Tuesday: Hilo, Kea'au and the Puna District
We stayed the night at a great little hotel on Banyan drive in Hilo. Apparently each of the giant banyan trees were planted by famous people.
I was really impressed by the view out the dining room window at breakfast. It was a lovely cove with bridges and landscaping. I couldn't resist taking a picture.
We took the van to Pahoa to start our ride. We started out with a pretty fun slight downhill all the way to the coast. In the middle of the hill, we stopped to see a famous "painted church" which had been moved out of the way of the lava flow in the mid 1980's. Across from the Church was a little factory making Noni juice from the Noni fruit. This fruit is known for its anti-oxidant properties -- but it tastes HORRIBLE!! the fruit is a super crazy looking blob --
this picture is one I took of mom taking pictures of the Noni fruit.
After leaving the Church and the Noni juice factory, We actually got to ride all the way down the road to where the lava flowed over it!
It was amazing to be riding down a tree lined road and suddenly come upon a hill of black lava!
This Lava is pretty new, but already trees and little plants are starting to grow out of the cracks.
A little further down the road there were more views of the lava fields. I stopped to take pictures of the expanse of black lava, and also of plants growing out of cracks. I thought that this picture of a monkey fruit tree growing out of the lava was particularly incredible.
After the lava fields, our path turned up the hill again and headed back towards Pahoa. This ride was uphill, and very much in the rain forest. All the way up the hill, we were sprinkled with small showers. Because the day was quite warm and humid the showers felt really great. I was feeling really great riding today, so I decided to ride some extra miles before lunch. I was at the lunch spot before lunch was ready, so I jumped back on my bike and rode 4 miles north through Pahoa and out to where the main road hit the big highway and turned around and came back to the lunch spot at Lava Tree State Monument park. (Trees fossilized by lava)
After lunch was a challenging downhill ride from the park back down to the coast.
This ride was particularly challenging because the fun sprinkling rain turned into jungle showers! At the bottom of the hill we arrived at Ahalanui Beach Park - this is a public park, which has a hotspring right on the edge of the ocean - so close to the ocean that waves splash in one end and cool the water off. Yeah, that means that some fish are in the spring, pretty fun!
~ ABI
We stayed the night at a great little hotel on Banyan drive in Hilo. Apparently each of the giant banyan trees were planted by famous people.I was really impressed by the view out the dining room window at breakfast. It was a lovely cove with bridges and landscaping. I couldn't resist taking a picture.
We took the van to Pahoa to start our ride. We started out with a pretty fun slight downhill all the way to the coast. In the middle of the hill, we stopped to see a famous "painted church" which had been moved out of the way of the lava flow in the mid 1980's. Across from the Church was a little factory making Noni juice from the Noni fruit. This fruit is known for its anti-oxidant properties -- but it tastes HORRIBLE!! the fruit is a super crazy looking blob --
this picture is one I took of mom taking pictures of the Noni fruit.
After leaving the Church and the Noni juice factory, We actually got to ride all the way down the road to where the lava flowed over it!
It was amazing to be riding down a tree lined road and suddenly come upon a hill of black lava!
This Lava is pretty new, but already trees and little plants are starting to grow out of the cracks.
A little further down the road there were more views of the lava fields. I stopped to take pictures of the expanse of black lava, and also of plants growing out of cracks. I thought that this picture of a monkey fruit tree growing out of the lava was particularly incredible.After the lava fields, our path turned up the hill again and headed back towards Pahoa. This ride was uphill, and very much in the rain forest. All the way up the hill, we were sprinkled with small showers. Because the day was quite warm and humid the showers felt really great. I was feeling really great riding today, so I decided to ride some extra miles before lunch. I was at the lunch spot before lunch was ready, so I jumped back on my bike and rode 4 miles north through Pahoa and out to where the main road hit the big highway and turned around and came back to the lunch spot at Lava Tree State Monument park. (Trees fossilized by lava)
After lunch was a challenging downhill ride from the park back down to the coast.
This ride was particularly challenging because the fun sprinkling rain turned into jungle showers! At the bottom of the hill we arrived at Ahalanui Beach Park - this is a public park, which has a hotspring right on the edge of the ocean - so close to the ocean that waves splash in one end and cool the water off. Yeah, that means that some fish are in the spring, pretty fun!~ ABI
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