Water water everywhere and every drop it...stinks!

Well yesterday I lived through my 2nd natural disaster in 3 years. It all started at about 3 am with a little rain. That rain soon turned into a disaster when it kept coming for the next 9 hours! My first clue to that this storm was no ordinary storm was when lighting woke me up several times, now I've only seen lightning here one other time even though we get a lot of rain storms over here. Well I didn't quite realize what kind of beast we were dealing with until I got up the next morning. This was the view off my porch! It was quite the shock!

It didn't look that bad at first, but then I started to explore and I soon found out that I luckily live on the high end of Iosepa.

This was the depth at the gutter outside my house


Looking down the Rio Iosepa

This house was hit the worst. It was built about 2ft below street level. Eventually the water formed a moat around the house. The water was up to my thigh, and I was on the street.

Rio Kulanui was the hot spot for Laie, I think I saw a spear fisher pass by me. I love the girl who looks stranded on the lightpost. Jen still had to go to campus (which was only a few inches under water) to take a final and as she was walking through the water she had cockroaches crawling on her! As we were talking one crawled into her pocket! Luckily they werent crawling on me! Everyone else was saying that they saw huge centipedes and all other sorts of creepy crawlies swimming through the poo water.




The best part of this picture are the bubbles comming up in the middle of the road...yup that would be the sewer pipe bubbling up!


This was taken after the water started to go down. You can tell because you can start to see the top of the hedges in the yard behind me.

They had to dig a huge ditch beside foodland so all the water could enter the ocean, the ditch was there before, but it was basically an overgrown gutter. They fixed that!


You can see where they started to dig that leads to the street next to Iosepa. Well after they dug the huch ditch the water drained in a few hours and the flood receded. Although there were still areas that were left flooded. The fields on campus turned into a lake, but nothing new (except for the fancy signs warning us of the poo water). The straight river in front of the field was the sidewalk, needless to say I was walking on the street which was dry.


This was on my walk back to campus around 4 pm about 12 hours after it started. All in all I survied the disaster and with no flood damage or injuries. Now we just have to survive the stench that is left, pray for good weather to dry it all up...fast!

Haleakala Crater-Day #2

After sleeping from 7 pm - 7 am that first night we got up and got ready for another day on Haleakala! Day 2 was a bit nicer than the first. We got a full nights sleep the night before and we didn't have to haul around our packs. We hiked 4 miles down the Kapu Gap, so a total of 8 miles for day 2. The views from the gap were incredibly beautiful!

Kapu Gap

We hiked down the gap alongside huge pali cliffs and it was so gorgeous that I decided that one day I will build a cabin and live in Kapu Gap. The government is still open to bribes, yeah?


The field in front of my cabin is FULL of Akala, the Hawaiian raspberry which has lost its thorns, could this place be anymore perfect?

Of course I have to give you some of the native plants and animals, since that was why we were there. This plant is called Ohelo and is quite tasty. The berries are used to make jams and other tasty stuff. There were good in the beginning but after a whole day of eating ohelo berries they are not that exciting.

This is called a plunge pool waterfall. Erosion happens when the water cuts away the rock then falls in a pool and that cuts out more rock and then the water plunges down farther.

Heading back up, the white stuff on the rocks was a really fluffy lichen

Haleakala Crater-Day #1

This is a picture is at the start of our hike with the whole gang. From left to right-Raphael, Jaime, me, Kara, Miahone, Mihi, Abby, and Dr. Hammond. Bro. Bruner was taking the picture

Haleakala Crater. Our total mileage was 30 miles over 4 days! We hiked from 10,000ft to 3,000 ft and ended back at 8,000 ft. It was a lot of fun and we saw a lot of cool things that are unique to not only Maui, but to Haleakala.

We took the sliding sands trail down into the crater. It was like waking down black sand dunes made of course lava rock instead of soft sand. It really worked your calves carrying all the weight and trying to stop yourself from sliding down the mountain.

Standing in the middle of a silversword forest

This is the endemic and endangered silversword! It is monocarpic meaning that it blooms only once in its life and then dies. It will grow for about 6-8 years before it blooms. This one was right on the side of the trail, and it was really cool to see a blooming one up close!

