Today was going to be a tiki tour day seeing some of the historical sights in Northern Kohala. We started out at Pu’ukohola Heiau which is a temple built in 1791 known as the Temple on the Hill of the Whale. Today the basic rock structure still stands and it is huge at 224ft by 100ft with walls up to 20ft. It is amazing to think that these walls were built so long ago and still standing, especially when you read that they are not built with any mortar or anything.
This temple was built by Kamehameha who had dreamt that one day he would rule all of the Hawaiian Islands. By 1791 he ruled most of them but not the Big Island. So built the temple, invited his cousin (who he was fighting for ownership of the island) to come see it and then slaughtered him on the beach! So yes, he did get control.
It was only a 1km walk around the whole thing, really hot, but really interesting. They have this great thing at the national parks where they have QR codes that you can scan with your smartphone and you get a guided audio tour of the whole park. Unfortunately we have been unable to use it as we just don’t have the data plan on our phone, so we have done the old fashioned way of reading the brochures and my Lonely Planet book!
From here I discovered we were a short stop away from the Macadamia Nut Factory, not part of our scheduled itinerary but hey, we were in the area. Seems like the GPS had a different idea (or maybe it was just me miss-reading it!) but somehow we didn’t manage to find it. So headed back on to the Highway for the drive to Pololu Valley.
Don’t panic, as we were driving we passed the street for the Macadamia Nut Factory so will be heading back there on another day. Phew…that could have ruined the whole holiday 
We passed via various historical spots on the way, Kamehameha’s birth place etc, didn’t stop, it was too hot! Also drove through a lovely wee town called Hawi (pronounced Ha vee), it has a small population of 1000 and lots of little galleries and cafes, we were going to stop here for lunch after walking into Pololu Valley.
We had been told Pololu Valley was a beautiful walk and much easier than Waipi’o Valley and just as lovely. Made easier by having several switchbacks rather than the straight up Waipi’o. Tell you what, if that was easy I hate to think how hard Waipi’o is! We just about died, no exaggeration, honestly.
Probably best not done in the heat of the day, especially given it was one of the hottest days, very little shelter and did I mention hot. As far as the switchbacks I am not sure that 3 counts as several. As we were going down, down, down I kept suggesting to Quentin that he just carry on down and take the pictures and I would wait and see them. No it will be great, it will be easy he kept saying. How wrong was he!
Yes the valley was stunning, yes there was a lovely wee black sand beach at the end, yes there was these cool piles of rocks that people had built to show they had been there, was it easy NO, was it worth it – the jury is still out.
Even going down was pretty tough as while it is a track it is not a man made one, more a natural one with tree roots, boulders and a steep cliff edge. I insisted when we got there that we also built our own rock stack, which I am sure you will agree is pretty spectacular!
As I have said before what goes down must go up and so we starting the walk back. It was HELL, it was so hot, did I mention there was no shade (well very little), the only breeze was a hot one, and it was very very steep. Even steeper than the Kilauea Iki trail we did at Volcano. It was not fun. By the time we got to the top we were so hot and sweaty that going anywhere for lunch was out of the question. We would have driven people out of the café! So we headed back home and had a cool refreshing shower, made pancakes, bacon and banana and had a wee rest.
After our rest we headed down to Kailua Kona (the main town area on this coast) and hit the cool air conditioned shops for a bit.
A day of two extremes!