Month: November 2016

The cold hike in the rain confined me to the bed with a box of tissues, but I was determined to rest up. The allure of snorkeling with Manta Rays later that night was enough to keep me there when the boys announced they were going out hunting! They loaded up the snorkeling gear, Dad’s traditional Hawaiian sling pole spear with a rubber band, and a fishing knife and headed off to the the nearest State beach (where it’s legal to spear fish).

I awoke to my ecstatic brother bursting into the room– “I knifed it! I knifed it!!”

The astonished laugh of my husband filled the room as Dom told the story of their hunting adventures that day… He had cleverly smashed a purple sea urchin (which are destructive to the reef) and put it on the end of his long fishing knife. As the enquiring fish came in for a closer look, his quick reflexes prevailed and he stabbed it right through the tough scale armor of a brown unicorn fish!

Lukas had also managed to spear a blackish blue trigger fish with the traditional spear! He said it was extremely difficult since the fish reacted to the sound of the stretching rubber as if they knew what was coming! Plus you had to aim a bit in front of the fish since they are swimming!

When they set to cleaning the fish, we were all surprised at the texture of the scales of the fish. It almost felt like armored thick sandpappery leather skin instead of scales. Their triumph of actually catching the fish by hand dulled their sense of guilt for killing the pretty reef fishy…

We grillled the fish on the BBQ with salt, pepper and a squeeze of lemon. The brown unicorn fish had nice flavorful meat. If you are wonderingly about the black fish… we didn’t cook it… since it gushed out brownish gook when they were cleaning it out and it stunk to high heaven!!(Lukas: “this FISH is 90% poop!!”)

 

On our hike in the rain we picked up a fruit that we thought was an unripe mangosteen. We excitedly attempted to open it at the breakfast table the next day (since we didn’t have time to wait for it to ripen), but it’s thick skin put up a good fight and we had to get out ‘the big knife’. Imagine our surprise when we saw this neon colored sticky GOO… looks Dangerous to ME!!

Anyone know what this thing is??

Early in the morning on the 19th of October, Lukas, Dominic, Gary, and I all piled into the mustang and headed up the cost to take the saddle road over to the Hilo side of the island to hike!

As we cruised up the coast in the Hawaiian sunshine, we passed plains of tufts of waving grass growing out of the lava covered coast and wondered at the strange small cone-shaped mountains hinting of eruptions past.

Our goose bumps forced us to put on the car top as we increased in altitude on the steep incline. The temperature steadily dropped from a balmy 82F to a chilly 64F on the way to the misty crest of the saddle pass between Mona Kea and Mona Loa. A torrential downpour commenced and the wind shield wipers worked frantically the entire way down the mountain.

We were determined to reach Rainbow falls that we had seen on the AAA map, and thankfully the rain turned to a threaten of a drizzle as we pulled into the parking lot.

On the way to the top of the waterfall, we found an absolutely enormous banion tree. The boys tried to swing from the hanging roots like Tarzan and I found a bunch of passion fruit!

We all made it out to the top of the waterfall:

After rinsing the mud from our tennis shoes, it was time for our next hike. We searched for the trail head to no avail, and in desperation asked a local for directions. He gave us directions and mentioned he was on his way by the place and invited us four to hop into the back of his pick up truck and he would drop us there! Hah! Nice guy!

Despite the rain, we thoroughly enjoyed our hike- collecting guavas, finding wild orchids everywhere and eating lunch by the river.

Drenched, we hopped into the car, cranked up the heat and began our drive around the south side of the island. What a great way to scope out where we wanted to come back to during the rest of the trip, and to experience several of the 10 microclimates on The Big Island.

At the end of a very long local road we found a beautiful rock beach to watch the sunset from, and why not in a sturdy acacia tree?

Aside: Have you ever seen one of these spiral seed pods? Let me know if you know the name of the tree it came from.

 

After finally arriving in Hawaii, we were itching to get into that warm tropical water!

We picked up our Mustang rental and cruised to the house our family had rented in Kona.

As soon as the sun was up the next day we headed out to snorkel along the Kona coast of the Big Island.

We were rewarded with a huge eagle ray that cruised by us on the outside of the reef. Lukas dove down and got a great video that I’ll upload later when we get to a computer! Here’s the still:

****UPDATE****

EAGLE RAY VIDEO (18MB, 9 sec):  dscn5274

Check out these wild sea urchins too: