Visiting Indonesian watefalls

While I was visiting my parents in Java we went to see some nearby waterfalls, and since we didn't get rained out this time I was able to get my drone in the air for some video. I actually didn't think to take too many photos as a result, but I got a few from my vantage point on the ground.

Coban Palangi.

The first one we visited was Coban Palangi; “coban” means waterfall, and “palangi” means waterfall (with the ‘c’ being pronounced like a ‘ch’). This was the tallest and most visually impressive one, as it plunged over the rim above and generated a lot of mist in the valley below. It was overcast when we visited, so we didn't get to see a rainbow. (And why the photo looks somewhat washed out.)

Here's a shot of Coban Palangi from above. It was the most open of the three waterfalls, allowing me more freedom to maneuver and get different angles. That openness also required the most hiking, down from the road above into the valley where it was.

Coban Toris.

The next day we visited two more waterfalls near each other, Coban Toris and Coban Tarzan. These were both smaller waterfalls tucked away under canopies of foliage, which made them feel a bit cozier and meant I had to get creative with the limited range of drone shots I could get.

Coban Tarzan.

But if you'd rather see these watery wonders in motion, check out the video below from the footage I was able to take:

One interesting thing I did notice while hiking (and flying my drone) in the Javan rainforest is that there seemed to be very few flowers visible from above the treetops. Not that every tree here in Hawaii has flowers, but we do have a lot of the invasive African tulip tree which always seem to have a lot of bright orange flowers visible from above. I haven't tried to quantify the difference, but it was something I noticed while looking out across the jungle canopy while hiking into and out of the valleys where the waterfalls were.

Not much more to say about this, other than that I'm glad the weather cooperated after getting rained out at the tea plantation tour. I like waterfalls, as I'm sure is pretty clear from this blog, so it was neat getting to see some in other contexts and locations. A hui hou!

Windy wet weather

This weekend was wet and windy as the center of tropical storm/hurricane Hone passed just to the south of the island. (It upgraded in status a short while before its closest approach.) According to the 48-hour rainfall map I saw Hilo got about 8-10 inches, so the rivers have been running high. After work yesterday I drove up to Waiʻale Falls, and found the lighting rather evocative above the raging river:

Waiʻale Falls, swollen with recent rain.

Thankfully, damage was fairly minor within Hilo from what I've seen. Around 5,000 people lost power according to HECO, but that seems to have been mostly outside Hilo in more rural areas, and all but about 400 had it restored by this morning. I heard a transformer blow not too far away (it made a tremendous noise), but never lost power. We've got another storm (Gilma) projected to pass by north of this island later this week (perhaps hitting the rest of the chain more square-on), but it was just downgraded from a hurricane in the last day or so and is expected to get weaker and not cause any significant effects here. All just part of hurricane season in Hawaii!

In other news, I found out last week that I didn't get the Gemini telescope operator job; from the message I got they went with someone currently working as a telescope operator, which certainly makes a lot of sense. That's pretty much the last nail in the coffin for me sticking on with Gemini, so I've been adjusting to that. I'm still waiting to hear back from the other two interviews I had, despite sending some gently querying emails about a week ago. I know things can move slowly, and no news can be good news at this stage, but I'm a bit surprised not to have heard anything. Still, not much to do for it except wait (and maybe see about putting in some more applications…). A hui hou!

A new view of the Wailuku

It's been so rainy for the past few months that I haven't had many chances to put a drone in the air. Last Friday we had an absolute downpour of up to 3 inches per hour for a short time, which caused a pretty widespread power outage including at the Gemini offices. I heard of one person in Piʻihonua whose rain gauge went from empty to 7 inches over the course of the day. A few weeks ago the rain let up long enough for me to get in a flight, and while the lighting isn't the best as it was still overcast I thought the photos I got were interesting enough to share.

I've been vaguely aware that there's a small hydroelectric power station in Hilo on the Wailuku River for some years now (it gets mentioned in the occasional local news article), but didn't actually know where it was located. There's an electrical station next to the river near downtown which I thought was associated with it, but I recently learned that it's actually upstream, outside the city proper above Waiale Falls (in Piʻihonua, actually).

