The Big Island-Part 3

Monday June 6

We checked out of our hotel and drove down the Mamalahoa Highway along the western shore of the island to the city of Kona.  Along the way we saw massive black lava flows of varying textures from Mt. Hualalai. The International Kona Airport is built upon these lava flows.  The local graffiti is to use white limestone rocks and spell out names, pledges of love, or outright commercials.  We actually drive past Kona to Kealakekua and the Greenwell Coffee Farm and old stone structure of the Kona Historical Society.

We have some Kona Coffee as the docent gives us a blow by blow account of the missionaries that came here, the coffee plantations and the Japanese workers that lived and worked on the plantations. 

The Greenwell family also ran a store which probably resembled most turn of the century general stores.  We then toured the coffee plantation; saw the beans on the trees, the bean drying, and the roasting equipment. One of the Japanese women gave us a tour of one of the simple, but efficient homes and how food was prepared among other activities.



From there we drove toward Kona and stopped for lunch at Teshima’s Restaurant for some traditional Japanese food.

Then on to Kona, now a glitzy tourist town, but was once a place of power for ancient Hawaiians.  King Kamehameha made his home there.  A descendant, King Kalakaua built Hulihe’s Place on the water for his vacations.  We were given a private tour of the palace taking our shoes off to protect the beautiful wooden floors. We walked a short distance to the King Kamehameha Hotel to see another heiau beside it. The heiau and the hotel are being restored due to the damage caused by the recent tsunami off the shore of Japan.

Our final activity on the Big Island before flying to Oahu was to have drinks and Hawaiian pupu at the hotel’s lanai where a group picture was taken of the attending classmates and spouses.

Aloha Big Island