When we planned an eight-day visit to Hawai’i’s Big Island in late April, we knew that an eruption cycle in the Kilauea caldera had begun a few months earlier–but eruptive episodes last only a few hours and occur days or even weeks apart. So it was by great good luck that we arrived in Volcano on the eve of Episode 45, which began in the middle of the night. We scrambled out of bed, into our clothes, and two miles through the dark to the closest viewpoint in Volcanoes National Park, where we spent hours gazing transfixed at one of our planet’s most primordial and magnificent spectacles.
Another highlight of the trip was an afternoon spent at the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden outside Hilo. Surrounded by blooms in a stunning array of colors and shapes, we relished the floral beauty–and saw and heard birds doing the same.
Speaking of birds . . . . On our one prior visit to the Big Island we had hoped to see a Nene Goose, the endemic state bird. We did not. Happily, we saw multiple Nene on several occasions on our recent trip. These handsome birds, thought to have evolved from Canada geese starting around half a million years ago, are the sole survivors of the five goose species that were once found in Hawai’i.