We are really enjoying eating out on the
lanai. Very civilized. We notice that at night, the light on out in
the lanai does not seem to attract bugs or moths. We have a screen door,
but it must be for show only.
CORRECTION!
Today we go esploring for Kona coffee. As a coffee hound, I know that it is some of the finest and most expensive coffee to be found in the world. I have heard that a coffee bean that is first eaten by some mammal then excreted, recovered from the excrement and then turned into coffee is more expensive. OOOOOH!
We did not get away till after 11:00 AM,
(2:00 PM, BC time) today. Damn that lanai. Actually I spent about an hour using
the internet to file an accident report to ICBC. Filling it out on a lanai,
overlooking the sapphire blue
Once you leave the main highway, the big
island roads get very narrow and the directional signage become scarce. No
problem, it’s a small island; how lost can we get. I have this assumption that
if you are a tourist business, you will need huge flashy signs all along the
highway announcing that you are only 10 miles, 5 miles, 1 mile, 500 feet and
finally “Your Are Here” How else will
us silly tourists ever find their business.
Well apparently, the Hawaiians have not figured that out. Instead they
have opted for tasteful, small signs announcing that you have arrived.
Our first stop was Holualoa and a small coffee company called Holouloa Kona Coffee Company. They have a small coffee mill and the guide book says that they give tours. We arrive to an empty parking lot. OHOH! We were greeted in the lot by the owner. She explained that it was a self guided tour. She walked us over to these large trees and said coffee grows on trees. I said great, point me to the latte trees. Seriously, coffee grows on trees.
I am now working out how I could get a tree back to
Even on the same tree, the beans ripen at different times so you might pick off that tree several times over the season. A picker can collect about 300 pounds of beans a day and is paid about $0.50 a pound. It takes about 18 pounds of beans to make one pound of coffee. The beans are dumped into pulper.
The pulper removes the red outer layer and the coffee cherry now becomes a bean. The beans are left in a fermenting tank of water for 24 hours. This is to soften a tough outer skin on the bean so it can be later removed. The beans are then pumped over to a shaker where the excess water is removed. The beans are then laid out on the floor to be sun dried. Modern manufacturing uses drum type dryers, sort of like a clothes dryer, to speed up the process but the sun is definitely cheaper. This mill would only use a dryer if the weather got to damp or the humidity was too high. The sun drying process can take up to two weeks depending on the weather. The beans are constantly raked to turn them over and assure a nice even drying process. Left wet, the beans can form molds. At this stage the beans are called parchment because of the stiff white parchment like skin that covers the bean. Once dry (10% - 13% moisture content) they are milled to remove the skin cover.
Photo: Charlotte Claypool McKinnon
The green coffee is then put through a grading machine and separated into sizes. The grades from top to bottom are Extra Fancy, Fancy, Number One, Prime and Peaberry. As the coffee cherry grows, it actually forms into two beans. If this does not occur and the cherry forms only into a single bean, it is call peaberry. Coffee can be stored for up to a year or more, in this state. We were told that like a fine wine coffee tastes better with age.
Our tour took us from the orchard to the processing mill. Not a huge mill but my kind of place. Lots of moving things to play with. One person ran the entire operation. At this moment he was milling and sorting beans for another coffee plantation. There are only a few processing mills on the islandl This mill processes beans for over 60 coffee plantations. Most plantations are quite small, no more that 3 acres in size.
Photo: Mike Peditto
The fellow running the plant saw us as we arrived and came right over to
explain how everything worked. He even
shut all the equipment down so he wouldn’t have to yell over the noise of equipment. We moved on to the roasting area and sales
shop. Most beans are sold green to the bigger roasting companies. This mill has a mail order coffee business
and 75% of their production is roasted in house and mailed out around the world
for $30 a pound. They also sell decaffeinated coffee. The green beans are
actually sent to a place in
We purchased a number of bags of coffee as gifts to ourselves. I have never spent $50 bucks on coffee before. Now I can understand why a Starbuck’s latte costs $4.00.
Our next stop was the tiny little town of
On to Kealakekua for another coffee
mill/museum. The museum was closed. We stopped in the town to have a look at a
kayaking outfit that I had read about in the Lonely Planet. They offered kayaking and snorkeling tours out
to
The kayak place was located just across the street from a Buddhist mission. We wandered across for a quick look. Shoes off of course. There was a little statue of Buddha in a small shrine located at the entrance to the mission. They had him all decked out in an apron and a jaunty chefs hat. Not sure of the religious significance but all he needed was a steak and Buddha was ready to barby.
Next stop
Photo: airbnb
Across the bay from where we are is
a monument to him. The land around the monument
has actually been ceded to
Lunch was served on the beach sitting on
old volcanic rocks with
Photo: Kona Boys Keaakekua Bay
As we returned to the highway, I spotted a
sign for the “
Photo: lovebigisland.com
But I
am not surprised. The Hawaiians only
discovered Christianity a little over 200 years ago but they have embraced it
completely. There are more churches here than I have ever seen any where else
and that includes
On the way back we stop at what we thought was another coffee mill. It was really just a tourist trap. I sampled a few coffees and bought some nice smelling soap called Noni. The Noni is a plant found in the tropics. It grows these big fruits that are used for all kind of purposes but not for eating because they are too ugly. We found the real coffee mill located behind the tourist trap. It was a cooperative plant that served the small coffee growers in the area. They had their own small store where the price of coffee was much cheaper than the tourist trap. The sales lady was very nice and kept plying us with free samples. I ended up buying another two bags of coffee and this really funky Hawaiian hat made with Ti leaves. Definitely one for the costume trunk. Nonie wants me to wear it at our Survivor party. NOTE: Wore it to the Survivor party. It was a hit.
