February 15th, Hawai'i Day 2

I woke up that morning and decided that I was going to hike up the Diamond Head Crater, which is located just southeast of Waikiki. I walked down the avenue which leads to the crater but I managed to catch a bus and I rode the rest of the way. It wasn't a very long bus ride, taking only about 15 minutes. I got off at the appointed stop, which had a sign saying Diamond Head State Park. I then walked 15 minutes to the park entrance and from there, it's a hike all the way to the summit.

Although volcanism is only active now of the largest of the islands, Hawaii, all of the Hawai'ian islands were formed by volcanism. In fact, the entire chain, which stretches back to about Japan, now mostly underwater seamounts, were all formed from the same source. Volcanism usually only occurs at tectonic plate boundaries, but Hawai'i is right in the middle of the Pacific Plate. Under Hawaii there is a large upwelling of magma called a "hot spot" and it is feeding the volcanoes on the big island. As the Pacific Plate has moved, the hot spot has remained stationary and has formed these Pacific islands. For clarity's sake, "Hawai'i" refers to the state (the preferred spelling now) and "Hawaii" refers to the island.

In any event, I scaled the summit of Diamond Head, which is called in Hawai'ian "Le'ahi". In mythology, a Goddess named the area such because the landscape reminded her of the forehead (lae) of the ahi fish. It is now known as Diamond Head because the first European explorers mistook the calcite crystals in the rock for diamonds. The crater itself is a caldera which means that it is volcanic in origin and not meteoritic. Essentially, this used to be the top of a volcano but after the volcano became extinct, vegetation grew inside. The pictures of the site will show what I had to contend with.

The remainder of the day I spent in downtown Honolulu. I spent a great deal of time around the grounds of the State Capitol, which located next to the 'Iolani Palace, which is in another photo. Towards the evening, I returned to Waikiki where I took some videos of boogeyboarders and the sunset. Night comes quickly in Hawai'i because of the steep angle at which the sun hits the horizon. In Ottawa, you can look forward to about 1 hour of twilight after sunset, but within 30 minutes after the suns dips below the horizon in Hawai'i, it's already quite dark.

Photos of Diamond Head (Le'ahi) State Park are now available at: http://leahidiamondhead.blogspot.com/

Photos of Waikiki and Honolulu are now available at: http://waikikihonolulu.blogspot.com/