it is a big island

so i'm here on the island of hawai'i, the big island, so big that all the other Hawaiian islands could fit on top of it. so far i've seen the town of kailua-kona, and the northern half of the island.

the sun is huge here, especially at sunset. (the zoom lens doesn't hurt either.)

so are the waves.

the landscapes are so varied, within a half hour drive you can go from completely barren desert to lush green rainforest...

there are so many microclimates on this island it's amazing. you can see many of them at once from some lookout points... and the sunsets over the ocean are always stunning.

volcanic

so yesterday i hiked across the crater of haleakala, the volcano that makes up the east half of maui. it was a pretty awesome journey, 12 miles across the crater of a "dormant" (not technically, since it erupted in 1790, but dormant enough) volcano. "haleakala" means "house of the sun", and according to hawaiian legend, it was the place where maui, the demigod, went to lasso the sun so that his mother could have more daylight.

i'm in the process of uploading photos from the trip, but the internets are slow here at the hostel since it's free wifi, so it might take awhile. so for now, have a picture of the sunset on friday night, off my friend Cass's parents' lanai in napili, on the northwest coast of maui:

maui.

so i arrived here in maui about an hour ago, after a long damn plane ride and a quick trip from the airport to my hostel. it's a pretty sweet place here, i've got a bed in a room with 4 other women, and the common areas of the hostel are pretty well populated.

no time for photography tonight, unfortunately... we flew in at sunset, and being on the east side of the mountains it got dark pretty quickly. it's also cooled off; it was 90 and muggy when we landed, and the airport is pretty much all open air, which makes it a bit warm.

i'm probably going to crash out pretty early tomorrow, since i'm still on pacific time, rather than hawaii time. it's a 3 hour time difference, so it's like flying from new york to seattle. tired early, awake early (or so i'm hoping). maybe i'll be up in time to catch the sunrise? maybe not. we'll see.

anyway, i think i'm going to get a little reading or maybe some writing done, and then crash out pretty early. it'll take me a few days to get adjusted to island time...