Tag Archives: Upolu

Upolu Airport bombed

Planes gathered at Upolu Airport, on the northern tip of the Big Island, for a fly-in.

Why would anyone want to bomb Upolu Airport, a lightly used airstrip at the northern tip of the island, which is where I go walking because of the peace and quiet? That’s what I wondered when I went down there on Saturday and found 20-plus aircraft, cars parked alongside the road, and a lot of people milling around. Turns out, a group of aviation enthusiasts had organized a fly-in and I’d stumbled on it en route to my walk.

There were planes parked, planes circling above, planes zipping by a whisker above the ground. Apart from the general milling around, a couple of events were scheduled. The first was a touch and go challenge where the goal was to touch as close as possible in front of a line across the runway. Touch down after the line and it counted for nought.

The other event was the bombing run. By the time that rolled around, I’d walked around to the other side of the runway and was leaning on a fence chatting to a couple of airport maintenance workers. The target circle for the bombing challenge, which involved bags of flour rather than high explosives, was not far from where I was so I decided to wait for it to play out, which took rather longer than I anticipated.

What I was hoping for was large bags of flour being dropped from a decent height and exploding in a large white cloud. Instead the bags were small and dropped from just a few feet above the ground as the planes flew by very low indeed. I don’t think the exercise even broke a bag, let alone throwing up a cloud of flour.

Still, it appeared that a good time was had by all, and while my walk got a zero on the peace and quiet scale, it got high marks for being, as they used to say on Monty Python, something completely different.

One of the planes makes a low pass over the airport.
A plane makes a touch-and-go landing, attempting to get as close to the line across the runway as possible.
One of the planes making a low pass for a bombing run. The bomb, a small bag of flour, can be seen just behind the rearmost wheel.
Another plane on a bombing run. The ‘flour bomb’ can be seen behind the plane.

Molted monk seal

A couple of days ago, I saw this monk seal resting on the shore below Upolu Airport. It turned out to be RA20, the same seal I saw there back in May (bottom photo). In the interim, she had obviously molted and looked very shiny and clean. Pre-molt monks seals look quite ratty and green, particularly around the flippers and head. After a molt, they look sleek and silvery as this one does.

Monk seals molt about once a year and it is a process that can take 10 days or so. During this time the seal will generally remain on the beach or rocks where it has hauled out.

Cliff ladder

My regular walk around Upolu Airport almost always occurs in the afternoon when I walk along the coast towards the east. This usually puts the sun at my back and the wind in my face. Last Friday, I went out in the morning and so walked in the other direction with both the sun and wind at my back. I was surprised by how strange it felt to do this. Approaching spots where I tend to stop and look for things in the water felt weird. I guess it shows what a creature of habit I’ve become.

One other oddity was this ladder propped halfway down the cliff face. I’d never noticed it before. Now, it might be a recent addition, but it’s also possible it’s been there for years because it is somewhat hidden when walking in the opposite direction.

The ladder was probably put there by someone who goes down onto the rocks to harvest opihi. The opihi is an edible limpet that is something of a delicacy in Hawaii. It can be eaten raw or cooked. Some people eat them right after they pry them from a rock. It’s a dangerous business though. They’re found on rocks right at the water’s edge and an opihi picker can easily slip or be swept into the ocean by big, breaking waves.

When I got home, I noticed the figure at the top of the photo. I hadn’t seen him at the time, but he’s an opihi picker who I ran into a little later on my walk.

Posted in response to Bushboy’s Last on the Card challenge. See more responses here.

Signs: No people

Three of these signs appeared at Upolu Airport recently. I think we can all agree that in these troubling times it’s important for people to stay safe by following such protocols.

The plane in the photo is owned by the skydiving company that used to fly out of the airport back in pre-pandemic days. It’s fairly safe to say that they’ll be one of the last businesses allowed to reopen. It’s hard to maintain social distancing on a plane that size, especially when most clients are going to be strapped to someone who knows how to operate a parachute.

