Going With the Flow in Hawaii

It was almost like a twilight picnic before a rock concert. People milled about carrying backpacks, coolers and baskets. Flashlight beams swung in arcs across the path. Shouts, cheers and chatter added to the carnival-like atmosphere.

A young woman pulled a marshmallow from her knapsack, skewered it with a stick and thrust it toward the orange glow. Roasting marshmallows in a national park is hardly unusual, but this woman was cooking hers over lava--scorching hot magma, molten rock--rising from 40 miles inside Earth.

About 400 of us were gathered here on a Friday in mid-July to watch the latest eruption of Kilauea, one of the most active volcanoes in the world. As of press time Tuesday, the Mother’s Day Flow, named for May 12, the day it started, was still close enough for spectators to make s’mores. But since my visit, the lava has marched down to the sea--about a 20-minute walk from the end of Chain of Craters Road, which was cut off by the flow, said Mardie Lane, a ranger at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. It is creating spectacular vistas of dangerous, fiery spray as liquefied rock heated to 2,100 degrees oozes, drips and streams into the Pacific.

It’s been seven years since Kilauea treated the public to such a close encounter. But because lava is notoriously fickle, experts can’t predict how long the Mother’s Day Flow will continue. For now, the spectacle is drawing thousands of locals and visitors--4,200 on one recent night, according to a National Park Service tally.

Kilauea has a long history of activity. In the last 50 years it has erupted 34 times, and the Puu Oo cinder cone on its east flank--the one causing the current fuss at the Mother’s Day, Boundary and HALP flows--has been spewing lava continually since 1983, adding 525 acres of grayish-black rock to the 4,021-square-mile Big Island. (The HALP flow was named for a U.S. Geological Survey global positioning system unit in the path of the lava.) The Mother’s Day Flow alone has created eight acres of new land since it hit the ocean on July 19.

This eruption of Kilauea was a bonus on my first visit to Hawaii. My husband, Barry, his son, Jann, and I had come to Kapoho, a small beach settlement on the less-touristed southeast coast about 30 miles south of Hilo, as guests of Barry’s sister Debbie Lapides; her husband, Murray; and their 6-year-old daughter, Alexandra. The Lapideses had rented an ocean-front house for the summer. We had nothing more remarkable planned than the usual vacation activities: bodysurfing at Waipio Beach on the northeastern side of the island, snorkeling with green sea turtles and lazing in a hammock while sipping POG, a mix of passion fruit, orange and guava juices.

During our weeklong stay, we learned that there’s more to this place than just the bliss of its beaches. You can get an astronomy lesson on Mauna Kea, one of the world’s tallest volcanoes; sleep on Kilauea’s rim, hike its caldera and poke around a creepy cave; and even have a sophisticated meal in a town called--what else?--Volcano.

The Big Island’s location makes it a bubbling caldron of volcanic superlatives. The southernmost of Hawaii’s major islands, it sits on a magma spout in the center of the Pacific plate and the “Ring of Fire,” a misshapen line of volcanic activity that encircles the Pacific Ocean.

The island is home to the world’s tallest mountain, Mauna Kea --32,000 feet if you measure from its base on the sea floor--and the most massive one, Mauna Loa, at 10,000 cubic miles. But Kilauea, rising 4,200 feet just a few miles northeast of where we stood, is the star of the island, the most temperamental and the one drawing crowds.

We started our volcanic explorations at Mauna Kea, Kilauea’s dormant sister, a rust-colored mountain slightly northeast of the center of the island. Astronomers adore Mauna Kea, which rises far from light-polluting cities and where clouds stay well below the summit.

On the volcano’s summit ridge, 11 nations operate 11 state-of-the-art telescopes, some of the world’s most powerful.

We had driven up from Hilo on Saddle Road, which bisects the Big Island and straddles Mauna Kea to the north and Mauna Loa, its more active and shorter--by 119 feet--sister peak to the south. Most major rental car companies don’t allow two-wheel-drive cars on Saddle Road, presumably because of its rough condition. We were in Murray’s four-wheel-drive Pathfinder (he had had shipped it from the mainland to avoid the cost of renting a car), and we found the road passable.

The unsigned turn for the road up Mauna Kea is easy to miss, and we did, but we retraced our path, found the turn and began the steep climb. We kept an eye on the car’s heat gauge as the needle nosed into the danger zone.

After an hourlong stop at the visitors center to acclimate to the altitude, Barry, Murray and I climbed back into the Pathfinder. (Debbie and the kids stayed at the center; children 16 and younger and people with cardiac and respiratory problems are advised to stay off the summit because its oxygen-scarce air can pose health risks.)

The view from atop Mauna Kea is spectacular. To the northeast is the somnolent peak of Haleakala, 75 miles away on neighboring Maui, and in all other directions the Pacific. Below are the surreal rust tones of a treeless landscape that could have been painted by Salvador Dali.

While Murray waited by the observatories to fight off altitude-induced dizziness, Barry and I took a mercifully short hike to the true peak at 13,796 feet, fighting a chilling gale. We had worn fleece jackets, long pants and hats, but I longed for gloves. (Who brings those to Hawaii?) The wind roared in my ears, tore my hat off and almost sent me tumbling down the mountain. I wasn’t surprised to learn later that Mauna Kea’s tip is often covered in snow and even has blizzards in winter.

