Today we check out of the Mauna Kea resort. We will be driving across the island to Puna for the final leg of our journey. We will be staying at the Zen Lite cottage there, and we are looking forward to a few days of peaceful self-sufficiency.

I'm not sure what we'll be able to get in the way of internet access there - I'm pretty sure I'll at least be able to use my dial-up account, so hopefully we'll upload a few more posts during our time there, but it seems unlikely that we'll have a high-bandwidth connection. So no more pictures beyond the set that we are uploading right now.

We had one adventure yesterday - we drove up North through the town of Hawi (pr. "Haa' vee") and continued through the more tropical regions of the island.

There were a lot of residences along the road, some in a state of rural disrepair. We saw one house that had a sort of tree-house/lanai built into a banyan tree!

We were following a coastal road that Jenny thought would loop around back to Waimea (no, not the Waimea Canyon in Kaua'i, this is the town of Waimea on the big island). Then we rounded a curve and were suddenly confronted with the most magnificent cliffs I have ever seen.

As we continued down the road, we found that it ended at a parking lot overlooking the Pololu Valley. The view from there was truly spectacular. A trail goes from the road down to a black sand beach where the valley meets the sea. I would have liked to take the trail, but it was late in the day and we didn't have appropriate footwear.

I regret that we were not able to explore this lovely area further, but today we are leaving to go to the other side of the island. Hopefully, there will be comparable wonders in that region.