I'm pretty sure that's it in the photo below, given the water coming out (though I don't know where the intake is). It's not very large, which makes sense since the Wailuku, though it reliably flows all year, spends most of its time in a very low flow state that can't be providing that much energy. I found myself more enchanted by the rest of the scene, with the emerald-green grass and the Wailuku rising up the mountain side, a distant waterfall barely glimpsed in the distance. It's quite idyllic…though the invasive Molucca albizia trees growing on the right shore spoil the mood a bit. (They grow faster than native trees and crowd and shade them out, but are pretty fragile and easily drop large branches, making them dangerous during storms.)

Anyway, that's all for now. I just wanted to share a nice photo of a new part of the Wailuku I hadn't really explored before. A hui hou!

Honoliʻi beach at dawn

It's been a busy few weeks here, with several people from my team at work who are normally remote being in town last week for a series of team meetings, socializing, and planning sessions. It was nice to see people in person (and we got a tour of the telescope!), but possibly as a result of all that close contact I came down with a cold on Sunday (which I'm finally mostly over today, thankfully).

However, the week before all that, I drove a short way up the coast around sunrise to Honoliʻi beach, one of the few beaches on this side of the island considered to have any waves worth surfing. It's at the mouth of the Honoliʻi stream, and is one of the relatively rare places along the Hāmākua coast where its usual sea cliffs give way to a beach and have a slope shallow enough to permit walking to the shore. (Honoliʻi means “little valley” in Hawaiian, if you were wondering, which is both descriptive and rather cute.)

Honoliʻi beach and the mouth of the stream.

The morning was bright and clear, and I saw something my housemate Jonathan and I chased several times in vain over a decade ago: a horizon free of clouds for the sunrise! I had begun to think it didn't happen. But the sunlight was dazzling reflecting off the water, which led me to an interesting discovery.

You see, I've got some circularly-polarized lens covers on my drones, one benefit of which is that they block glare from linearly-polarized light reflecting off flat surfaces like water. It partially depends on the angle of the Sun, and while I was conceptually aware of what they did, this flight was the first time I really noticed. With the ocean as smooth as it was, you can see the ocean floor in the image above for quite a ways out from shore. And the water definitely wasn't this transparent to the naked eye by any means, so I was really a bit shocked at how well I could see through it with the filter. Here's another shot from a slightly different angle looking back along the coast towards Hilo; notice how clearly the rocks on the ocean floor are visible near the bottom of the image:

The beach from a different angle.

It was really quite eye-opening, no pun intended. I've always found water too deep to see the bottom of unnerving (one reason I don't spend much time in the ocean), and tend to assume the land drops off quickly. Whereas, from what I could see during this flight, it's actually fairly shallow even a ways from the shore, and slopes down gently. (Which isn't too surprising, given it's a shield volcano with very gentle slope, but our minds fill in assumptions for what we cannot see.)

One last bonus photo, if you follow Honoliʻi stream back from the ocean you come to a nice plunge pool and Makaila falls, surmounted by a bridge carrying the original road up the coast (the current highway uses the bridge seen in the first photo). The name of the falls means “young shoot, as for transplanting,” apparently. It's a lovely, serene place that isn't easily reachable by land. Which I'm beginning to realize is true of many of the waterfalls on the Hāmākua coast, the more I explore with my drone. For every Akaka falls and Rainbow falls, there's another set of falls that can't be easily reached or seen, perhaps not quite as spectacular or breathtaking, but beautiful in its own way. I've started planning out trips based on where I can see falls on Google Maps, trying to find new spectacles to enjoy and share. So you can expect more waterfall photos from me in the future.

Makailo falls.

Having flown up the stream with the Sun at my back lighting the way, I had a bit of a nasty surprise when I tried to turn around and return: the Sun was still so low in the sky that it was shining almost directly down the valley, and the backlighting of leaves and lens flare made it a dicey proposition to try to fly back out. Fortunately, this was actually my second time flying around Makailo falls (the first was back in July of ʻ22 when I stopped near the bridge in the photo), and I knew the pool itself had a clear view of the sky. Combined with the Mini 3 Pro's ability to look upwards better than a lot of drones, I was able to fly straight up out of the jungle and safely back above the trees. All's well that ends well, as they say! A hui hou! And happy leap year!