Around The World In 80 Waves

Later in the day I drive to Mauna Kea which is the highest peak in the Pacific. When I arrive just as the sun goes down the park ranger suggests I shouldn’t go all the way up to the top at 13,796ft or 4,205m because it might be too challenging for my non 4×4 rental. I heed his advice and spend the evening at the visitors centre hanging with a load of astronomers who show me:

• Orion Nebula
• The Andromeda Galaxay
• Jupiter and its moons
• Brilliant images of the current crescent moon

All of which are amazing from such a great vantage point. We also see loads of shooting stars as well as the International Space Station. This picture of the Orion Nebula is something I have lifted from the net but it looked exactly like this. It is a brilliant night and the sky is so clear you can see so many stars, but that also means it is not the warmest as I settle in to sleep in my car for the night. As usual I wake up well before dawn, but quickly decide to grow a pair and have a go at the mountain in my hire car in the darkness. The road is like the corrugated surface I spent so much time bumping along on my Sahara Surf trip but it is also at a 45 degree gradient to spice things up. There is only one solution I must go faster, and it seems to work. :o)

I get to the top and am there on my own with only the selection of huge telescopes for company for about an hour. All the fantastic buildings look like something out of Star Wars. It is a mind blowing experience.

I pause at the UK’s own Infrared Telescope whose funding has recently been cut in favour of something newer in South America. (You can use it for £250,000 a year if you are interested.)

Before too long a group arrives and lieterally shuffle off into the pitch black towards the adjacent hill blowing a conch shell horn to guide each other through the darkness. Once they reach the summit there is a Polynesian guy performing a ceremony for the sun on the peak (without realising it I later discover that I have happened to stumble across the winter solstice completely by accident). It is eerily silent apart from the haunting sounds of his conch horn and his cries into the night. The closest I can get to describing it would be to think of the Maori Haka without the aggression, and with a great deal more deference thrown in.

The sunrise eventually comes and it is epic, don’t you think? After snapping away for ages I have to descend the hill and realise that in a manual car I would keep it in low gear for the huge descent so as not to allow too much speed to build up, but in the glorified dodgem I am driving that is easier said than done. No matter I bump all the way down the awful surface without incident and realise that it is Saturday morning and I am so overdue a fry up it is criminal. I head towards Hilo (which is actually a place as opposed to an option on a fruit machine) on the east coast for breakfast and note with interest the waves breaking on the shore.