So first off we headed to the Hawaii volcanoes national park in Kilauea.
Headed along the trail for the sulphur banks…
you certainly can smell it before you can see it,
Along our walk we bumped in to a lovely and enthusiastic man that told us a native story about this boring looking tree with a beautiful flower…managed to find the story online so he wasn’t talking jiberish! Haha!
“The Ohia tree is often the first plant to grow on new lava flows, but don’t even think of picking it’s beautiful, red Lehua blossom as a souvenir. Both the tree and flower are rooted in Hawaiian legend. Ohia and Lehua were young lovers: he was a handsome trickster and she was the most beautiful and gentle girl on the island. But, one day Pele came across Ohia and wanted him for herself. When he refused her, she turned him into a twisted, ugly tree. Pele ignored Lehua’s pleas to change him back, but the other gods felt sorry for the young girl. They couldn’t reverse Pele’s magic, but they did turn Lehua into a beautiful red flower and placed her on the tree so that the two young lovers would never again be apart. It is said that as long as the flowers remain on the tree, the weather is sunny and fair. But when a flower is plucked from the tree, rain falls like tears since Lehua still cannot bear to be separated from her beloved husband Ohia.”
Thought it was sweet.
Also we all got fascinated by these plants that close up by touch,
these three were very fascinated! Haha!…
We then drove up to the crater rim, well as close as we could get…
Oh and this is the car we are driving! …free up grade from a spark! Haha!… Kindly modelled by carla and Kieran…
I asked for a nice photo…hmmmm…
We drove round and the idea was to get close to the coast and see the recent volcano flow into the sea…but we weren’t in luck, road workers told us the roads were closed and it was pretty inactive too. As we turned round we took a wrong turning that turned out to be a highlight of the day…
According to my photo library, location of picture, it says we were in Kaimu-Makena home stead, I’m gathering around Puna and Pahoa. This section clearly quite recently hit and only just starting to rebuild.
We walked along the the flowing remains, the detail and colours are wonderful, such spectrum of colour in the lava.
Loved how things had started to grow in such a place…coconut started to make some roots,
We proceeded to the beach …
we all were blown away the water crisp blues and whites, but hitting against jet black rocks and sands, all we could do was sit there, but we were all in a daze and zoned out.
We then headed along to a snorting hot spot. We saw some incredible looking fish!, … We kept our socks on just because it was painfully sharp, took the edge of it.
This fish was obsessed with Kieran’s feet! Haha!
We then decided with time to spare we would head back to our very first day of seeing turtles and when the battery died on the camera.
It was really windy at this point, Thies got in with out a second thought, Carla wasn’t going in, Kieran and I were unsure, we’d only just warmed up from the rock pools, …but we headed in as soon as Thies nearly drowned himself again getting excited about finding them…
After trying a few nights to get up to the observatory, but believe it or not it was blocked and unsafe due to snow?!?…But we are in luck!…
We had tea and got wrapped up and headed up!!…
We made it to the information center just before they closed and got to see the moon and Jupiter through telescopes. Which was cool!… We were advised not to head up further…but we thought we’ve got this far might as well try!…
We started to feel woozy as we reached 13 000 feet!!! …and still went a little further…
So started at 23 degrees And got as far as 0degrees! Well that’s what the car said but it certainly felt colder we just jumped out for a quick snap then headed back down!…