As lovely as the view was, the show at the visitors center, where we had left Debbie and the kids, makes a trek to Mauna Kea worthwhile. The Onizuka Center for International Astronomy is one room of marginally interesting displays, videos and interactive computers, along with the usual souvenirs, snacks and concessions. But hang around till nightfall, because that’s when the heavens reveal their glory.

Volunteers and staffers set up powerful telescopes outside and train their sights on a sky so blurry with stars that it is hard to distinguish one constellation from another. They pointed out Venus low in the evening sky, Polaris, Scorpio and the Southern Cross, a constellation usually seen below the equator. Erik Rau, a guide, showed us the biggest star cluster in the Milky Way. Omega Centauri has more than 5 million stars, he said, and the light we were seeing left its source nearly 17,000 years ago.

Several companies on the Big Island operate daylong trips from Kailua Kona and Hilo to Mauna Kea, and from the snatches of lectures I heard, the guides seemed knowledgeable. But why pay $75 a person, I reasoned, if you can get the same show for free?

After the strenuous trip to the top of Hawaii, we decided on a cushier expedition for our next exploration. Leaving the family and kids behind, Barry and I drove up to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park for a night at the fire-engine-red Volcano House.

I’ve learned over the years that the National Park Service puts hotels in some fabulous locations, and the 42-room Volcano House is no exception. It’s perched at 4,000 feet on the lip of Kilauea, and the view from our room overlooking the home of Pele, the Hawaiian volcano goddess, was fascinating--a flat crater, formed when the volcano collapsed, with wisps of smoke rising from cracks.

A small fire burned in the lobby’s large lava-stone fireplace when we arrived on a warm afternoon. Windows flanked the fireplace, and a row of honey-colored koa wood rockers stood in front of it. Our room had a koa rocker too, and, in place of a TV, a shelf of bestsellers. If I’d had a week here, I could easily have curled up in a rocker, a Hawaiian quilt on my lap, watching the sun play off the crater.

After drinks at the Volcano House bar, where we had a view of Kilauea, we left for dinner at the 12-room Kilauea Lodge in nearby Volcano, a village of about 1,400.

When I saw the sign that read “Please check in your car for curious cat” in the lodge’s parking lot, I was so charmed that the quality of the meal wouldn’t have mattered to me. (Barry, who has higher standards, just rolled his eyes.) But the meal, from starter to dessert, deserved accolades, especially my entree--ono, Hawaii’s ubiquitous white fish, with capers--and Barry’s appetizer of celery soup with macadamia nuts. The dish that made the trip, though, was the coconut cake, so airy and flavorful that I would fly back in a New York minute for another slice.

Finding a sophisticated meal in such a small town surprised us, but there were other treats awaiting in tiny Volcano and the national park.

Our plan the next morning was to hike down into Kilauea crater, join Jann and the Lapideses in Volcano for lunch and return to the park for more geologic explorations.

The five-mile hike was relatively easy, the trail taking us down about 400 feet through a rain forest on the nearly vertical sides of Kilauea Iki (Little Kilauea) crater. We brushed against hapuu ferns twice as tall as my 5-foot-3 frame and yellow mamane blooming by the trail. I was on the lookout for a nene, the native Hawaiian goose and the state bird. I saw none, but Khalij pheasants, a game bird introduced to the island’s ecosystem, were plentiful.

Then the forest abruptly disappeared, and we stood on the edge of the caldera floor, staring at a barren plain of black rock, thrust into rough angles in some places, as smooth as obsidian in others.

In 1959 this was a pond of percolating lava. Slender reeds of steam rising from cracks reminded me that only a few feet beneath my hiking boots, the earth was hot enough to boil water. And just a few miles east, Kilauea was alive with streams of molten rock.

I didn’t think anything could grow in such a tortured landscape, but proving nature’s tenacity were the red-tufted blossoms of the native ohia lehua brightening the bleakness.

Our hike took two hours at a leisurely pace, leaving us only a half-hour to check out the nonprofit Volcano Art Center, next to the national park visitors center, before lunch. The 12-room gallery, housed in the first Volcano House hotel (built in 1877), is chockablock with jewelry, pottery, paintings, sculptures, ceramics and furniture crafted by Hawaiian artists.

I really wanted to buy some koa furniture, but Barry looked so pained at the prices that I settled for koa salad tongs. With shopping rapidly turning into an exercise in frustration, we left the gallery to meet the rest of the family.

We worked off our lunch of burgers and sandwiches at the Lava Rock Cafe with several quick hikes in the park: the half-mile Devastation Trail; another half-miler past reeking sulfur vents; and through Thurston lava tube, formed when surface lava cooled and hardened but magma continued to flow through an underground tunnel.

The tube was like walking in a long, narrow cave. Half the tube is illuminated, but our band of explorers decided to continue into an unlighted adjacent tube. The ground underfoot grew uneven, and the tube damper and creepier, so I proposed we turn back.

