Honus and hiking in Hilo, Hawaii

Rain was forecast for Hilo today, so I breathed a sigh of relief when I woke up this morning and saw the sun bravely trying to break through from behind the clouds. We are on the tropical side of the island, so rain was always a risk here, but my pre-bedtime prayer last night had been for a dry day if at all possible.

As I wandered into the kitchen at 7 am this morning, my hosts (a 73 year old grandmother who was obviously a hippie in her youth, and her son) arrived back from the fruit market with an enticing selection, including rambutan, longan (something like a litchi/lychee), papayas, avocados, chirimoya, local apple-bananas, oranges and other delicious fruit for breakfast.

"Let's go to the beach," they said, shortly after that. "There's a beautiful spot where we can swim with honus." (Honu is the Hawaiian word for the iconic sea turtle.) As I waded into the turquoise water, I looked around me, expecting to see little creatures about a foot long. Imagine my surprise when suddenly, next to my legs, was a large turtle of more than a metre in length. One of the turtles, whose distinct shell markings have caused the locals to nickname her Radar, is nearly four feet long. It was fun to swim among the rocks in the ocean and keep encounter-ing turtles who were also enjoying a swim. The water was slightly chilly, but there were warm volcanic currents that made it more bearable for swimming. And after we came out of the water, we could lie in the sunshine on the warm, black volcanic rocks to warm up again. We stopped at the farmers' market for a healthy lunch on the way home: a liquid lunch for me, as I had a smoothie of taro, banana and macadamia, followed an hour or so later by a fresh lilikoi (passion fruit/grenadilla) juice mixed with coconut milk.

My German friend was heading to the volcano park in the afternoon (a two hour bus trip, followed by a hike up to the rim of the volcano) but the potential of rain made me decide to stay in Hilo and walk just out of town  (about 40 minutes hike up a hill) to the famous Rainbow Falls. They're one of several falls in the Wailuku River. At 28 miles (45 km) long, it is Hawaii's longest river, which descends steeply from the volcanic mountains and joins the Pacific Ocean in Hilo. In the Hawaiian language, Wailuku means "waters of destruction," - partly because the sudden falls can be treacherous for swimmers, and partly because the currents could sweep bathers into underwater caves caused by the erosion of the volcanic lava rocks. So it's not a river for swimming, but it's very pretty if you like to admire waterfalls. I've long been a fan of falls; finding new ones to visit was one of the things I loved to do in South Africa and Zimbabwe.

It looked as if it would be more like "rain falls" than rainbow falls, as a slight drizzle began, and there no rays of sunshine to cause the famous rainbows above the water. But it didn't come to much, and I managed to walk home again safe and dry. The torrential rain only began once I was indoors again. My hosts tell me that typical weather for this side of the island would be rain in the morning and evening, and sun mainly in the afternoon; these two completely dry days were kind of unusual, they say, so I feel blessed to have escaped the usual tropical rain.

This brings my two days in Hilo to an end, and tomorrow morning I'll be catching the bus back to Kona again. Watch this space for news of our leadership meetings over the coming weeks. And thanks for your prayers.