The Big Island

This last weekend we took a puddle jumper over to the Big Island and got a different experience from one here in Maui.

Our first stop was to experience the growing fields of the world-known Kona Valley and its coffee.

The Kona bean's unique flavor is due to the rich composition of the lava base.

We shared our breakfast with geckos with Australian accents 

and saw turtles basking on a black sand beach.

Then we went down to South Point, the southern-most point of the USA. If we looked real hard and kept looking, we would have seen Antarctica.

Unlike Maui, much of the water around the Big Island is that beautiful, aqua-blue found in the Caribbean.

We drove to the top of the Kilauea Crater, and although there are parts of it that continue to flow, we were only allowed access to it gaseous spew.

The Big Island is a much younger island than Maui, the lava flows much newer, and the many lava flows dominate much of the landscape.

Sometimes, for as far as the eye could see, mile after mile, was the barren blackness. We found a lot of it ugly, and a lot of ugly.

However, not all of the landscape was bleak. In the northern end near Hawi, we found rolling green hills reminiscent of Ireland (a tip o' the hat to the Irish alcove).

Flying home we saw from above another river of lava as it had flowed to the sea.