In the meantime, in the last four months, the number of times I’ve seen more than one person inside the fence is exactly equal to the number of times I’ve seen that one person wearing a mask. I won’t say how many times that is, but it’s a very round number.

Posted in response to Becky’s July Squares challenge theme of ‘Perspective.’ See more responses here.

Great frigatebirds on the wing

This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Freedom.’ See more offerings here.

When Terri posts the Sunday Stills challenge themes for the month ahead, I usually check out what’s coming up. That way I can see what photos I have that fit the themes, or come up with ideas for what I could shoot.

When June’s themes were posted, my first thought for this one was of flying. Since the earliest of times, people have looked to the skies, watched birds, and envied their freedom of flight. Of the various birds I see here, the great frigatebird most epitomizes that freedom. These large birds cover great distances, gliding effortlessly across the sky, rarely flapping their wings but using the wind to maximum advantage.

I picked a couple of photos from my archives, expecting to use them since I hand’t seen any frigatebirds for many weeks. But a couple of days later, I saw one, though I didn’t get any good photos. That’s the other thing about these birds: they seem to have a knack for sneaking up on me, so that I usually notice them disappearing into the distance.

Over the next week or two, I saw a few more birds in similar situations. Then, one day, as I neared the coast below Upolu Airport, I saw a frigatebird flying into a strong wind. By the time I had my camera ready, it was again getting smaller. Still, I took photos and as I did so I saw a second bird, then a third. They continued heading east and I carried on down to the coast.

I hadn’t been there more than a couple of minutes when one of the birds shot by in front of me. It was pointing east, but heading north of west riding the stiff northeast trades that were blowing. A second followed, then a third, and a fourth that I hadn’t seen before. I expected them to quickly disappear on the wind, but once over the water, they regrouped and held their position, circling and gliding up and down. Then I noticed them edging back into and across the wind, heading my way. Slowly they came closer, still appearing to make little effort.

Eventually, the four of them passed directly overhead, the lowest maybe 20 feet above me. Almost immediately they turned and slipped back they way they came, only this time they kept going, gliding sideways in the general direction of Maui. I watched until I couldn’t see them anymore. The whole episode probably lasted no more than 15 minutes, but it seemed to last much longer.

I’m not much of a poetry buff, but these birds made me think of the opening lines of a poem called High Flight, written in 1941 by John Gillespie Magee Jr. when he was 19 and a pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force, stationed in England. They read:
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings.

Abstracts: Dong Fang

There’s a skydiving business that operates out of Upolu Airport and they have a blue shipping container inside the airport fence where they store gear. One day when I went down there, I saw a second container had been installed next to the first, creating an L-shaped setup.

I liked the logo on the container and took a photo, which was just as well since the next day the container had been repainted to match the other one.

Monk seal resting

When I first saw this monk seal on the North Kohala coast a couple of days ago, I thought it was IO5. He’s the seal I see most often in this part of the island. But as I got closer, I saw this one was a female. I took photos, including some of the red ID tag. I wasn’t sure if, at that distance, I’d be able to read it, but luckily I could make out ‘A2’ in a couple of photos. There was space after the ‘2’ as if a number had rubbed off, so I wondered if this was RA20, the monk seal who raised pups on a Kona beach in 2018 (here and here) and 2019 (here and here).

I sent the photos to the Big Island Hawaiian monk seal response network, which tracks the movements and welfare of the monk seals. They confirmed this was RA20 and was the first sighting of her since she was released from Ke Kai Ola Hawaiian Monk Seal Hospital after suffering from a bacterial infection. The hospital’s veterinarians think RA20 recently lost a pregnancy and that the infection may have caused, or resulted from, the loss.

The good news is that she certainly appeared healthy and in good shape when I saw her.

For more information about Hawaiian monk seals and Ke Kai Ola Hawaiian Monk Seal Hospital, go to www.marinemammalcenter.org/hawaii.