Kaloko-Honokohau National Historical Park

 We checked out of our airbnb and drove over the Saddle Road to Kona.  

Since we had some time before we could check in to our hotel, we stopped at the Kaloko-Honokohau National Historical Park.  This seems to be mainly interested in preserving the way that Hawaiians developed to live off the land.  It consists of a fish trap and a fish pond (well two fish ponds, but we only saw one).

The fish trap came first.  The idea of a fish trap is to create a pond where the fish enter during high tide but as the tide goes out, they are channeled thru only a small number of openings, which they can be caught easily.  This worked well and provided a good supply of fish for the people.

But over time, they realized that rather than just catching the fish, they could put them in a much larger fish pond, and let them grow to be bigger fish, then catch them.  So they built larger fish pond structures which worked like the fish trap, but allowed them to farm the fish until they were bigger.

Both of these structures were by the ocean, so that the fish could come in from the ocean and the ocean would replenish the water in them.  To get to them, the Park Service had constructed trails to walk across the lave fields to the beach and along the beach to the fish trap and fish ponds and then back.  

But we underestimated the difficulty of the walk — they were longer and more difficult, sometimes walking on the sandy beach, 

sometimes on lava rock, 

mostly all exposed to the hot sun.  So, not fun.

We barely got out of the park before they locked the gates.  

Then as we were driving to our hotel, we got a text from the snorkeling cruise that it was canceled tonight because of bad ocean weather conditions.  So it was off to our hotel, dinner, and pack for the flight tomorrow.


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