“I am not afraid,” Alexandra said. I wasn’t about to be outdone by a 6-year-old, so we continued until black walls closed in on us.

When we surfaced, it was time for the grand finale to our primordial odyssey, so we joined the line of cars on Chain of Craters Road, the highway that leads south from Kilauea’s caldera about 20 miles to the sea. When we arrived next to the sea it was sunset, the most popular time at the flow, so we had to park almost a mile from the road’s end, which was closed off by the lava flow.

Carrying cooler and picnic necessities, we joined the human chain moving over a path marked by yellow reflectors fastened to the lava.

We settled ourselves on a crumbly lava mound, passed around sandwiches and sushi, and watched as molten rock streams ebbed, flowed and changed course. Some of the visitors poked and probed within a foot of the lava holes, patches of orange peppering the black landscape. Less than a half-mile away, ethereal lava streaked a darkened cliff.

A woman screamed when she fell and cut herself on the lava. Barry felt her pain. Earlier in the week he had stumbled on a lava flow and sliced open his hand and thigh and scraped a few layers off his shin. Lava, I found out later, is about half silica, so landing on it is like falling on shards of glass.

I leaned against my backpack and stared at the sky, picking out constellations I had learned to recognize three nights before, then looked back at the ridge. The crowd blurred into background, leaving me to contemplate, in silence and awe, the birth of new land.

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When to Go, What to Take

You can get within a few feet of the lava on the Big Island, but because nature is often unpredictable, there’s an element of danger.

The most popular time to see the flow is at sunset, when the line of cars parked along Chain of Craters Road can stretch for two miles. Mardie Lane, a ranger at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, advises visitors to go at sunrise, when the sights are just as spectacular but the crowds are smaller.

If you’re going to see the Mother’s Day Flow, the park service says visitors should:

* Wear sensible shoes. Lava fields are uneven with cracks and fissures. As we learned firsthand, it’s painfully sharp if you fall.

* Take a flashlight. Though the lava is bright, it’s not bright enough to illuminate your way after dark.

* Take plenty of drinking water. The radiant heat off the flow combined with high temperatures and humidity can dehydrate you quickly.

* Stay out of the steam plume that’s caused by superheated lava hitting the ocean. The steam contains hydrochloric acid and minute particles of glass, which can sting your eyes and skin. If you have respiratory problems, it can be deadly.

* Stay off the new land created by the flow. It’s unstable and could break off.

* Watch out for centipedes. Their bites can cause discomfort and swelling, and anaphylactic reactions in allergic people.

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Guidebook: Hard Rock and Cafes

Getting there: We flew into Kailua Kona because we could get nonstop service. From LAX, the service is offered by United and American; connecting service (change of planes) is available on Northwest, Hawaiian, Continental and Delta. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $544.

Hilo is about 20 miles from Volcanoes National Park. Connecting service from LAX is available on Northwest, United, American, Hawaiian, Continental and Delta; restricted round-trip fares begin at $544.

Where to stay: For most of our visit, we stayed at my in-laws’ rented house in Kapoho, on the southeast side of the Big Island.

We splurged one night at 42-room Volcano House, at an elevation of about 4,000 feet on the edge of Kilauea crater in the national park; (808) 967-7321, www.nps.gov/havo/pphtml/lodging.html. Doubles in this 1846 structure start at $135; a crater-view room is $185. Ten cabins are also available for $40.

I tried but failed to get a room at 12-room Kilauea Lodge, P.O. Box 116, Volcano Village, HI 96785; (808) 967-7366, fax (808) 967-7367, www.kilauealodge.com. It was built as a YMCA lodge in 1937 on Old Volcano Road in Volcano Village, about a mile from the national park. Some rooms have fireplaces and koa furniture. Doubles $125-$175.

Where to eat: We had a buffet breakfast of the usual scrambled eggs, toast and fruit at Volcano House. The food was nothing special, but the view overlooking Kilauea crater is.

Our best meal of the trip

was at Kilauea Lodge, where chef Albert Jeyte creates an eclectic menu of game dishes such as Hasenpfeffer (rabbit) and antelope, seafood pastas and the ubiquitous Hawaiian fish ono. Entrees $17-$38. Reservations a must; (808) 967-7366.

The Lava Rock Cafe, on Old Volcano Road behind the Kilauea General Store (the building with the mural of

the volcano and rain forest), offers pizzas, burgers and sandwiches, most under $10; (808) 967-8526.

We also had a tasty meal at Cafe Pesto in the S. Hata Building in Hilo; (808) 969-6640, www.cafepesto.com. Pastas, pizzas and seafood $17-$29.

For more information:

Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, P.O. Box 52, Hawaii National Park, HI 96718-0052; (808) 985-6000, fax (808) 985-6004, www.nps.gov/havo.

For daily updates on the Kilauea eruption, log on to the U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaii Volcano Observatory site, wwwhvo.wr.usgs.gov/kilauea/update.

Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau, 2270 Kalakaua Ave., Suite 801, Honolulu, HI 96815; (800) GO-HAWAII (464-2924), www.gohawaii.com.

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Vani Rangachar is an assistant editor in the Travel section.