Caves, Stars and Turtles

Friday, July 26, 2019

Another great day!  We began the day after checking out of our Hilo hotel, by going to the Kaumana Caves.  These are a giant network of underground lava tubes, widely connected, which result from the flow of molten lava and the cooling which leaves these enormous channels.  The floors are extremely uneven with irregular sharp wet slippery lava to walk over and the tubes narrow in places so that it’s necessary to crawl.  Joyce went only a short way in; Ben and Victor did the full excursion.

The entrance is down a steep stairway to a steeper opening in the earth:

 Inside the dripping wet caves are roots hanging from plants on the surface:

On the walls are masses of white and colored deposits which our cave guide said were from giant mats of bacteria which belong to a completely unique genus.

I was skeptical of that, and then he said that one of the bacterial examples was aspergillus.  I didn’t challenge him, but aspergillus is not a bacterium, it’s a fungus, and we’ve known about the lung disease it causes for a very long time.  It does not belong to any new category.  Oh well.

After the rather rigorous lava cave exploration, we went to the Imiloa Astronomical Center in Hilo:

We first had lunch.  The ten children on this trip have really done well together, and often choose to sit with each other for meals:

We then had a presentation at the Center which was extremely well done, relating the geography of Hawaii to that of the rest of the earth and out to the stars.  The astronomer used a clever demonstration of the difference between height and tallness to show us that Mauna Kea is the tallest mountain on earth, even though it is far from the highest:

We then went into the planetarium and had a great presentation of the sky which will be visible in Hawaii tonight.  It all was very well done.  We left for the Kona coast on the west side of the island, driving south to the black beaches made of volcanic sand. 

This is the home of the protected Hawaiian Green Sea Turtle, and they were there, waiting for us.  Their preferred resting site is separated from human beach access to protect their rest and their laying:

We arrived at the Kona/Kailua hotel, checked in and went for a lovely dinner, after which the children had a great time in the hotel pool until it closed.  They do have lots of energy!  Tomorrow is our last day; we start home on Sunday.