Hilo, the largest settlement on the BIG island of Hawaii, sits in the middle of a circle of mostly active/dormant volcanoes. Mauna Kea, supposedly extinct, is the highest of them. It is also the highest mountain on earth, if one measures it from the Ocean floor, reaching a staggering height of 33.374 feet.
It is topped by a number of observatories, which during some of the colder and wetter winters are surrounded by snow. Locals drive up there, dressed in anything remotely suitable for keeping warm, load their pick-up trucks with snow, and return to the balmy beaches to construct snowmen in tropical paradise.
Hilo also has been devastated by tsunamis - twice. The first on 1. April 1046 killed 160 people. The second, on 23. May 1960, killed 61 lives, mostly because people ignored the warning signals and stuck around to watch the waves.
Kilauea Volcano is still active. The main crater emits impressive plumes of sulphur dioxide, creating what locals call 'vog' which drifts along the whole chain of Hawaiian Islands if the winds are strong, and closes access to parks on Hawaii, as well as rendering air quality somewhat iffy for the residents. Eruptions create fall out like hot cinders and ash, and lava flows create ever new bits and pieces of island, which occasionally break off and slip into the Ocean. A rather violent and unpredictable bit of land, which makes for interesting real estate deals.
Properties are classified from level one to ten, one being the least subject to volcanic destruction and ten being the ones, where red hot flaming lava flows around the backyard hibiscus bushes. Prices vary accordingly, insurance availability and premiums are the stuff of legend.
Legendary Pele is still excavating the Big Island of Hawaii. Hers is the usual story of envy and jealousy between sisters. In ancient times before the existence of the Hawaiian Islands, happy and beautiful Pele ruling fire and volcanoes, frolicked in the surf, while her unhappy sister Namaka, who ruled the oceans, grew more and more upset with her hedonistic sister.
Namaka's anger reached 'boiling' point, and she summoned violent storms to undermine Pele's fun times. Pele fled eastwards and burrowed into the sea floor, and created the island of Nihau in her frantic attempot to escape. Sister Namaka grew even moer resentful, and forced Pele eastward again. This time Pele tunneled deeper under the Oceans and created Kauai from her suboceanic digging. Now, Kauai turned out so beautiful, that Namakas anger increased tenfold.
Lovely but frightened Pele kept digging eastward to escape her sister's wrath. She kept digging and digging, creating Oahu, Molokai, Maui until she got exhausted.
Finally Pele burrowed deeper than ever, and she is still digging, throwing up lava and ashes from the depths of the earth, creating the new land on Hawaii. Namaka, not to be outdone, sends her storms, which break off bits of the newly created land and drag it down into the bottomless sea.
Give or take a few hundred thousand years, and the two of them will continue fighting over another yet unborn island further south east.
In the meantime, life springs forth from cracks in cooled and dried lava lakes, even if steam vents still send their boiling vapors across the ground. A moonscape with barren plains and thousands of fissures, where plants take roots and create an eerie landscape.
I took a hike down into one of these craters, still steaming in places, parts of it accessible by dried out lava tubes.
A study of contrasts, descending from crater rims covered with tree sized ferns, flowering bushes, towering trees, lush orchids into the inhospitable black and almost barren plains of crater floors.
It rains a lot here on the 'windward' side of the island, more than three meters per annum.
Saw a couple of Indian Mongoose, which were imported a long time ago to eliminate the equally imported black rat population. Unfortunately rats play at night, and mongoose play during the day. Ergo both animals flourished without ever getting into each other's way. Wild pigs, chickens, Kalij pheasant and feral cats added to the local wild life, and imported plants are threatening the endemic flora. The only endemic mammals, the Hawaiian Monk Seal and the Hoary Bat are both on the endangered species list.
Local people are divided on the merits of the pig population (which has no respect for anyone's gardens and did up the countryside like a herd of bulldozers). The hunters want to maintain plentiful game, and the conservationists want to get rid of them.
Tulip eating deer suddenly sound quite acceptable...
Overall an impressive island, one that reminds us how thin and volatile our earthly home is for all of us. Never far away from a tectonic fault causing earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis.
