The Hawaii Traveler

The interior of the church
Photo by Flickr–Creative Commons by konaboys

In the late 1800s, Father John Velge began painting frescoes on, well, everything inside the St. Benedict’s Catholic Church in Captain Cook (Big Island). Since then, the heavenly imagery therein has been referred to as The Painted Church.
How to get there:
Take Ke Ala o Keawe Road or Hawaii Belt Road (highway 11) to Painted Church Road, which looks deceivingly residential at first. Take it up over the switchback and look for the white steeple. Outside, on the church grounds, you get a great view of things, and …read more

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Telescopes on Mauna Kea
Flickr Creative Commons by
MGShelton

We were at Hapuna Beach at dusk, and stayed until well after the sun dipped down past the earth’s curve. I could see the moon’s reflection in the wet sand and looked upward and inland, and pointed to a blue star. I said, “I wonder if that’s Venus.”
As it turns out, it’s the observatories at the top of Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano, and also the highest peak in the world, when measured from its base at the sea floor. From the edge of the island, and way down at sea level, …read more

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In about an hour, I saw two crabs battling it out, a million green-lipped mussels, and tens of black echinoid-like creatures that looked like black urchins wearing a coat of smooth armor called shingle sea urchins. A wave brought me tiny little fish that glimmered in the sun, and then the next wave took them all away.
I saw all these little gems in one Big Island tide pool the size of a cereal bowl; it was carved into a huge slab of lava near Pu’uhonua o Honaunau. (Or, if you get tongue tied with all those syllables, just call …read more

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