The total mileage for the first day was 10mi. We ate lunch at Kapa'aloa cabin where we saw (and hand fed) nenes. Nene is the hawaii state bird and is endangered. It ovbiously has been feed by humans before because about 5 min after we arrived and started pulling out our lunches the nenes came flying in. They weren't shy at all and I touched them and fed them by hand.


From lunch we hiked 4 miles to Paliku cabin. This part of the trail was a bit nicer than sliding sands because we hiked on actual earth. This portion of the crater was extremely beautiful! When you turn a corner you can see out Kapu gap and in the distance was the Big Island. We also found Iliahe-or Maui Sandalwood tree-which is endemic to Maui and a very expensive and fragrant wood.
View of Big Island from Kapu Gap

Maui Sandalwood Tree
When we finally made it into Paliku, it was beautiful. We were all tired after hiking for 9 hrs and 10 miles!


My sweet sunburn-now permanent tan line-I guess that is what you get when you don't see the sun for 2 months and then you hike across a volcano!


The perfect way to end the day!

Bio lesson 101

Well one of the best parts about being a biology major in such a beautiful place is the opportunity to explore nature while learning tons about it. Maybe sometimes a little too much about it. This semester I am taking Pacific Natural History and on Saturday we took our first field trip. This is only about a 1/4 of what we learned in 9 hours. We went down to Makapuk'u Pt. on the south side of the island. There we learned a lot about plants and about lots of the geography that created the islands.



This is a picture of Ma'o or Hawaiian cotton. It has become very valuable because is is resistant to the diseases that kill normal cotton, so they are trying to do gene replacement therapy. It is endemic to Hawaii and only found in this location on Oahu.

Heading up

So this isn't the best picture, but I was surrounded by bio majors not art majors!

These pictures are at about 1/2 way up our destination. We started past the second major cove that goes the farthest inland, you can see it better in the last picture. You can also see Koko crater in the upper left corner of the picture.

This is a closer look at koko crater. You can kind of make out the two calderas the big one is towards the top and the smaller one is at the bottom. These are examples of phearatomagnatic eruptions (big boom). You can tell which way the wind was blowing during the eruptions because the ash is built up higher on one side.

This is the view from our destination. It is one of the best views on Oahu! The steep cliffs were created when a huge part of the island fell off into the ocean. They can see parts of the huge landslide almost 100 miles off coast! Imagine that tsunami! The islands are sinking back into the ocean and are already made of very porous and unstable rock, so these huge landslides have occurred on all the islands. They are also responsible for the Napali Coast. Also if you look in the picture at the black lava flow, in the ocean, right on the right side of the beach is the last volcanic flow on Oahu, it happened about 25,000 years ago.


This is the remnant of the Oahu Ko'olau shield volcano. The top of the mountain used to stand about 14,000 ft when the island was still active. That is about the height of Big Island right now, currently the highest point on Oahu is over on the west side and only about 4,000 ft. So Oahu has sunken about 10,000 ft over lots and lots of years and eventually so will Big Island. The Ko'olau is one of the 2 main volcanoes that built Oahu. The caldera now sits about 100 yards from Queens Medical Center where Hailey was born. You can compare the gentle slope on one side to the cliffs on the other side of the volcano, this is where the island slide away.

These were all views from the top!

The trail back down was just as exciting. Our tail is on the left side of picture on the edge of the cliff, between the trees.

After the main hike we had lunch from a lunch cart at sandy beach. After the break we headed up the coast a little ways. At the turnout right after the blow hole we got out and went down to the shore to look at some more geography.


These are layers of ash called tuff. Each layer represents a separate eruption and the big block of white is petrified coral that was covered over.These are called pisolites. They are essentially petrified rain. Apparently it was raining during an eruption and as the water fell it formed mud and the mud hardened.

So there will be a quiz over all vocabulary terms and also over plant identification. I learned a lot that day, I think a little bit more than I wanted, but over all it was a really really fun trip and I'm getting excited for the other trips we have planned (including a 4 day trip to Maui)!

Also I got some pictures to go along with my Labor Day post thanks to Katie!