Just thought I’d provide a summary of my recent bike tour around the Big Island of Hawaii. After soliciting this community for advice a few months back, I decided to circumnavigate the island anti-clockwise, for reasons I’ll get into below. The trip was overall a huge success, owing largely to good roads, decent weather, and an especially vibrant and welcoming warmshowers community.
Riding was much easier than anticipated. The shoulders on the highways were comparable to the mainland in most places, and the traffic was sparse everywhere outside of Hilo and Kona. Grades were fairly gentle, although it could get a bit frustrating ascending 1,000 feet from your beach camp to get back onto the highway, lol. Vehicles were respectful (save for one asshat near Pahoa, oh well) and the infamous island buses left me plenty of space. However, you have to always keep the altitude in mind. I climbed more than 15,000 feet over the course of the tour and had multiple days with 3,000+ feet of ascent, ugh.
No complaints about the weather. You have to make peace with occasional rains once you’re on the windward side of the island (from roughly Pahoa to Waimea), but fortunately it’s often a morning/evening phenomenon and it quickly passes. The area around Waimea was unusually foggy, but most everywhere else was dry and rather predictable.
The warmshowers community in Hawaii was ludicrously friendly. I had four hosts altogether, plus two friends-of-friends who put me up, and everyone exhibited the gracious spirit of aloha. My host in Kona was responsible starting my trip on the right foot: all I had to do was get a taxi to his place and I was able to store my gear and assemble my bicycle in a spacious and friendly household. All the other hosts made me fantastic dinners, so I probably lucked out since it seems I arrived at a quieter time of year, go figure.
The windward side was absolutely bucolic. If you like fresh fruit, you will not be disappointed: there are guavas, papaya, plums, lilikoi, etc., all available either for free from the roadside vegetation or else from honors system roadside stalls. Do yourself a favor and try every exotic fruit you can, there’s all sorts of weird stuff here you won’t find on the mainland. The leeward side, however, is almost a scrubby wasteland, lol. Expect nasty kiawe thorns to threaten your tires and even your footware if you venture off-road!
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park was hands down the most impressive part of the tour. The camping is cheap ($10 per night, first-come-first-serve), the roads are immaculate, the views are outstanding and diverse (lava tubes, calderas, petroglyphs, etc.), and the descent down Chain of Craters Road was absolutely breathtaking. I cannot recommend highly enough riding those twenty miles while also taking a side trip down the Hilina Pali. It’s a 1,000 foot descent over a smooth tarmac path that’s closed entirely to cars halfway down. There’s a campground just before this closure, but it’s just a quiet set of picnic tables and a pit toilet, so be sure to bring your own water. Come to think of it, you could probably just bring your gear with you all the way to the end of the road, stash it near a trailhead, and hike to what I’ve been told are some of the most unspoiled and remote beaches of the Big Island. I didn’t get a chance to visit, but maybe one of you all can, lol.
Oh yes, that brings me back to the main reason one should ride anti-clockwise around the island: aside from always having the beach on your side of the road, it allows to you to descend 4,000 feet down Chain of Craters without having to climb back up in the heat of the day. There’s an emergency access route that cuts through the lava and isn’t very well advertised, but it’s a packed gravel road that connects the National Park’s coastline to the community of Pahoa about six or seven miles away. There’s a short segment that’s composed of fist-sized pumice stones and will probably require you to walk the bike, but it’s a painless ride if you’re lucky like me and have some decent cloud cover.
Including airfare from a neighbor island, I spent just over $500 over the course of fourteen days: twelve days of riding, plus a day on either end to pack up the bicycle. I rode roughly 400 miles, my longest day being 60 miles and my shortest being 10 miles. My thirteen nights were divided as follows: five spent with warmshowers hosts, two spent with friends-of-friends, five spent at paid campgrounds, and one spent wild camping near the highway.
If I had anything to do over again, I would’ve wild camped at South Point–the wind was unusually calm and I could probably have seen an awesome sunset, sunrise, and green sand beach. As it stands, I darted 2,000 feet back up to the highway and ended up pitching my tent in the dark, utterly exhausted. Oh well, live and learn!
