Hitchhiking in Hilo, Hawaii...
With lots of free time on my plate I stopped in Hawaii again for a week and went this time to The Big Island to see more of Volcano National Park. There's a great short, 3 or 4 day, hut to hut hike you can do to there to get to the summit of Mauna Loa. And the annual backcountry fee is only $10! But first, because it's an isolated high-elevation hike over very rough ground, you have to be interviewed by a ranger. My interview didn't start well. I began by asking where I could rent hiking boots - I'd rented boots last year in Iceland - and the ranger said, You don't have boots! And it all went downhill from there. He learnt that I didn't have hiking poles. Or a tent. It's a hut to hut hike but due to the elevation the weather can close in at any time and sometimes you have to hole up exactly where you are for several days in zero visability. So a tent is recommended. I said I couldn't carry a tent. I agreed instead to take 6 emergency blankets for such a situation. I lied about having a good sleeping bag. Next we discussed that there is no potable water on the trail. And then I horrified him twice in a row by admitting that my plan to get to the trailhead was to hitchhike and that my cell phone is without a sim card. 'You're planning to go alone?', he asked, 'Give me one reason why I should grant you a permit.' 'I'm old,' I said, 'I know my limits, I know when to stop, and I know when to turn around. I have nothing to prove and if the trail looks too challenging or the weather looks like it's worsening I'll just go back.''Hmmm.' He wasn't happy but he agreed to give me a permit. Next he opened his large ledger to see if, despite very short notice, there was still availability in the huts I wanted to book on the nights I'd requested. Yes. There was. In fact they were empty. Completely empty. Meaning not only that there'd be no one else in the huts at night but likely no one else, at all, on the trails. Really? Really! Isn't hiking Mauna Loa on the top of all tourists' agendas? How could it not be? We sat on opposite sides of his desk for a couple of minutes looking at the gaping hole in reservations. The cabins were well booked both the week before and the week following my time on Hawaii but completely empty for several nights right around the time I could go. I'd hoped to meet someone at the trailhead and stick with them for four days, or, if not that, at least meet people coming the other direction to chat about the trail ahead... 'I think,' I said, 'this is the time to turn around.' And I decided not to do the hike afterall. Which left me lots of time for other great stuff.
Being a random tourist in Hawaii - or anywhere else for that matter - I'm too cheap to go on guided day excursions and too unsure a driver to rent my own car so my preferred methods of getting about include a) finding other hostel guests who have rented cars and joining up with them b) taking local busses or c) hitchhiking. None of these methods are perfect. Sometimes the other hostel guests with cars are all very young and just want to hang out on a beach all day. Sometimes the bus, clearly marked on the schedule, is apparently operating on 'island time' and just doesn't show up at all. Sometimes you hike 5 miles uphill in the hot sun before getting picked up only to learn you're on the wrong road. So none of my preferred methods of transportation are perfect, and all 3 of them tend to be inefficient, but if like me you have lots of time, little money, and a willingness to accept a bit of pot luck, it's all good in the end. I went almost everywhere I wanted to go and met a lot of great people along the way.
I'd been going to split my time on The Big Island half in Hilo on the wet side and half in Kona on the dry side but I loved Hilo so much I just stayed right there. Hilo gets over 3 metres of rain a year. The Banyan trees are amazing. The Monkeypod trees are amazing. The roads through the rainforest are amazing; lush green walls of vegetation, inpenatrable undergrowth rising up, up and over creating green tunnels, long low grarled tree branches reaching right across the road and into the jungle on the other side, ferns big as trees, palms of all descriptions, banana plants, bamboo groves, multi-footed mangroves, trunks big and small green both with moss and vines, and a plethora of other unknown verdant plants many of which are in bloom adding a heady floral aroma to the rich earthy background. And the birdsong goes on all day. It looks as if there ought to be monkeys, at least, if not dinosaurs. It's fantastic, just fantastic. And then you drive across an imaginary line into an area where there's been a recent lava flow, black blocky aa or bronze ropy pahoehoe, and suddenly it's more barren than a desert - though presumably it still gets masses of rain - and the rock, primative, primordial even, stretches for miles, smelling of sulphur, begging poetry.
