Day 68: Big Island - Volcanoes National Park

Morning

We started our day with a visit to the Keeau Farmers Market, which was really small but had a great choice of fresh fruits.

Next stop was the Hilo Farmers Market, which was bigger and consists of different stores. Beside of local fruits & vegetables there were craft & art sellers.

Volcanoes NP Part 1

As the Volcanoes NP is best done around dawn (or dusk, if you are the early rise type), we decided to start at the green sand beach. The beach is at the southernmost point. To reach it though, we had to drive through Volcanoes NP.

On the way through, we made a short stop at kaʻū desert trail head and hiked a bit of the trail. The landscape was so unique and just beautiful.

Southernmost point

We then drove on and reached the south point point of Big Island. What we only realized as we reached our destination, that this is also the southernmost point of the whole USA. A lot of people think it’s Key West, but that’s only true for continental USA :)

This was a nice surprise and what was even cooler, there were some ledges from which you could jump into the water. And because jumping off a cliff without a way back up wouldn’t be smart, there is a ladder right next to the ledge.

So back to the car, into the swimming gear and off we went. It felt quite high, but we assumed that it was in the range 5-7 meters. In hindsight we found that it’s estimated to be between 40-60 feet (12-18 meters)… But we will never know for sure.

Then we went to the Green Sand, or so we thought… We only made it to the parking lot, there we were friendly informed that the beach is another 3 miles and we can walk or take a shuttle, for 20$ per person. This felt like a ripoff and we passed, as it was really really windy, the hike was neither appealing to us, so we decided to skip green sand beach.

Punalu’u Black Sand Beach

We started our way back with the goal of Punalu’u Black Sand Beach. Another natural beauty.

Time was moving quickly today, as always… So we decided to start the trip to the Volcanoes National park to do a hike there and then view the erupting lava in the dawn.

Volcanoes NP Part 2

There is quite a network of trails around the Visitor center, so we decided to just go freestyle for now and then hike or drive to the Kilauea Overlook for the lava view.

We hiked down in the crater and there it was just another world, so hard to describe with words. In the main crater, only a small stretch along the edge is open to hikers. But we crossed into Kilauea Iki Crater, which could be completely hiked.

The hike wasn’t challenging, but the beauty of it was just different. Lava, the destructive power of nature, transformed into a beautiful valley.

After we crossed the valley we climbed up to the rim trail and followed it back to the visitor center. Shortly before we reached it, we got a first glimpse of the lava eruptions.

As we were running out of time, we decided to drive to the western part by car. But this turned out to be a bad decision. Due the closure of part of the trail, we couldn’t get close enough to the crater and therefore had zero view of the eruption. So we decided to go back to the viewpoint close to the visitor center and that was a really good decision.

Our iPhone and small Camera couldn’t capture this spectacle. Even tough it was far away, it was so impressive!

We then tried to find the Kalapana Night Market, but couldn’t… Maybe we were too late, or on the wrong spot. As it was already after 21:00 we decided to go for a quick Pizza Hut and then call it a day.

Pictures

Activities

Hike: Volcanoes NP