Hawaii's Big Island gaining steam

BY ROBERT W. BONE
Travel Arts Syndicate

Hawaii's first tourists, Captain James Cook and his company of Royal British sailors, didn't fare too well when they visited Hawaii's Big Island in 1779. The locals killed the great explorer in an argument over a rowboat. Since then, however, travelers have been more hospitably received in the nation's 50th state.

In a very real sense, the Big Island is Hawaii. And this is not because its volcanoes, cowboys, mountains, tropical rain forests and spectacular beach resorts are representative of the state.

Two centuries ago the word ``Hawaii'' was applied to the Big Island alone. In fact, until Cook sailed into the neighborhood in 1778, the chain of islands we now call Hawaii had no collective name at all. Cook wrote ``the Sandwich Islands,'' on his charts, thus honoring his patron, the Earl of Sandwich. The largest island in the group is still officially the Island of Hawaii, but to avoid confusion, everyone in Hawaii calls it simply ``the Big Island.''

Actually the name is an understatement. With more than 4,000 square miles, it's twice as large as the seven other main Hawaiian islands put together.

Despite its size, the Island of Hawaii is sparsely populated, with vast cattle ranches, large tracts of conservation land and other open country. It has fewer than 150,000 residents.

Historically, the Big Island has been less popular with travelers than the islands of Oahu, Maui, and Kauai. In the past few years, however, the growing collection of luxury resorts on the island's dependably sunny western coast has been changing all that. 

This side of the island, along the golden beaches of the Kona and Kohala coasts, is served by the Queen Kaahumanu Highway, which crosses several old lava flows. Newcomers notice the unusual graffiti along the way, where many have spelled out messages by carefully arranging pieces of white coral against the coarse, black lava. 

On this seemingly inhospitable ground, palm trees and bougainvillea have been planted and several tropical golf courses created that are ranked among the world's finest. But on the lava-lined fairways, if your ball goes in ``the rough,'' you've usually lost it for good. Some places are covered with such sharp rocks, not even a goat could walk on them. Wild goats and donkeys are often seen along the coast, and they often prefer the relative comfort of green golf links to rough stones as they make their way from one place to another.

HISTORIC LOCATION

This coastline also figures prominently in Hawaiian history. It was from here that Kamehameha the Great launched his successful 18th Century campaign to unite all the islands under his rule. The conqueror's headquarters were at the village of Kailua-Kona. A small collection of thatched huts and wooden towers, a partial reconstruction of the royal compound, is on the grounds of the otherwise undistinguished King Kamehameha's Kona Beach Hotel.

Kailua-Kona was also the site of the first American missionary compound on the island. Members of the Calvinist community sailed from Boston and landed in the Islands in 1820, a few months after Kamehameha's death, a time when the old Hawaiian religion was being challenged by younger Hawaiians. The church they built in 1837 is still in use.

Kailua-Kona is the center for year-round sport fishing. Charter boats often return home with record catches of marlin and other deep-sea species.

Also on the Kona Coast is Kealakekua Bay, the site of Captain Cook's tragic demise. A small white obelisk marks the spot where Cook fell.

Kealakekua Bay today is an underwater park, one of the best places in the Hawaiian Islands for scuba and snorkel parties to see many species of colorful fish. Also beside the bay are the remains of a Hawaiian heiau, a stone platform which served as a center of worship in the Hawaiian religion. Based on ancestor worship and veneration of higher classes, it included severe penalties for small transgressions.

CITY OF REFUGE

Two other religious sites are in the same neighborhood. One bears the difficult-to-pronounce name Pu'uhonua O Honaunau (``poo-oo-hoe-NEW-ah oh hoe-now-now'') National Historical Park, but locals usually call it the City of Refuge. Before modern times, those who broke a taboo such as eating food reserved for a chief remained unharmed if they could make it to this sacred sanctuary. Otherwise they were put to death.

A couple of miles away on a small country road is the Painted Church. In the 20th Century, its minister decorated the inside of this modest frame building as if it were a large European cathedral.

The premiere draw on the Big Island, however, is Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, not far from the eastern shore.

VOLCANIC ACTION

There are two volcanoes within the park. One of them, Mauna Loa, 13,679 feet tall, erupts every 25 years or so. Lava last poured down its slopes in 1975, so scientists have been watching it closely in recent years. Hawaiian volcanoes, however, are not of the explosive kind, so they are not considered especially dangerous to human life, although property can be rendered essentially useless by flowing lava.

Visitor activity is centered around the other volcano, Kilauea, which is not a separate mountain, but more like a deep pit on a plain. Its massive crater has often served as the stage for a dramatic show of fire and lava.

Today it often sends up smoke and sulfurous fumes, and it could become active again at any time. Travelers often like to drive completely around the crater which is two miles in diameter. The rim road measures 11 miles.

Kilauea has been technically in eruption since January 1983. But instead of coming to the surface in its crater, lava has been coursing underground to emerge in other locations, most recently on the Big Island's southern shoreline.

A rambling two-story hotel, the Volcano House, has been perched on the crater rim for the past century and a half. Nearby is the National Park Visitor Center where rangers advise visitors on where they can safely appreciate the features of the park.

One of these places is the Chain of Craters Road, which winds down a gentle slope over vast fields of lava, past dozens of small craters. At one time, the road led clear out of the park at its lower end, but it has been blocked by heavy lava flows in recent years.

At the very end of the road today, rangers indicate where visitors can walk over cooled lava to see any current volcanic action. Often this takes the form of a cloud of steam at a distant point where 2,000-degree lava pours into the ocean.

Little by little, the Big Island is getting bigger.