Day 4: Kamehameha! The decisive attack at the end of the world!

Waking up to a symphony of nature (and by that, I mean hella birds chirping right outside the window), we got up and prepared breakfast using the handy-dandy kitchen that the house has.

The plan today is to go around the northern part of the Big Island, as seen in purple on this map:

Day 4 Route

We headed back the way we came to visit Pu’ukohola Heiau historic site, which is a sacred site to King Kamehamaha the 1st, who bestowed Goku his signature attack.

Pu’ukohola Heiau

You can see in the map here that there’s apparently a whole bunch of history here with a preserved temple (the “heiau” in pu’ukohola heiau), old city grounds, and apparently the site for an important event in Hawaii’s history.

Map of the historic site

There’s a small exhibit section that talks a lot about the history of the area and Kamahameha I especially. Apparently, the dude was huge.

And had an awesome cape.

He also apparently triple-wielded spears or something:

Kamehameha triple-wielding spears

Which, is like Sanada from Sengoku Basara, which makes Kamehamaha (the first anyway) hella anime (which we already know since he taught Goku his signature move).

Exactly like the dude.

There’s a short trail around the area, during which you can see the temple the place is named after:

Temple @ Pu’ukohola Heiau

Apparently, each stone of the temple was carried by workers by hand and King Kamehameha himself would work alongside everybody else in creating this temple. Of course, given that the place is sacred to the Hawaiian people, tourists are not allowed in the temple:

Weird things bar entry to temple

No seriously, don’t.

Right outside the temple, you can also see the offering tower they build that faces the ocean:

Stand tall, offering tower.

Nearby, there’s also a site where a village called Pelekane once stood. Apparently, it is where King Kamehameha I killed his last rival (who presumably looked like Date Masamune and had 6 swords) and united Hawaii under his rulership.

Pelekane

Along the way, I had the opportunity to take more random shots of the flora in the area:

Stay floral, my friends.

I don’t even know what this is.

Back at the exhibits, they had a table of an old game the natives played called Konane, which is more or less checkers combined with peg solitaire. I played it against my sister (and I lost… the 1-game format is rough)

Konane

Driving along, we stopped by a small town called Hawi for lunch and gas:

Hawi

We stopped by a place called Bamboo Cafe, which apparently is somewhat well-known? Not sure.

Bamboo Cafe

They had a whole bunch of passion fruit drinks and the like, but I didn’t try any since I was driving. I ordered a kalua pork and rice plate, which was pretty good.

Kalua pork and cabbage

We kept on driving and ended up at the end of the highway at Pololu Valley Lookout:

Pololu Valley Lookout

The place is literally where the highway ends and it just kinds of abruptly stops and becomes a lookout that looks over the valley:

End of the line.

As you can see in the previous picture, there actually are quite a few cars here considering there is literally nothing within the area besides a few small towns and scattered houses. They’re all apparently here to look at the valley and maybe hike down to the ocean. The edge of the lookout just looks over the northern edge of the Big Island into the Pacific Ocean:

Over the edge

This valley is actually a sister valley to one that’s right next to the place we’re staying at currently, complete with a matching trail that’s steep as hell that goes down from the top (which is about 2000ft up) to the ocean. Since we’re planning on hiking that sister trail tomorrow morning, we decided not to hike this one and just turned back after marveling at the scenery for a bit.

On the way back, we picked up some supplies for dinner at the legendary Foodland, which included a bunch of different types of poke and this awesome poke-themed reusable grocery bag:

Foodland schwag.