On Friday the 'valleys' were our destination. This time the sun and the rain agreed to cooperate with us. It was such a beautiful day. The drive up north to the valleys was so beautiful. The first Valley is called Pololu and is so deep and only accessible from the ocean by boat. There is one dead end road that looks over into one small segment of the valley and you stand there, with the wind blowing the hair off your head and wishing you could go down into that jungle and see what there is to see there; but you had better be in very good condition and able to carry everything you need on your back with you which left me out right away. It is gorgeous though.
Waipio Valley is just a bit more accessible. There is sort of a visitors stop and overlook that shows the shore and the "square shaped" opening from the ocean into the valley. AW such beauty. There are waterfalls over the 2000 foot cliffs into the ocean and the waves crashing into the shore that just takes your breath away. After spending a while at this stopping point, we take off down the road into the valley.
Every vehicle that goes into this valley MUST be 4-wheel-drive. There were several people hiking; we met some coming up and passed several going down. The first part of the road is a 25%, that is no typo I said 25%, grade down (I don't really know how far but it sure wasn't short). It took several minutes to reach the bottom of this "hill". This is where the paved, if you can call it that, part of the road ends. It is gravel or rock or dirt or mud the rest of the way, with the exception of when the road and the creek are the same for some distance. (pictured are Ipuu falls on the left and 1,600 foot Hilawe falls)
It is so awesome, 2000 foot cliffs above you and all around you very lush growth. It gives new meaning to the word boon docks. We do find several homes, houses, there and find some small plots of land under cultivation.
We saw something being grown in a paddy that is flooded at the proper time much like rice is. I found out later that it was the Hawaiian sweet potato. There is no electricity in this valley, so all the folks who live here are really roughing it. I did see one lady mowing a small patch of yard, though most of the land surrounding the houses was left to the wild. It appeared that all the homes were heated with wood, because I saw some piles of wood around some of the houses. Maybe they have to still cook with it, because I can't imagine it getting very cold here. It is really, really damp though and maybe they have to have a fire some times to dry the house out. Ha ha
We found that "square shaped" opening from the ocean into the valley and it was just as breathtaking as it was from above. The ocean waves crashing all along the rocky (huge lava rocks) shore, the waterfalls nearby and the driftwood piled up on the lava rocks made such a beautiful setting that we broke out the cooler and the sandwiches and had our lunch right there.
There were many, many trees and it was so shaded and secluded and just so pretty. That I could do every day.
All along the road you are looking across the valley to the cliffs on the other side, covered with lush green growth and at almost every crevice there are waterfalls. They are magnificent. Some of them show themselves for a stretch, then hide in the undergrowth or go underground and re-emerge again and again down the cliff. There several of these waterfalls, not just a couple.
We drove around in the valley for a while until it started getting late and we headed back out. Going up that 25% grade was just about as bad as going down it, but it was fun.
For the first time this week as we went back into Kona to the Resort we got into the heaviest traffic we had run into. It was awful and it took forever to get back to the condo, made us think of rush hour back home. I wondered how much of it was weekend traffic going way for the weekend and how much was tourists coming in for the weekend.
