Today we drove to the southern most point on Hawaii and by definition the southern most point in the USA. Unfortunately the first part of the drive was along the same stretch of road that we did the other day which is actually pretty boring, but we kept going and 2 hours later we reached the tip. At this point there is nothing but water between us and Antarctica which is pretty impressive. Unfortunately because we don’t have a 4 wheel drive car we were not allowed to go to Green sand beach unless we paid to get in the back of a flat bed truck and be driven down by the locals which we decided against. The beach is carved into a 49,000 year old cinder cone belonging to the Mauna Loa volcano which contains green crystals (olivines) these are apparently mixed with black lava and white coral which makes it fascinating to look at. From there we went round the bay a bit and stopped for lunch, this is a very dramatic part of the coast line with lava flows and waves crashing down. It is apparently where the first Polynesian’s landed and where despite the crashing waves they used to go fishing. There are ‘caves’ carved in the rocks where they used to leave their canoes while fishing to make sure they didn’t float away. From there we continued along Highway 11 towards Hilo and got as close as we are able to Volcano National Park, you are not allowed to stop at all and in parts there are signs warning of road damage due to earthquakes but you don’t get very close although we did see the ash plume from the volcano. We decided to drive back across Saddle road again and I am glad we did as it was really clear this time and we had a great view of the volcano and no fog or mist at the top. We stopped at the rest area to have a bit of a stretch and also to look at the view then started the decent back to the hotel. We have to pack up tomorrow and head to LA but we have an evening flight so we will have a final drive round tomorrow.
