Somewhere in the Kailua-Kona coast, a dangerous beauty lurks quietly. Called a sinkhole, blow hole, or lava tube, this open-ended natural conduit connects the ocean with the coastal Hualālai volcano lava flow as a ‘well’. An incoming wave rushes through this channel and pumps out hundreds of gallons of frothy sea-water, which soon after, recedes right back into the sinkhole forming several temporary enticing waterfalls. Occasionally, a random monster wave gushes up water all around to knee deep and poses a real threat to anyone nearby of being swept right into the hole and the purgatory beyond it. Despite these risks, many photographers seek and glorify such danger and the adrenaline rush they get from messing with it. Well then, now was my turn to get a shot of the ‘well’ adrenaline for myself.
After driving an hour from another part of the island, Rishabh and I reached this ‘beach’ 15 minutes before sunset. Two tripoded gentlemen, who made it easy to locate the otherwise camouflaged sinkhole quickly, occupied the best seats for the sunset-show. “Be careful, those rocks are very slippery”, one of them kindly warned me as I tried to squeeze myself into some sort of a decent view, all-the-while wishing for their prime spot. By the time they left, the sun had long set and the menacing twilight was all there was left. Other than the occasional whitish froth in the sink, I could barely see anything else with my naked eyes. The darkness – thickly dissolved in stillness of the air – prompted mild trepidation. However, the anxiety was kept at bay by the fuzzy acoustics of sea-water churning in the well – the siren’s song if you will.
Asking Rishabh to stay far back, I kept shooting, hoping sincerely that all monster waves stay away. The ocean obliged but only partially. Once, a semi-monster wave came in and drowned me up to eight inches above my ankle. As the wave receded, I felt the intense pull of the ocean in my legs. For a brief second, I didn’t know what I would do, if the grip of my hiking boots on those slippery rocks failed. Thankfully, it didn’t. I ended up returning with my dose of adrenaline, a few decent shots of the sinkhole, and fine memories of fiddling with a beauty that knows how to kill.
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