Travelling to the next place: the Rainbow Bee Farm

Today was a relatively quiet day as we moved from our B&B in south Hawaii to a cottage at the Rainbow Bee Farm in north Hawaii.  We started with a tour at a coffee farm, which proved to be extremely interesting.  A coffee tree in bloom has the most pleasantly fragrant flowers.

Coffee fruit are called cherries, which are harvested as they become yellow-orange-red.  

The farm we visited had thousands of coffee trees, but they also bought cherries from farmers around the area.  Cherries are tumbled with water to strip them of the flesh, and then the beans are dried in huge low drying houses.  

After drying, the beans go through blowers to strip an outer skin, and ultimately go to roasting.  Kona coffee refers to a very specific geographic portion of Hawaii—one step outside that area does not count for labelling.

We had to provision up along the way:  the Walmart and Costco stores are here in force.  Please note the lovely feral poultry at Costco, in the parking lot.

We visited a state park called Kalako-Honokohau in the afternoon, which was a major Hawaiian village site beside the ocean.  It is unbelievable to think of a village here, because the site is merely an expanse of miles and miles of raw moonscape lava. 

There was an area where there were some Hawaiian petroglyphs, including a “checkerboard” for a game they played.  Speculation is that the game board was used for other purposes such as divination, planning, and teaching.

Down at the beach we found sea turtles basking.  As we approached, we saw a jagged shore line with people stretch out along it.  As I turned to ask the closest group whether they had seen sea turtles, I saw six merely 20 feet away.  You could see turtle heads appearing above the water as many others floated just offshore.

We are inland in a rural area, and outside our cottage is a tiny little pond, which contains—to Brian’s horror—bullfrogs.  Big loud bullfrogs just beginning their mating season.  Last night did not feature great sleep for Brian.

We drove out to a tiny little town for dinner and ended up at an Italian restaurant.  Dinner featured live entertainment included a male guitar player and a female saxophone player, who were very good.  At the end of their set, the guy walked around to talk to people at their tables.  It turned out he was the owner of the restaurant!  Both he and the female player were 70 years old.  Talk about an inspiration as to what to do when we get older.