Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Halape

Before I go into great, lengthy, detail on my weekend beach adventure I have a message to my readership:
I love it when people make comments, it lets me know that people haven’t completely forgotten my existence. However, I like comments even more when I know who wrote them. See, otherwise I have to make assumptions such as it must be grandma who wants more pictures of herps.
Wow, I didn’t know my grandma knew what a herp was!!!
Next time I visit the grandparents I will have to give them a whole slide show of herp pictures!
So, save both my grandparents and me from the grave misunderstanding that would ensue- sign your comments (you people know who you are… and I don’t).

On Friday we were out ant mapping at Kahuku Ranch, the ex-cattle farm that will someday be part of the park. Part of our transect happened to pass by the Giant Pit-Crater of Awesome-ness (not the official name, but I highly suggest that park adopt my nomenclature system). I had pictured in my head a huge bottomless pit, and while that mental image had no relationship to reality, the actual pit crater was really neat. It was round, several hundred meters across and deep, and the bottom was completely forested. It was as if a circle of the forest dropped a couple hundred meters below all the surrounding woods. Being isolated like that, it seems like an area that could have all sorts of nifty things: unicorns, bigfoot, lost dinosaurs, etc. We climb up trees all the time in search of insects, it wouldn’t be completely out of the question to repel down a crater to “search for ants”.
Highly unlikely, but would be soooo cool (even if there turned out to be no unicorns).


(digital media fails to capture the awesomeness that is the pit crater)

All week I fantasized about another beach trip, this time without the soccermom minivan full of unruly “children”. Sometime in the last few weeks we stepped into the wet threshold of the Hawaiian rainy season where sunshine is no longer a daily guarantee. On Saturday morning I woke up to a grey sky and the sound of water pouring from the gutter outside my bedroom. Ignoring the weather (I am going to get wet at the beach anyways…), my housemate dropped me off at the trail head for a 10 mile hike to the nearest beach. It was a wet, but pretty, hike.


I passed through miles of black pahoehoe lava fields where bunches of red, orange, and green grasses sprouting along the rock edges gave the terrain the appearance as if aflame. Of course, these same fiery colored grasses also collected ample quantities of rain water, which was then transferred to my pants. Within an hour I was soaking wet from the waist down. Conveniently, by then I had dropped 1000 feet in elevation and it was relatively warm . I reached my beach of choice by early afternoon and met several park volunteers who were living there to monitor sea turtle nests.
I am not kidding here, the job of the turtle interns is to camp on a pristine Hawaiian beach for 6 days at a time, waiting for turtles to show up. Every night they have to patrol the beach hourly (6pm -2am) to spot incoming turtles, and they are expected to trap feral cats and mongooses, but that’s about all they are required to do. I showed up right as they were about to head to a favorite freshwater swimming spot, formed by a water seep in the lava field alongside the beach. I followed the turtle folks to “the Crack” ( I swear, that’s what they call it), a hidden pond of brilliant turquoise water filled with large aggressive shrimp. While the rest of us swam, one turtle intern sat on the rocks, trying to integrate the word “cloaca” into a song she was writing about sea turtles. They do spend a lot of time on the beach with just the turtles.

I eventually wandered off to go explore the larger, saltier body of water and enjoyed my own private beach, complete with some coral and coconut palms, for the rest of the afternoon. Towards the late-ish end of the afternoon I decided I needed a coconut. I spent half an hour bashing at it with a stick to get it out of the tree, and then another half an hour smacking it against a rock to get it open. Yep, a university degree and I am pretty sure that my pathetic coconut attaining techniques would make me an outcast in early hominid society. As I sat on a rock along the wave’s edge, eating my coconut and watching the water slide up and down the white sand, I couldn’t help but think: this is awesome.


As the sun was setting I wandered back to the main beach. I strung my hammock above the sand between two palms and then joined the turtle crew for a few of their beach surveys. It was pretty late in the turtle nesting season, and unsurprisingly, there were no turtles (adults or hatchlings) to be seen. I retired to my hammock and swung to sleep under a spectacular starscape unmarred by the lights of civilization.
In the morning I flopped out of my hammock onto the sand, found a coconut, and ate it for breakfast while sitting on the lava rocks just beyond the water’s reach. I rolled up my hammock and sleeping bag and hiked two miles down the coast to another beach (Keauhou) where I found some of the most spectacular snorkeling I have ever seen. Surrounded by a protective circle of lava rock was a shallow lagoon carpeted in an incredible quilt of multicolored corals. The water was beautiful, the coral, pristine, and the fish shiny, but eventually it was time to head up the trail again for the ten mile hike back towards civilization, Monday, and the humdrum daily life on top of a sulfur-belching tropical volcano.


the sun came out, and my camera ran out of batteries, so here is a picture to illustrate what it was like. this is a very accurate rendering, or course.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds great! I laughed over your lack of primative survival skills. Betty

Unknown said...

sounds incredible! I hope I get to experience this one day.

-pascal

Anonymous said...

C'mon, you don't think your grandparents would love to see photos of the metallic purple skinks??? I know I would! (yes, I know the herps are all introduced, but still...)

--Kellie