With lots of free time on my plate I stopped in Hawaii again for a week and went this time to The Big Island to see more of Volcano National Park. There's a great short, 3 or 4 day, hut to hut hike you can do to there to get to the summit of Mauna Loa. And the annual backcountry fee is only $10! But first, because it's an isolated high-elevation hike over very rough ground, you have to be interviewed by a ranger. My interview didn't start well. I began by asking where I could rent hiking boots - I'd rented boots last year in Iceland - and the ranger said, You don't have boots! And it all went downhill from there. He learnt that I didn't have hiking poles. Or a tent. It's a hut to hut hike but due to the elevation the weather can close in at any time and sometimes you have to hole up exactly where you are for several days in zero visability. So a tent is recommended. I said I couldn't carry a tent. I agreed instead to take 6 emergency blankets for such a situation. I lied about having a good sleeping bag. Next we discussed that there is no potable water on the trail. And then I horrified him twice in a row by admitting that my plan to get to the trailhead was to hitchhike and that my cell phone is without a sim card. 'You're planning to go alone?', he asked, 'Give me one reason why I should grant you a permit.' 'I'm old,' I said, 'I know my limits, I know when to stop, and I know when to turn around. I have nothing to prove and if the trail looks too challenging or the weather looks like it's worsening I'll just go back.''Hmmm.' He wasn't happy but he agreed to give me a permit. Next he opened his large ledger to see if, despite very short notice, there was still availability in the huts I wanted to book on the nights I'd requested. Yes. There was. In fact they were empty. Completely empty. Meaning not only that there'd be no one else in the huts at night but likely no one else, at all, on the trails. Really? Really! Isn't hiking Mauna Loa on the top of all tourists' agendas? How could it not be? We sat on opposite sides of his desk for a couple of minutes looking at the gaping hole in reservations. The cabins were well booked both the week before and the week following my time on Hawaii but completely empty for several nights right around the time I could go. I'd hoped to meet someone at the trailhead and stick with them for four days, or, if not that, at least meet people coming the other direction to chat about the trail ahead... 'I think,' I said, 'this is the time to turn around.' And I decided not to do the hike afterall. Which left me lots of time for other great stuff.
Being a random tourist in Hawaii - or anywhere else for that matter - I'm too cheap to go on guided day excursions and too unsure a driver to rent my own car so my preferred methods of getting about include a) finding other hostel guests who have rented cars and joining up with them b) taking local busses or c) hitchhiking. None of these methods are perfect. Sometimes the other hostel guests with cars are all very young and just want to hang out on a beach all day. Sometimes the bus, clearly marked on the schedule, is apparently operating on 'island time' and just doesn't show up at all. Sometimes you hike 5 miles uphill in the hot sun before getting picked up only to learn you're on the wrong road. So none of my preferred methods of transportation are perfect, and all 3 of them tend to be inefficient, but if like me you have lots of time, little money, and a willingness to accept a bit of pot luck, it's all good in the end. I went almost everywhere I wanted to go and met a lot of great people along the way.
I'd been going to split my time on The Big Island half in Hilo on the wet side and half in Kona on the dry side but I loved Hilo so much I just stayed right there. Hilo gets over 3 metres of rain a year. The Banyan trees are amazing. The Monkeypod trees are amazing. The roads through the rainforest are amazing; lush green walls of vegetation, inpenatrable undergrowth rising up, up and over creating green tunnels, long low grarled tree branches reaching right across the road and into the jungle on the other side, ferns big as trees, palms of all descriptions, banana plants, bamboo groves, multi-footed mangroves, trunks big and small green both with moss and vines, and a plethora of other unknown verdant plants many of which are in bloom adding a heady floral aroma to the rich earthy background. And the birdsong goes on all day. It looks as if there ought to be monkeys, at least, if not dinosaurs. It's fantastic, just fantastic. And then you drive across an imaginary line into an area where there's been a recent lava flow, black blocky aa or bronze ropy pahoehoe, and suddenly it's more barren than a desert - though presumably it still gets masses of rain - and the rock, primative, primordial even, stretches for miles, smelling of sulphur, begging poetry.
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| One hostel resident. |
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| I walked up to Akaka Falls on purpose and discovered that I now look exactly like my father... |
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| ... and then hitchhiked to the botanical garden (with a military family with 4 small kids). |
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| I took the local bus to Volcano National Park and then hitchhiked down the chain of craters road (with a young German couple) ... |
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| ... but was too chicken to stand on the arch at the bottom ... |
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| ... though I did take a walk to see the petroglyphs. |
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| My most ambitious hitchhiking was to the summit of Mauna Kea (with a police officer and his teenaged daughter) ... |
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| ... which I did on a gloriously sunny day. |
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| But my favourite hitchhike (with 4 off duty cruise ship workers) was to return to the lava fields... |
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| ... that I'd seen before. (See Hawaii Part 2) |
Unlike several of my good friends who return to the same resort year after year I like to go to different places, see what's around the next corner, explore the unknown. I seldom want to return to somewhere I've been, I'd rather go somewhere new. But Hawaii's special. I'll be back!
