BY ZORAH BURRESS / Kalamalama Staff Writer
Last year, my roommates and I took a weekend trip and Island hopped to the Big Island. It was kind of a spur-of-the-moment plan, and within a couple of days we had an Airbnb and a car to rent out for the weekend.
We flew into the Kona airport, got the rental car, and drove up to our house in Hilo. The drive was mostly large farmlands on the way up to our Airbnb. We stopped and played with baby goats at the Honomu Goat Dairy farm.
The first beach we stopped at was Punalu’u Blacksand beach which was so amazing to see how the sand was so coarse and black I’d never seen anything like that before. There are only about 20 Blacksand beaches in the world so it was really cool to go and see it.
We also went to Hawaii Southpoint which is the most southern point in the United States it’s about a 40-foot cliff jump. Once you jumped off into the ocean, you had to climb a rope ladder to get back up. My 3 roommates jumped and said it was fun, but hard to get back up the ladder.
We then drove up to one of the tallest peaks in the world, Mauna Kea. This mountain is about 13,803 ft above sea level. In order to drive up it, you need to have a 4-wheel drive car. We drove up halfway and had to stop at a checkpoint. The checkpoint was for our bodies to acclimate to the elevation. While we were waiting for our bodies to get used to the elevation, there were workers that gave us safety instructions on how to drive up and down without burning out the brakes.
When we were all set to continue driving, we continued up the road. The road quickly became dirt and mud. The rails that prevented us from slipping off the side of the mountain disappeared. The higher up we drove, the heavier the cloud cover became. We were about 2 miles away from driving up this crazy scary “road” and the car stalled and we started rolling backward.
The whole drive was very scary and hard to do. But finally, we made it to the top, we didn’t stay up there for as long as we wanted because the altitude was so high. We watched the sunset from above the clouds and then drove back down in the dark.
When we stopped at the halfway point the rangers said our breaks were too hot so we had to wait about 45 minutes for them to cool down in order to make it down safely.
Overall, it was an amazing view above the clouds, but the drive up was very sketchy.
My favorite thing that we did during the trip was hiking up to see the active lava at Kīlauea. The Volcano was a crazy experience I’ve never seen anything like it before.
We had to park down in a parking lot and then hike up this broken road from the volcano eruptions. It was very cold as we got further up in elevation.
When we got to the end of the road it was a straight drop looking down into streams of lava. The lava glow was so bright, it lit up the whole sky orange.
My second favorite thing to do was manta ray diving through a company called Kona Boys. when we arrived at the harbor, there were lots of different boats all going manta ray diving. When we found the right boat, they went over safety precautions, gave us wetsuits, and loaded us into a canoe.
When we got to the drop spot, there were floating devices with LED blue lights that lit up the dark water. These lights attract plantain, and the manta rays know its feeding time. I never realized how big these creatures were until they got about a foot away from us.
Although these creatures were huge and intimidating, they were the most gentle and graceful creatures I’ve ever seen.
Overall, Big Island was my favorite island I’ve been to. Every part of the island is different in its own way. There are so many cool things to do and see and I would highly recommend going and checking it out.
