val and I as it was here in 1991 that,
in pouring rain, five bus loads of Solar Eclipse viewers took a vote on whether
to try for the other side of the Island or stay and go as far up the mountain
road as the police would allow in the hope of seeing the eclipse. We stayed
and went up the mountain and saw the eclipse.
Back to now and the walk round the kipuka, or rather up and over the top - views
of lava fields, saddle road and Mauna Kea.
Mauna Kea Visitor Centre: Lunch stop at 9000ft at the visitor centre. It is a bit cooler up here so the warmer coats were a good idea, and the visitor centre displays the UKIRT website showing the weather conditions at the summit which today is sunny and 4C.
First stop after driving up the final 4000ft, was the W.M.Keck I telescope, which seems to be the only one that the public are allowed in. From here it is possible to see all the other instruments.
The time at the summit is spent driving between viewpoints for photo opportunities of which there were plenty. East towards Hilo and North towards the top op the Island and Haleakala on Maui were particularly good. More information on the observatories can be found on their website: http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/mko/mko.html
In spectacular places like these there is never enough time and when Arnotts say it is time to go - we go.
The drive back along Saddle Road was as bendy as it was coming - only this time we're going downhill. This road is out of bounds to hire cars, though why I can't imagine - a drive through the Lake District and over Hardknot Pass (in the UK) is far more hazardous than this!
The buses get back to the hotel at about 5.30pm, the weather being a lot greyer than when we left, but with the desperate water problem on the Island I wouldn't think that there would be any locals complaining.
One of our party, Tom, gives a geology lecture in the evening in readiness for tomorrow's afternoon/evening trip to Volcano National Park.
Goto Day 11: Volcano National Park
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