Sunday, January 17 we headed down the mountain and around the coast headed toward Kona.
Our first stop was at Punaluu Black Sand Beach. The black sand results from the breakdown of lava. We were told not to disturb any of the endangered green sea turtles that we might see in the area.
The main item on the itinerary for the day was a submarine ride in coral reefs "teeming with tropical fish". This was canceled due to "too much turbidity". There were strong currents on this side of the island; actually good for surfers.
We went to a reconstructed (1/2 size) Hawaiian royal temple on royal grounds and between it and the ocean, the Place of Refuge. The stone wall marks the boundary between the two. Below is a picture of the wooden images outside the temple. Above is a picture of an endangered green turtle that posed for this shot.
We learned that if a person violated Hawaiian law or kapu by doing something that offended the gods, this was often punishable by death, and if he swam to the Place of Refuge, he could be blessed by a Hawaiian priest and forgiven and able to return home. One of our people asked an interesting question. "Does it still work?" The answer was that an incident occurred several years ago. A person was fleeing the police. He ran onto the Place of Refuge. The police did not follow; they waited. It was hot; there was no food and no water. After a while the person gave himself up.
The Polynesian derived Hawaiian language did not have a written language. Early missionaries translated the sounds of the spoken language into a written language. In doing so, some of the subtleties have been lost. The written language has 13 letters (sometimes described as 12 letters and one symbol). The vowels: a, e, i, o, and u, and the consonants: h, k, l, m, n, p, w, and ʻ. Hawaiian words end with a vowel. The symbol ʻ is the ʻokina. It marks a glottal stop. [Something similar in English might be the hyphen in uh-oh!] In Hawaiian the name of the island is Hawaiʻi.
In the town of Captain Cook we stopped for a typical Hawaiian lunch at the Manago Hotel. Lunch included seaweed salad, potato salad, rice, and a tofu and pork dish.
We continued on to Kona and the Sheraton Keauhou Bay Resort. Here is the view from my room.
Michael Shara gave a lecture, Einstein. This was added because the submarine ride was canceled. He was well prepared. He was the curator of the AMNH's exhibit with the same name. We learned about Einstein's "miracle year", 1905, when he published groundbreaking papers on special relativity, Brownian motion, and the photoelectric effect. Each one of these worthy of a Nobel Prize. We also heard about many aspects of Einstein's personal life. I learned, the faster something moves through space, the slower it moves through time.
During the break between lectures, a group of people were watching the manta rays in the ocean from a hotel patio. All of a sudden a wave that was significantly larger than all the others struck. I was among those who got wet.
Michael Shara gave us another lecture, this one on cosmology, Nebulae and Galaxies. We saw the famous picture taken by the Hubble Space Telescope of the Abell 2218 group of galaxies. [Picture courtesy of NASA and ESA.] Galaxies and dark matter cause the gravitational lensing visible as the arcs in the picture. The arcs are images of even more distant galaxies bent by the lensing effect of the closer galaxies and dark matter. Super massive black holes and quasars, specifically quasar 3C 273, were discussed. We heard about the surface of last scattering, after the first 300,000 years of the universe, beyond which it is too foggy for telescopes to see. To make it easy to understand the Big Bang and expansion of the universe, Michael explained, the center of the explosion is everywhere. With reference to galactic dark matter, Michael Shara said, "there be dragons, terra incognita".
Tomorrow is a big day. A sunset visit to the Mauna Kea Observatory Complex at 13,796 feet.
