Hawaii -The Big Island

With my good friend Sasha from Michigan :)

            The ship docked in Hawaii Island, or “The Big Island.” I had a field lab for my Geohazards and Natural Disasters class. On that day, I woke up early to watch the sunrise for the first time on board. At 6:00 I was on deck 6 waiting for the sun to rise up and for the ship to pull into Hawaii. There were a lot of students, faculty and LLL, and we saw a lot of little whales and dolphins jumping around. Then we went to eat breakfast and then we did the immigration process, which was not bad at all. Everyone got ready to debark and I got ready to go to classroom 10 where the class met and we waited there for the bus to come pick us up. After a 40-minute ride we arrived to the Volcanoes National Park, where Kilauea volcano is. Kilauea is the most active volcano on Earth.

We started our tour on the Hawaii Volcanoes Observatory. One of the guides was there when the big volcano eruption occurred in 1959, so he told us about it. The other guide showed us the room where they monitor the volcano, with a lot of seismic and heat detectors, and radars, all monitored in screens in a big room. This observatory is located in the caldera, not too far away from the Haleumauma crater.

The view was spectacular. The caldera and the crater are huge, and there was a lot of volcanic gas rising up from the crater, although the smell was not strong. Afterwards, we went to Iki Lava lake, which formed after the 1959 volcanic eruption. We did a three-hour hike and we started on top of a mountain and descended until we got to the lake. Then we walked throughout all the lake for more than an hour. The lake is basically cold lava, and it looks like solid dark rock but it actually is more like glass. For example, I sat down on the ground and when I touched the rock it hurt, and sometimes while we were walking we would break some big rocks into small pieces. Every time we stepped on these rocks it sounded like breaking class.

One side of the volcano is wet rainforest and the other one is desert. This is because water evaporates and goes away from the volcano when it reaches a certain point, and also this water vapor is contaminated with sulfur, thus creating acid rain which is not good for vegetation or animals. Interesting fact: In that same lake Neil Armstrong and more astronauts trained before going to the moon. The surface of the lake is the same as the surface on Mars, the Moon, and the deep ocean.

Then we hiked up the forest to get to the bus and we went to eat Thai food on our way back to the ship. The next morning the ship docked in Oahu Island, but it was just a refueling stop so we did not get off the ship. Hawaii was a good experience, although too short. It was great to visit something different than beaches.

Eco Lips Balm