Hilo, the Big Island

Tuesday, February 11, 2020

Today the ship was docked at the city of Hilo. Hilo is on the west coast of Hawaii, generally called the Big Island to avoid confusion. 

imagecredit:https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ozwv/wvap/hilo.html

We will give lots more information about the Big Island next week, when we come back to visit for a few days.

But just for fun, the state fish of the island is the humuhumunukunukuāpuaʻa, which translates to “triggerfish with a pig-like short snout”. And that is not even the longest fish name in Hawaii!

imagecredit:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reef_triggerfish

Our first choice for an excursion today was a 6 hour trip to the summit of Mauna Kea volcano.  Mauna Kea is home to the world's largest astronomical site with 13 powerful telescopes, operated by 11 different countries.

imagecredit:https://bigislandguide.com/stargazing-at-mauna-kea

On July 15, 2019, the state closed the road to the summit so that the new Thirty Meter Telescope could be built. This is the ideal location for the telescope because it is higher than 13,000 feet and above 40% of the earth's atmosphere. It would collect 9 times the information over the current largest visible-light telescope in the world.

imagecredit:https://physicsworld.com/a/thirty-meter-telescope-forges-ahead-with-canary-islands-site/

Shortly after construction began, news reached the locals and there has been a protest ever since that has closed the road to the summit. Native Hawaiians consider the mountain to be the most sacred mountain in Hawaii.  Even Jason Mamoa and The Rock joined the protests.

imagecredit:https://theintercept.com/2019/07/24/hawaii-mauna-kea-telescope-protest/

So what to do instead?  

Some passengers just caught the free Walmart shuttle.  Seriously:

For us:  Jungle Falls Bike Adventure! We were a little nervous about this one, hoping the biking was not too hard! And maybe it would rain and we wouldn't have to do it????  There were 10 of us passengers that signed up for this excursion, and drat if it wasn't just the sunniest weather ever.  

But for a 6.5 hr excursion, only about 2 hours were spent biking.  We biked 13 kms.

We biked along the Old Mamalahoa Highway, which is not really used anymore.  Here is a non-hilly section:

We stopped at the halfway point for snacks, Anton happily hogged all the pineapple:

There were A LOT of hills on this bike ride!  And why are there always more hills going up than down?  We were pretty psyched that we made all the hills, some of the girls had to walk them.  Ha!  All that frantic biking at the gym for the last 3 weeks paid off!  Three of the girls gave up and took the van back for the second half.  

We thought this was about the nicest bike ride we have ever been on, for scenery (beautiful jungle).

We did get to see a private waterfall:

This is where Frankie decided to "give her lei back to the earth", because Hawaiian tradition says you should not just throw them out.

Apparently Hilo is the wettest city in America?  It started to rain on our drive back.  We stopped at Big Island Candies, and it was fascinating to see the line of workers dipping chocolate.

When we got back, we popped into the ship's library for the 3rd time, and the books are all STILL locked up behind glass.  Frankie is going to start a Campaign to Liberate the Books!!!  FREE THE BOOKS!  FREE THE BOOKS!!

***Not that we have time to read anyways.....