Its Miller time, so we hit the highway for home. Driving back we discovered that the big island has a traffic problem. Trouble in paradise? We found traffic heading out of Kailua Kona backed up for a couple of miles. We will definitely avoid this part of town around 4:30 PM (7:30 PM, BC time)
A couple drinks on the lanai and another fabulous
sunset. Off to Bubba Gumps restaurant
for our anniversary dinner tonight. We got dressed
up. Nonie put on the wedding dress from
We stepped in to a tour place as they were
offering some unbelievable prices for some of the tours we were planning to go
on. I knew there had to be a catch and
of course there was. We had to give up only one hour of our life to hear about
a chance of lifetime to own our very own piece of paradise. Not going to
happen. The sales lady was so shocked that she offered to reduce the Luau price
even more. Not going to happen. We told
her we already lived in paradise and we only wanted to visit hers and not own
it. There are no free luaus in
Back to Bubba Gumps and another 20 minute wait. Got an “I told you so” from Nonie as she wanted me to leave our name the first time we were there but I wanted to esplore and not have to rush back if we found something interesting. The twenty minutes went fast as we esplored a small shopping area adjacent to Bubba Gumps. The food was okay. The shrimp was fresh and the fish was fresh. $55.00 later, we headed home. Had my first Mai Tai. It contained a good whack of rum. A lot slushier than a Mojhito and they replaced the mint with a small tropical flower. I would have another one but at $6.00 it will be awhile. Something to be said for the all inclusive experience.
EVEN
I woke up to another beautiful day. About 5:30 AM Kona time. Oh well. I brewed up my first pot of Kona coffee and was not disappointed. It is a very smooth coffee with no bitterness. I think I will be blowing my last American dollars on as much as I can carry home. I don’t think there is a coffee limit crossing the border!
Today we are off to the north of Kailua Kona to South Koala to find Spencer’s Beach. I picked this beach as it is easy to spell. Actually, it has a great protected beach with good snorkeling opportunities. We did not get away till almost noon. That darn lanai has her hooks into both Nonie and I. We stopped by Snorkel Bob’s to pick up some snorkel gear. They are working on the road in front of our condo and had a number of the roads blocked off. It was quite a challenge to find our way to Bob’s with roads closed or one way going the wrong way. Had to wander through a few parking lots but finally managed to get to Bob’s and rent the necessary gear.
Photo: Foursquare
As we got further north, the wind started to pick up. Very gusty! Every large truck that passed us created a huge vacuum that threatened to suck the Jeep off the road. At one point the plastic side panel on the Jeep was blown open and I had to pull over and re-attach it. I am now very conversant in attaching little plastic bits to Jeep Wranglers. The wind started to die down as we moved further north.
We arrived at Spencer Park only to find that the park was closed for maintenance. AW CRAP. I had chosen Spencer Park for another reason and thankfully it was still open.
Pu’ukohola Heiau is located adjacent to the park and is a sacred temple site to the Hawaiians.
We hiked around the site for an hour or so. They were a number of ruins beside the temple. The site had been used by Hawaiians for years before as a sacred site. Some of the older ruins are still visible. There is no written history of what the site was used for before the temple was built. The site sits on a bay that could be a poster beach for Survivor. Nonie and I wandered about arguing over the best spot to build our shelter so it would not be flooded or blown away. We ended up agreeing to disagree. In my defense, I have years of cubs and scouts and I know what is required for a good camp site. So there.
On a small point over looking the bay we found a small historical marker. It stated that there was an old temple located in the bay. This temple had slowly been taken over by water so was no longer visible.
The marker went on to say that it was dedicated to the Shark god and that even today, sharks while not liking shallow water still come into the bay and swim around the temple site. It was recommended that you not wade in the bay. Yeah right, a bunch of hooey for the tourist. Well was I wrong. We continued up the trail which overlooked the bay. Gullible Nonie was intently scanning the bay for the sharks. I had better things to do. She suddenly yelled out, I think I can see a shark. I looked and said it is was probably just a sea bird.” The more we watched the more it became apparent that that black tip cruising around randomly in the bay was in fact the dorsal fin of a black tipped shark. In fact there were at least three of them circling around in the bay.
I took a lot of terrible pictures, but I think that like all the Ogopogo pictures ever taken, these pictures will not prove that we really did see a shark. One of the sharks showed up just below us and we were able to see him quite clearly. I say him because sharks are always male or course.
We continued up the trail as it would lead us to Spencer Park. I thought we could check it out to see if the beach was worth coming back to. Just as we arrived, we were immediately met by a very serious security lady in a golf cart, who sternly told us that the park was closed and we would have return along the same path. She stayed parked and watched us very intently to assure that we did indeed go back the way we came. I felt so guilty. The short glimpse we got of the park told us, we definitely need to come back. We headed back up the trail and made a short stop at the visitor centre where we watched a short three minute video on the history of the site. (See above) Mostly just enjoyed the AC for a few minutes as it was very hot.
About 7 miles outside of Kailua Kona we hit the traffic jam. Bumper to bumper for as far as the eye could see. It took us over 15 minutes to travel about 3 miles. It was bumper to bumper in the out going lane as well. It seems that most people who work in Kailua Kona cannot afford to live there, but live in the outlying areas. The cost for a one bedroom condo such as the one we are staying in is about $350,000. We now know that we should not travel on the highway between the hours of 3:30 and 5:00 PM.
Dinner in front of the TV tonight as the Amazing Race is on at 7:00. The hippies came in last, but got a free pass. We are cheering for the hippies.
