At the end of the day, after our walk in the woods among the frogs of Manuka State Wayside, we headed back to Kona on the western flanks of Mona Loa along Highway 11. We passed back thru the desolate Kipahoehoe Natural Area and took the turn-off back to Honaunau.
You see, the fair and industrious Trudy had spotted another place to go: Captain Cook, an enclave on Kealakekua Bay, where Captain Cook landed in the 1700s. From Pu‘u Honua o Honaunau, City of Refuge Road (State Highway 160) ran straight north our destination.
“Go this way,” said Trudy who was studying her maps intently and pointing up the road.
The road quickly became a single lane blacktop stretching across another desolation. There was no shoulder, and the road fell off 10 feet on either side. Beside the road flakes and slabs of cracking pavement were difficult to distinguish from the black lava of the landscape. After driving a while with no place to turn around and no indication that we were getting anywhere near the bay, we … well, we just had to keep going and hope that we didn’t run into a vehicle going the other direction.
Happily, there was no traffic. But there was a thick cable running beside the road, a sign perhaps of civilization ahead. And now and then the bleakness of the land was broken by a rock wall that ran up to the road’s edge after crossing that no-man’s land. (And just who built those walls, why and when?)
With no sign of anything ahead, I kept wondering aloud if this was really where we meant to be. And Trudy, studying her maps closely was certain that we were heading in the right direction. There were, the map assured her, no other roads thru this ancient lava flow, and the map said this road ran straight north into Captain Cook. And sure enough we came to an intersection and were back in civilization.
Now there were trees and flowers and homes and cottages and yards and gardens beside a narrow, winding road.
“Turn here,” Trudy said. Then, “Turn here.” And now we were driving along the bay.
“There should be a place to stop.”
The sun was getting low over the western ocean, and we were really hoping to catch sunset over the bay. Yet we drove past nothing but homes and cottages with no obvious place to look out.
And suddenly, there it was: a small parking lot with a park at the water’s edge—the perfect place, the place Trudy was taking us to all along. A breeze blew out of the west off the water. The the air was fresh. There were some other people standing on the beach taking pictures of the sunset.
We stood there for a few moments looking out on the bay, on the darkening sky, on the water washing up on the shore, on the jagged rocks breaking the surf. And we watched the sun descend into clouds on the horizon.
It had been a good day.