1 Comment
Hey all,
Just thought I’d provide a summary of my recent bike tour around the Big Island of Hawaii. After soliciting this community for advice a few months back, I decided to circumnavigate the island anti-clockwise, for reasons I’ll get into below. The trip was overall a huge success, owing largely to good roads, decent weather, and an especially vibrant and welcoming warmshowers community.
Riding was much easier than anticipated. The shoulders on the highways were comparable to the mainland in most places, and the traffic was sparse everywhere outside of Hilo and Kona. Grades were fairly gentle, although it could get a bit frustrating ascending 1,000 feet from your beach camp to get back onto the highway, lol. Vehicles were respectful (save for one asshat near Pahoa, oh well) and the infamous island buses left me plenty of space. However, you have to always keep the altitude in mind. I climbed more than 15,000 feet over the course of the tour and had multiple days with 3,000+ feet of ascent, ugh.
No complaints about the weather. You have to make peace with occasional rains once you’re on the windward side of the island (from roughly Pahoa to Waimea), but fortunately it’s often a morning/evening phenomenon and it quickly passes. The area around Waimea was unusually foggy, but most everywhere else was dry and rather predictable.
The warmshowers community in Hawaii was ludicrously friendly. I had four hosts altogether, plus two friends-of-friends who put me up, and everyone exhibited the gracious spirit of aloha. My host in Kona was responsible starting my trip on the right foot: all I had to do was get a taxi to his place and I was able to store my gear and assemble my bicycle in a spacious and friendly household. All the other hosts made me fantastic dinners, so I probably lucked out since it seems I arrived at a quieter time of year, go figure.
The windward side was absolutely bucolic. If you like fresh fruit, you will not be disappointed: there are guavas, papaya, plums, lilikoi, etc., all available either for free from the roadside vegetation or else from honors system roadside stalls. Do yourself a favor and try every exotic fruit you can, there’s all sorts of weird stuff here you won’t find on the mainland. The leeward side, however, is almost a scrubby wasteland, lol. Expect nasty kiawe thorns to threaten your tires and even your footware if you venture off-road!
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park was hands down the most impressive part of the tour. The camping is cheap ($10 per night, first-come-first-serve), the roads are immaculate, the views are outstanding and diverse (lava tubes, calderas, petroglyphs, etc.), and the descent down Chain of Craters Road was absolutely breathtaking. I cannot recommend highly enough riding those twenty miles while also taking a side trip down the Hilina Pali. It’s a 1,000 foot descent over a smooth tarmac path that’s closed entirely to cars halfway down. There’s a campground just before this closure, but it’s just a quiet set of picnic tables and a pit toilet, so be sure to bring your own water. Come to think of it, you could probably just bring your gear with you all the way to the end of the road, stash it near a trailhead, and hike to what I’ve been told are some of the most unspoiled and remote beaches of the Big Island. I didn’t get a chance to visit, but maybe one of you all can, lol.
Oh yes, that brings me back to the main reason one should ride anti-clockwise around the island: aside from always having the beach on your side of the road, it allows to you to descend 4,000 feet down Chain of Craters without having to climb back up in the heat of the day. There’s an emergency access route that cuts through the lava and isn’t very well advertised, but it’s a packed gravel road that connects the National Park’s coastline to the community of Pahoa about six or seven miles away. There’s a short segment that’s composed of fist-sized pumice stones and will probably require you to walk the bike, but it’s a painless ride if you’re lucky like me and have some decent cloud cover.
Including airfare from a neighbor island, I spent just over $500 over the course of fourteen days: twelve days of riding, plus a day on either end to pack up the bicycle. I rode roughly 400 miles, my longest day being 60 miles and my shortest being 10 miles. My thirteen nights were divided as follows: five spent with warmshowers hosts, two spent with friends-of-friends, five spent at paid campgrounds, and one spent wild camping near the highway.
If I had anything to do over again, I would’ve wild camped at South Point–the wind was unusually calm and I could probably have seen an awesome sunset, sunrise, and green sand beach. As it stands, I darted 2,000 feet back up to the highway and ended up pitching my tent in the dark, utterly exhausted. Oh well, live and learn!