Chrissy's World - Photos 1, Page 2, Waa Waa, The Hot Pond

After brunch, we decided to head on back to Hawaiian Paradise Inn and get ourselves
organized. We'd just arrived the night before and dumped everything on the floor and went to
bed, so we wanted to get ourselves "landed" and somewhat organized.
On the way back to Paradise Inn (green line), we missed the turn to Pahoa and ended up on
the Pahoa-Kalapana Road headed for Kalapana, where the Black Sand Beach used to be
located. Both the beach and the town were wiped out in the lava flow of 1992 or '93 and are
just up the road from where we would eventually buy our house (near Kehena Beach). You
can enlarge the map by picking on it, as you can with all the maps. At Kalapana, we hooked
left (map right) and followed the magenta line. This eventually brought us to the Hot Pond.
After that, we headed back home (cyan line).

There's signs like this all over the seashore

This is known as the Hot Pond. It is simply a tidal pool that happens to be over a thermal vent so that the water is
bathtub-warm. They have arranged the sea entrance so that seawater can get in, but the big waves can't crash in. As
you can see, it's not very friendly out there.

This sign intimidated me pretty good and I
didn't end up going in. But Robin wasn't
inhibited one bit and jumped right in... All
along, during the planning of this venture, all
she could talk about was going swimming.

Happy as a pig in - well, you know...

This young gentleman was informing
Robin of the fish he just saw. Looks
like a fish story to me!

After the Hot Pond, we headed back up to the "Four Corners" and turned left on the Pahoa-Kapoho Rd. (brown line)
and headed back to Pahoa for the night. It was quite a first day in Paradise!

On day 2, we did some more local exploring, heading out to see an unfinished dome house (green line to the left of the
map. The house was out in the middle of some old cane fields and it was really cool out there, but the house needed
too much work for our purposes.

Dome house

Road In

Road Past

After that, we decided to check out a couple of possible houses in Nanawale Estates. We tried getting there the
back way by following Homestead Road (green line near top to "Dead End"), but it ended in the middle of a papaya
farm with No Trespassing signs all around. So we went around and came in the front way (the magenta lines). We
found this development to be very suburban with houses packed fairly close together. That was the extent of the
day's explorations, although it took the better part of the day as you can guess from the quality of some of the roads
(above). I think we went shopping for supplies that afternoon -- at Wal-Mart in Hilo, no less.

On March 9, we took a trip to the other side of the island (white line around the bottom of the island) to
Kailua-Kona, looking for sunshine. Except for the day we arrived, it had been raining pretty much
non-stop. This was about when we started hitting the national news about our rainfall problems which,
by the way, never hit us too seriously, although we had to "tippy-toe" through some pretty hefty puddles.
Fortunately, we had the Jeep. But because of the rain, the sight distances were very limited, so I wasn't
taking any pictures. The route took us through Volcano and the Kilauea National Park which you will
hear a lot more about later. We stopped off at Pu'uhonua O Honaunau National Park near Captain
Cook to do a little snorkeling. We couldn't get the cheap masks we'd bought at Wal-Mart to stop
leaking, so we didn't really get much done. It was a first attempt, though. Just getting out feet wet, as it
were. We then continued on to Kailua-Kona (green line).