The landscape is arid and as torturous as the road. I read that this particular lava flow from Mauna Loa is young; only 250 years old. But it isn't pretty.
The two photos above show the worst part which is saying a lot because the whole thing was hideous. 4WD is definitely the way to go but we watched a Nissan Altima tough it out.
We took this road to the sea because we were looking for whale sharks which like to eat the plankton rich water. But the only "wailing" happening was me as my head would hit the side of the car door.
No whale sharks
Because I enjoyed that journey so much, we decided to embark another one to the most southern spot in the USA called..."South Point". When we finally arrived there was a crowd of young people hanging out near the cliffs. Come to find out, they had all jumped off the cliff into the water and then climbed the rickety ladder back up to do it again!
It is very windy at South Point as indicated by the tree above.
Tim wanted me to stand where the girl is in the picture above - NO WAY!
The bone breaking journey continued as we headed east over the rutted plains to the only green sand beach on the island or maybe in the state. The roads are 2 1/4 miles of up and down. I say roads because many a people have driven to the beach, each trying to find a softer route than the guy before. It's pretty hard to get lost because all the roads lead to the beach. Some guy decided to follow us - poor sap. It was truly trial and error (many) to find the road of least resistance. At one point, Tim decided to take the high road but, too late, did he notice that the left side was further down then the right side and the right side of the car was literally hanging in the air. (The car behind us decided enough following and pulled off the road.) I was going to get out but Tim wanted me to lean toward the right to act as a ballast. It was really scary but he, obviously, got us through.
What looks like cutaways in the grass, are the roads that people have made to get to the beach.
To get to the beach you have to scale down this cliff-uhhh, no thank you. We are probably the only people who drove that hideous road, got out, looked down at the water, took a picture, and left to do it all over again. I told Tim that I don't need to visit this lovely spot again.
On the way back, we did stop and continue a tradition we started our last time here. It is a sort of an island tradition to compose friendly messages from pieces of coral on the black lava. Last time, we "wrote" Andrew's name. This year we did both Andrew and Lyla's but we cheated a little.
Tomorrow we must give back the 4 wheel drive wrangler to the rental people-oh darn!
You guys are very adventurous.
ReplyDeleteLove your tradition!
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