Flat Alexandra and Flat Amy's Journal Entry from La Perouse Bay

We took Flat Alexandra and Flat Amy to see the lava flows at La Perouse Bay.  Flat Niamh visited the site last year and that post can be seen here: Flat Niamh's Journal Entry From La Perouse Bay.

Since all of the girls were really intrigued by the landscape, we consulted Wikipedia for some more information, all the following text is either directly taken from Wikipedia or is slightly abridged from the original Wikipedia text. 

 The bay's Hawaiian name is Keoneʻoʻio. It was at La Perouse that the first Westerners set foot on Maui. When the French explorer Jean François de Galaup La Perouse landed here in 1786, scores of Hawaiians from the village of Keone'o'io came out to greet him.  It was later named for the French explorer Captain Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse. In 1786, La Pérouse surveyed and mapped the prominent embayment near the southern cape of Maui opposite the island of Kahoʻolawe. The bay is the site of Maui's most recent volcanic activity

Here is a picture of Molokini, a volcanic crater that is partly submerged beneath the Pacific Ocean.

 Here's another view from Makena Road, looking out over the lava flow toward Molokini.

 See the lava flow coming down the hillside? And the volcanic cones? They look like little hills.  

Here is the monument dedicated to La Perouse, it is made of volcanic rock.

The rounded peninsula that dominates the northern half of the bay and extends up the coast a short distance was formed about 900,000 years ago by an eruption of basaltic lava that originated in the southernmost landward expression of the Haleakala Southwest Rift Zone. A small string of cinder cones extending inland to the northeast marks the axis of the rift zone.

La Perouse Bay lies directly south of the Ahihi-Kinau Natural Area Reserve. Fishing is prohibited within the reserve, which is home to many endemic and other fish species, marine mammals, green sea turtles, and coastal plants.^[3]
From north to south, the reserve spans four ahupuaʻa (land division extending from the uplands into the sea). These are Onau, Kanahena, Kualapa, and Kalihi. The reserve was named for the land and sea around the lava flow named Cape Kīnaʻu at the southern end of ʻĀhihi Bay.^[2]Niamh was expecting to see smooth lava which is called pahoehoe lava.  However, most of the lava at La Perouse Bay is ʻAʻā,  meaning "stony rough lava", but also to "burn" or "blaze". is one of three basic types of flow lava. 

The reserve's land boundary was specifically designed to encompass the young rugged lava flows on Haleakala volcano’s southwest rift zone. Much of the reserve is barren, rough and jagged ʻaʻa lava with some smooth pahoehoe lava fed by the Kalua O Lapa cinder cone. These lava flows form Cape Kīnaʻu and coat the adjacent sea floor. Also within the reserve is the coastal part of an older, similar sequence of lava flows northwest of Kalua O Lapa. This older sequence, the Kanahena flows, erupted from an unnamed fissure at about 1,400 feet (430 m) altitude.^[3]

The incoming tide formed tidepools.  We saw a few small ocean animals.  We did not see any sea turtles or spinner dolphins during our visit, but the area is a nature preserve where both animals, as well as others stop to "rest".

Five eruptions within the last 500 years are known from East Maui. Kalua O Lapa is among the youngest. Two radiocarbon ages have been determined of charcoal collected from beneath Kalua O Lapa lava and spatter deposits. The average ages indicate the lava flowed sometime between 1419 and 1621 AD. Radiocarbon dating of the Kanahena lava flows leave its age unresolved. The best estimate is between 1024 and 1183 AD.

The area contains many archaeological sites, including fishing shrines, salt pans, and heiau, or religious platforms. The road ends at the parking lot/entrance to the seashore and marks the start of the King's Highway,^[4] a trail that circumnavigated the island, originally built by Pi'ilani and later improved by Governor Hoapili, sometimes called the Hoapili trail.

Flat Amy and Flat Alexandra certainly hadn't seen anything quite like this before! And we're not done just yet.....check back for new posts soon!