Catching our breath from the near run-in with a local bird, we tooled along Chain of Craters Road.
“That wasn’t a nēnē,” I said, showing the family the results from my Google search.
In contrast to the nēnē (the Hawaiian goose with its soft call), the exotic chicken who had rushed our vehicle was the male Kalij pheasant, my phone said, and was often spotted in the Himalayan foothills, from Pakistan to western Thailand, although someone had introduced the species to Hawaii as a gamebird in the early 1960s.
We seized the dwindling daylight and stopped the car to romp in the national park’s fields of lava rock along the East Rift. At one pullout, we snapped pictures of the expansive Mauna Ulu lava flows, blanketing the landscape from 1969 to 1974, now hardened and resembling the moon’s surface. At another, we gazed into the almost four-hundred-foot depths of the Pauahi Crater. Finally, we parked the car, so we could hike up to view the glow of Kilauea, its newest eruption having broken out only a few weeks earlier.
We trekked the paved path for twenty minutes with Flicka hobbling along, the “urchin pieces” in her foot slowing her down. The skies darkened to pitch as we walked, and the wind swept us forward. My mind returned to a familiar vacation subject—appropriate clothing—and to a conversation with Husband before our departure from Minnesota.
“I should probably bring my packable down,” I had said with a wink, dangling the coat for a second over my suitcase.
“Knowing you,” he said, “you probably should.”
But I hadn’t. And on this night’s hike up to the volcano, a pair of shorts, t-shirt, and flimsy jacket weren’t cutting it. I crossed my arms and tightened my abs to stave off the chill.
We arrived at the summit and joined a mass of spectators, but our reward was only a hint of orangey glow emanating from the pit.
“Come back in forty days,” someone at the hotel had told us earlier that day, “And you’ll see the full lava lake of Kilauea.”
On the drive back to the hotel, pinpricks of light shone through the drape of blackness over our car.
“Dance with me under the diamonds,” Justin Bieber serenaded us through the speakers. Even pop music sounded glamorous in a tropical locale. “See me like breath in the cold…”
“Uh, I dropped my ID somewhere up at the volcano,” Flicka announced from the back seat.
Bieber’s voice was smooth, his lyrics timely. “You say that I won’t lose you, but you can’t predict the future, so hold on like you will never let go…”
Ugh. If only Flicka had.
After Ricka, Dicka, and I finished our free thirty-minute hula lesson at the hotel the next day, we all zipped into downtown Kailua-Kona to Body Glove Cruises for our whale-watching tour. The boat was large, the gathering small. The guy on the mic peppered us with humpback whale facts.
“Whale watching should really be called whale waiting,” he said. And over our three-hour session, we practiced waiting while he repeated that same statement a few more times.
Our guide described Migaloo, the well-known hypo-pigmented humpback whale, and I followed the intriguing sea creature on Instagram. While the famous one has been spotted off the coast of Australia, some have claimed to see the “white fella”—as the aboriginal elders call him—near Maui. But no celebrities for us today. Instead we eyed the usual—but still impressive—grey-colored variety a handful of times, their massive bodies rolling through aquamarine waters, showing us glimpses of backs or dorsal fins, if we were lucky.
On the route back to the port, spinner dolphins showed off near our boat, giving us a grand finale to our sea show. We waved goodbye to the tour crew and strode to the car. The girls scrolled through their phones.
“There’s Pukie and her kids,” Ricka said, pointing at an image.
“Wait. What?” I said, leaning in.
“You didn’t see that lady on the boat?” Flicka said. “She threw up a substantial, singular time.”
Sure enough, I had seen the mother with her two little girls across the deck from us, but hadn’t witnessed the vomiting. A quote from a book blew in: “Sailing is the fine art of getting wet and becoming ill, while going nowhere slowly at great expense.”
Hopefully now the woman felt better—and like we did: the whales were well worth it.
Back at the room, we snacked on fruit—soursop, egg fruit, and lilikoi—from a local farmer’s market while we freshened up for the Haleo Luau on the Sheraton’s grounds. Outside, we located our table on the carpet of grass, and a mongoose skittered across our path. Before taking our seats, though, we ventured toward the ocean and captured forever pictures there, the golden hour photoshopping our skin, lest we forget when Minnesota’s winter winds chap it.
Instead of a buffet experience, our plated feast came to us at the table: taro chips and shoyu poke, lomi lomi salmon and kalua pork, hoio salad and coconut rice, teriyaki New York steak and purple sweet potatoes. Later, over pineapple upside-down cake and haupia (coconut pudding), performers whisked us away with their Polynesian dances and songs. A storyteller carried us through the birth of King Kamehameha III—and into his reign where the royal blended ancient traditions with new—and transported us into the surfing stories of He’eia Bay.
The festivities over, we wandered back to our rooms, flickering torches pointing our way through palm trees, bird of paradise, and red ginger. Scents of passion fruit flower and gardenia escorted us. And there was that crashing beauty again in the darkness—the Pacific blasting against black rocks—restraining her power long enough to allow us to pass.
Husband and I gave up our usual evening on the balcony in favor of sleep. 4:30 a.m. came early, and we needed to rest fast. Sunrise in Pololu Valley—an hour’s drive away—waited for no one.
We would catch tomorrow’s fresh mercies even as they peeked over the horizon.
*Tune in next week for the fourth (and final) installment of the story. Mahalo!
*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.