To my pleasant surprise, my awesome Hotwire deal got me a
Ford Escape for $240/week. Even more surprising, I actually had a lot of fun
driving this vehicle – maybe the first time I’ve enjoyed driving a domestic
car! I managed just over 600mi in hitting all my sites and sights! Let's start with Day 1.
I flew into Hilo from Honolulu on a Sunday morning arriving
around 9:30am. My first order of business after picking up the car was stocking
up at the local Wal-Mart with some basic dry goods and some camping fuel before
setting off for my first adventure of the week: Mauna Kea. After stocking up
and checking into the lovely Hilo Tropical Gardens where I had a cute little
campsite and set up my tent in the rain, I booked it up to Mauna Kea OnizukaVisitor’s Center to make their 1pm escorted summit tour. It’s free, but you do
need a 4WD or AWD to drive up to the summit. I make it there in the nick of
time where we have a 1 hour film to watch about Mauna Kea, the observatories,
and its flora and fauna. It’s also where our bodies start to acclimatize to the
high altitude.
After the film, we all quickly do our washroom pit stop and
then we all get in line with our vehicles to drive up as a convoy.
Unfortunately, I caught a really foggy and rainy day so I felt like I was
driving on Mars, surrounded by red rock and gravel, while being enveloped by clouds. As we get to the top, I hop
out of the car and quickly notice I was a little unsteady on my feet! The
altitude had definitely kicked in; I would compare it to being drunk. Being on
the escorted tour meant we got to tour one of the telescopes. They took us into
one of the Keck Observatory telesopes where we got to
see the telescope rotate and move around. It was so massive and so cool to see
the technology. This massive telescope weighing many tonnes had hydraulics that
would allow just one person pretty much move it with just their arm. Okay,
instead of getting into details, watch and listen to this video:
After that, we were free to explore the summit on our own. I
was pretty set on seeing if the clouds would clear for the sunset so I was one
of the people who decided to stay on the summit despite the single digit
(Celsius) temperatures. I made the quick hike up to the summit as marked by a
United States Geological Survey Marker and then huddled in the car for the
remainder of the hour and a half until the sunset where I wished with all my
might I would see it. No such luck. The whole time I was up there was rain,
mist, and fog. By the time I started my descent, the summit temperature had
dropped to 2 degrees Celsius. So close to snow!
 |
| The official summit of Mauna Kea. Okay, I lied. I got a glimpse of blue sky. |
So back to the Visitor’s Center I go as they have a
stargazing program every night (also free!). They sell bowl and cup noodles and
I think the bowl I had was the best bowl I ever had being so cold after being
on the summit. So remember how I said the stars were amazing when I was in
Martinborough last year? Well, this blows that out of the water. Being at
altitude with minimal light pollution, I have NEVER EVER seen so many stars or
seen the Milky Way so clearly! I felt like I could just lie there and stare at
the skies all night (except that it was cold). I was truly thankful for the
volunteers and staff who run that program every night so that they can share
such amazing sights. I wish that were my TV every night. At 10pm, the program
ended so back down to Hilo I went for the night. I would have had a great night's sleep if it wasn't for the Coqui frogs!
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