Puako Petroglyphs

The Hawaiian Islands were first settled roughly 1000 years ago by some very brave canoeists from elsewhere in Polynesia, probably the Marquesas or Tahiti. The islands they settled looked rather different from what we see today since a large fraction of what we think of as native flora were actually brought here by them. So their legacy is a substantial one — as in, everything and everyone here that did not arrive later from North America and Europe. But one of the most enigmatic reminders of their existence are the petroglyphs: carvings into the lava rock that dot the islands. Some have obvious meanings: men, women, fish, canoes, spears, i.e., the usual iconography of an agrarian hunting and fishing society. Others are some kind of geometric symbolism about which essentially nothing is known.

Hawaii’s two richest collection of petroglyphs are right here on the Big Island, one near Kilauea Volcano and the other here on the Kona Coast near a beach called Puako, about an hour north of our house. I’ve written about it in some detail before, so just click here if you’re interested. (It’ll open in a new browser tab.) But for the past few years I’ve been yearning to photograph it from the air, failing every year because the winds in that area are usually quite strong, making drone flight impractical. But yesterday we got lucky, with winds of only a few knots, so I was able to realize that particular small ambition.

There’s a parking lot near the beach, and from the trailhead you make an ankle-twisting one-mile walk across broken lava to the petroglyph site, through an ominous assemblage of burnt, twisted trees that look like the Hawaiian version of the haunted forest that Dorothy et al navigated in The Wizard of Oz.

The petroglyph field is about the size of a couple of tennis courts and is covered with hundreds of the carvings. So here at last is my long-sought aerial tour of it: just click the image to open a YouTube video in a new tab.

When we returned from the site we hung out on the beach for a bit, failing to spot the hoped-for sea turtles or whales but enjoying watching the surfers. I took some drone video of them, which turned out to be a lot harder than I thought. If I succeed in assembling some clips of them, I’ll put them up in another post.

Hapuna a me ka Lapakahi

…which is not as complicated as it looks. It simply means “Hapuna and Lapakahi” in Hawaii, those being the names of two places on the Big Island that we visited yesterday.

Hapuna Beach is one of the best known beaches on the island, an achingly photogenic stretch of dun-colored sand caressed by a gentle turquoise surf, and framed by two jagged lava promontories at either end. Here’s a panorama from the drone, taken during yesterday’s visit:

Besides the obvious beach and surf, there are two other features of note: Kohala mountain bulging gently above the horizon at left, and the luxurious Hapuna Prince Beach Hotel at far left, regally overlooking the scene. The hotel is enormous and beautiful; several years ago we had the privilege of staying there for four or five days on someone else’s dime while attending a boondoggle conference. The mountain is also enormous: a mile-high, 200 square mile (500 square km) extinct volcano that essentially is the entire northwest corner of the Big Island.

Conditions are not always this idyllic at Hapuna. The surf can be rough, although the bottom is sandy — unlike the other, rockier beaches on the island — and so a rough surf is far less dangerous than elsewhere. And if the wind is high you can get sandblasted whilst attempting to enjoy yourself. But these are the exceptions. Most frequently the place looks like a postcard and it is a popular destination for sunning and body surfing. Here’s a 2-minute drone flyover video to give you a sense of the place:

(As you can tell, I’ve gotten heavily into flying my drone on this trip. But I dare you to tell me that this is not seriously cool.)

Neither Alice nor I are sunbather types. For one thing, when I am in strong sunlight my mottled pasty complexion moves the state of my skin almost instantly from “Anemic Vampire” to “Crimson Crispy”. In the words of Woody Allen, “I don’t tan, I stroke.” And Alice grew up in Oregon, where one’s best opportunity to get a tan requires dodging the raindrops. So we hung out for 45 or minutes or so with our visiting friends, then moved on.

Our next stop, further up the coast in Kohala, was a little more cerebral: Lapakahi State Historical Park. It’s the ruins of an ancient coastal village, about 600 years old. The name means “single ridge” and it is an array of ruins and reconstructed structures spread out along a rough lava coast and threaded by a mile-long interpretive trail. Like so many archaelogical sites it seems to make the most sense when viewed from above, so here are a couple of aerial shots:

In addition to the ruins, the offshore area is a Marine Life Conservation District. The interpretive path takes you past a variety of structures in various stages of deterioration or, in some cases, reconstruction. There are dwellings, canoe storage houses, salt-making pans, and a couple of kōnane games, the latter being a lot like Chinese checkers. It’s played on a lava “board” with a grid of hollowed out pits, with alternating black and white stones placed in the pits and variously moved around per the rules.

The aerial views give you a sense of the layout of the place, but, truth to tell, when you are following the path it mostly feels like you are walking among a random collection of low lava walls of uncertain purpose. Which, I suppose, is why I am not an archaeologist. Nonetheless, the place has an enjoyably eldritch feel to it, the susurration of the surf and the dark rough lava walls invoking a real sense of mystery and age. Or to put it another way, it feels just a bit like being inside the beautiful old computer game Myst. Here’s a video that I took by flying along the coast, so that you can see how large and spread out it is.

The surf has been high and the weather on the windward (eastern) side of the island rainy for the past few days, so we have confined our roamings to the Kona coast and the western side of Kohala to escape it. But things look better for the next few days. Tomorrow we will try and make it to the 13,802′ (4205 m) summit of Mauna Kea where the conditions are expected to be clear, provided one is willing to tolerate sub-freezing temperatures and 20 mph winds. They’ve had a lot of snow up there this winter, so if we are lucky then I will have some “snow in Hawaii” photos to post.