Fields of volcanic rock

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GOOD afternoon, I'm coming from just north of Kona just down that way, the main city. I've been exploring up and down the coast today. If you look down the coast, that point you see way down there is where Captain Cook was murdered. He came a long time ago in 1779 and the locals there thought he was a god. After he left they changed their mind for some reason. His ship got damaged in a storm and they returned to the bay to get repairs. But because the people no longer believed him to be a god they killed him and a few of his men.

If you look around the mountains here you can see the clouds are covering one of the big volcanoes of this island. I notice this is quite different to the other islands of Hawai'i because this is a much younger island. As you can see here there's a lot of new lava which is only a hundred or so years old. The vegetation is only just starting to grow through the lava flow. But this is very very very young rock. It is the same the entire way around the island. There is about a two hundred kilometre drive around the island which unfortunately I'm not going to have time to do.

Hidden away up there is Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, two of the tallest mountains in the world. I say they are the tallest mountains in the world because the sea bed on which these volcanic domes lie is about six kilometres deep. From here the mountains keep sloping into the sea and goes down six kilometres deep which is phenomenal. The rocks here are quite hot actually from the tropical weather we are getting here.

Over here that's the old airport very close to the town. For some reason they have recently built the new airport quite some distance up the coast so it's a little bit difficult to get to now. I'll get some pictures of it at some stage is it is quite unique with the terminal being mostly open air. So here is the coast, the old airport, and the mountains with quite a bit of rain falling on them now. So today I'm exploring up and down the coast from where Captain Cook was killed up to here - this is as far north as I'll get today. Exploring the very young island which doesn't have anywhere near the character of the other islands as it hasn't been eroded yet. This is a very young shield volcano, probably the best example of a shield volcano anywhere on the planet. So I'll make the most of it and explore it today.