The Last Day -- The Sky Cries and the Sea Complains

It is our last full day on Hawaii and it seems to be protesting our departure. Or trying to get rid of us. One or the other.

Yesterday as we made our most ambitious exploration of the coral encrusted lava pools that have been our front yard for over a week, complete with fins to make short work of any currents we might encounter near the outer reef, a gentle rain fell on our backs from time to time from a bright enough sky. I was watching a goat fish tease a meal out of a rare sandy bottom with his chin whiskers until I spotted the biggest puffer fish to date, about the size of a football. I tore after it over a shallow belly bumping shelf into the the best coral “bowl” on the reef, only to have him disappear under a shelf draped with lettuce leaf coral. Popping my head up to reorient myself and spot my husband’s snorkel, I saw a wall of black sweeping in from the open ocean. Concerned that there might be lightning to go with that storm, we put the fins to good use and shot back in to the inner pools at record speed and danced across the lava boulders, reaching our house just as the first lashings of hard rain hit. Grateful we’d had an exceptional few hours in the water we retreated to lunch and our books, and a good afternoon of watching the rain from the covered lanai.

In the evening it had cleared to the south and we decided to explore the coastal road, Highway 137, cutting over to the end of the road on Highway 130, terminated by a lava flow many years ago, and hike out to see the lava and steam where in entered the ocean. The road itself turned into the adventure of the evening. Paved, but narrow and twisting and unpainted, the black asphalt merged imperceptibly with the black lava soil, at places canopied by trees so dense you needed headlights. When we arrived at the entrance to the lava viewing area we were turned back by the park attendants -- the wind had shifted and the sulfurous steam clouds smothered the area, making it unsafe to be there. By bedtime there was quite a storm brewing, with rain lashing the windows and the ocean breaking hard on the reef.



This morning the storm was still with us. The gray and heaving sea was dotted with whitecaps. Waves rearing up over the reef were the color of aqua milk glass, skimming the tops off their sugar white foam, leaving it in the wind behind them as they rolled on. Coupled with an increasing tide, the sea pushed into the coral pools to the point that it seemed we were only on a rocky shore, not a chamber laced miracle.

It cleared a bit this afternoon and we were able to snorkel the coral pools one last time, visiting the fish to see how they were reacting to all this excitement. Between the cloudy skies and the turbulence, the visibility wasn’t quite up to par, but we could still see clearly for 20 feet or so. Plenty clear enough to see the large sea turtle we flushed out of the hanging coral shelf he was sheltering out of. He peered out, realized we weren’t going anywhere as long as he was lingering in the same small pool we were in, not five feet from him, and the last we saw of him was his tail end, booking over a shallow buckle of smooth coral, back towards the open sea. We realized it our time in the water wasn’t going to get better than that, and we let the current take us back to shore.

Tomorrow we’ll head back to our beautiful dry desert, just in time -- I feel odd growths on either side of my neck that could be developing gills. A 90% reduction in humidity and some time in the sun should sort me out. But I will not be surprised when I dream of floating, suspended over a watery world populated by fish well-named parrot, trumpet, and butterfly. Hawaii has not seen the last of us.