February 3 – Lava Rock Hale

     Airbnb presents some interesting travel housing options. We told you about the Avocado Tree House. For our last two nights on the Big Island we booked ourselves into a place called the Lava Rock Hale (hale means house). Eric and Diane built this circular house several years ago, and now rent it out.

      This place is in the Puna district, near Pahoa and the Avocado Treehouse. They live completely off the grid. Rain is collected from roofs and stored in tanks, sunlight is caught in roof mounted solar panels and stored in batteries, and the heat of the sun is captured in pipes and fed to an outdoor shower.

 It took Eric five years to build the house.  Five years?  I laugh at five years.

Everything except the bathroom and shower are in one room.  

We enjoyed the tranquility of the place for two nights, with only a few interlopers keeping us company.  A fence surrounds their property - it keeps their three horses in and the wild pigs out.  Soon after we arrived we heard pigs squealing outside the perimeter.  Very exotic!