Pu`uhonua o Honaunau National Historical Park

Welcome to the city of refuge. Hawaiians fleeing death sentences were allowed to live here if they could make it before the sentence was executed. That was until 1819, when Kamehameha II ended the practice. Now it's a national park with many interesting features.









Those ~500 year old lava walls are a few meters thick.



The Hawaiians built habitable structures on them, like this:



The ponds hold rainwater and salt spray from the ocean behind me.



You can tell they're brackish by the abundance of pickleweed...



Unfortunately, the pickleweed is Batis martima, a Californian that arrived recently and is invasive here.



Conservation efforts are underway.



That green shrub is Morinda citrifolia, a widely distributed tropical species.



It makes a fruit the Hawaiians call noni. Traditional/alternative medicine people value it highly; science is not so sure. Ripe fruit is putrid (think vomit + fart), and usually found on the ground.





This green shrub is naupaka (Scaevola taccada syn. S. sericea), another medicinal.



The flowers appear to be halved, giving rise to a legend that you can read about here.



There are a few miles of trails and other things to see.











Next door is Two Step, a popular snorkeling site named for the two natural rock steps you take in to the water. I snorkeled for little bit and saw big schools of yellow tang (and many other things besides). I should have bought fins when I bought my snorkel and mask (for $20, at Long's). I felt a little bit insecure without fins. When you come, please do not step on the coral. Don't step on the coral anywhere.



The house in the background is flying the Hawaiian flag upside-down. I will let you intuit what that means for yourself.

The lava field next door

We stayed at the Aston Shores at Waikoloa. Waikoloa, for those of you who don't know, is the Big Island's nexus of mega-resorts on the western, desert side. (The big town on the island's west side is Kona so you call it the "Kona side", as opposed to the eastern "Hilo side" where anything less than 70 inches of rain annually arouses drought concerns.) Anyway, Waikoloa is... convenient, especially if you're traveling with 85-year-olds, as we were. I don't have a lot to say about Waikoloa, the nexus of mega-resorts, except that it's... convenient.

But I do want to show you the lava field, with petroglyphs, around which Waikoloa, the nexus of mega-resorts, is built.

That's our parking lot on the right. Besides being somewhat heart-breaking, one of my favorite things about Hawai'i is the extreme juxtaposition of natural and man-made environments.



One step in this direction, and you stand on virgin land spewed from the guts of Mother Earth some millennia ago. One step in the other direction, and it's a golf course. It's like Four Corners, but more elemental, more visceral, and a little bit inscrutable.



The fountain grass you see everywhere on the Kona side (north of Kona anyway) is not part of the natural natural environment. That's Pennisetum setaceum, an escaped ornamental from the nexus of mega-resorts. (Gardeners...pfft!)



Just looking at it prompts musings on accelerated rates of soil formation, et cetera. The lava fields are very quiet, and prompt introspection.



So do the craters and caverns and tubes you often find.



How close do you want to get?



Some people feel inclined to leave offerings to Pele in places like this.



Other people leave different kinds of offerings, to no one in particular.



As always, I am just here to take pictures.





Near here you can see ancient petroglyphs.



Now you have two different kinds of man-made environments to contemplate. The juxtapositions are piling up!



But you can just keep going.



And going.



And going.