Leaving Kona (for now)

After our foot soak, we headed back to the hotel to grab our stuff before heading out for the day.  We had a late checkout, 4:00 PM, so we had a little time to gather things before we had to leave.  Before going, we wanted to grab some shaved ice from a little store on the hotel grounds that we've been looking at ever since we arrived the other day.  Each time we went by it had been closed. Plus we had hotel credit we needed to use before checking out so we stopped in.  We had a Haleakala (coconut milk) and a Party in da Mouth (tamarind, passion fruit, and calamansi).

We then grabbed all of our luggage and started our journey towards our home for the next three nights in Volcano, HI.

We only made two more stops on the way to Volcano.  First, because we were getting kind of tired, the jet lag was still hitting us pretty good and second, it rained a good part of the way. 

The first stop was a tiny Catholic Church right on the ocean.  The church is called St. Peter's by the sea and it probably doesn't sit more than 10 yards from the ocean.

The last stop was a cute little roadside bakery.  Chris found it while poking around on Google maps and it looked like a cool place to stop. Being late in the day on Saturday we weren't sure there'd be much left but there still was some pretty good selections.  Payment was Venmo or cash, all on the honor system.  We grabbed a matcha – ula  cake with macadamia nuts and a small loaf of jalapeno cheese bread. 

That was the last stop until we arrived at our Airbnb in Volcano.

Kona Sea Salt Tour and Foot Soak

After leaving the farmers market we drove about 45 minutes for a tour of a salt farm which we had booked a couple weeks ago.  The Kona Sea Salt farm is a working Salt farm which uses deep water saltwater to make gourmet salts.  The 45 or so minute tour was pretty informative and is located in a beautiful setting right at the most western tip of the island.  And Sofia made a friend on the tour! 

Because the ocean quickly gets very deep off the shore of the island of Hawai'i, they are able to run a pipeline a little over a mile long out to sea to a depth of 2200 feet.  Onshore, the salt water is put into a solar evaporation system which uses the pretty much year-round sun to dry the salt.  In about 4 weeks' time, the seawater evaporates, leaving white salt crystals that are placed into covered wooden hoppers where any remaining moisture is drained out.  Then it is hand packaged and sold.  The moisture that was drained is used as a mineral supplement or as a spa soaking bath. 

We then had a foot bath using that mineral supplement and that beautifully called 47° deep sea water.  On a really hot day that felt nice, although it was difficult to keep your feet in the water more than a minute or two at a time. 

Waimea Farmers Market

We were up early on Saturday (surprise!) so we had some time before our 11:00 AM sea salt farm tour.  We had wanted to go to Waimea Farmers Market, rumored to be one of the better farmers markets on the island, but they're only open Saturday.  Since we had only one Saturday on our trip, today had to be the day.  We knew we would only get there if we woke up early because it was about a 50-minute drive from our hotel and we had an 11:00 AM tour at a salt farm.  We left the hotel a little after 7:00 and made the drive up.  The farmers market actually opened at 7:00 and when we got there a little before 8:00 there were a fair number of people, but it wasn't too crowded yet.  We were starving so we headed immediately to a couple of food tents.

The first thing that caught our eye was a malasada tent.  Malasadas are a sugar coated donuts that have become very popular in Hawaii.  They are Portuguese in origin and were introduced to Hawaii by Portuguese laborers working in the sugar plantations.  There were lots of different choices for filling and a few different choices for sugar coating.  We mixed it up a little by getting two with Li Hing powder, which is a powder made from dried plums that has a sweet, salty and tangy taste; and one with plain sugar.  We chose the guava filling for one of them, another with with a s'mores filling, and the last one with Mango filling.  They were made to order and when we got them they were hot, fresh, and absolutely delicious.  If we had more time we probably would have ordered a dozen more.

While the malasadas were being made, we hit up a produce tent.  We always say that people should give out samples because that sells your product better than anything.  If it weren't for samples being given out we would not have had a chance to try a jaboticaba.  While it is native to Brazil and not Hawaii, it was delicious nonetheless.

We also bought some fresh pineapple, some freshly squeezed pineapple juice and some freshly squeezed lilikoi (passion fruit) juice.

We also picked up some steamed dumplings which hit the spot.

After walking around a bit and checking out some of the crafts for sale, we spotted a guy cutting up coconuts.  Sofia had tried coconuts before in Puerto Rico and wasn't thrilled about them, these were younger and softer, and she liked it.

Luau

On Friday night we had reservations for the Royal Kona Hotel’s Voyagers of the Pacific Luau.  Most of the luau's that we looked at seem to have a lot in common: Polynesian dancing that tells a story, fire-knife dancing, Hawaiian and island food from an all you can eat buffet, and an amazing location with sunset. We chose this particular one because reviews seem to indicate it might be a little more kid friendly, it was close to our hotel (on our second day on the island jet lag might be catching up with us) and since each hotel's luaus are only offered certain days of the week, this one matched up with our schedule.  Before we arrived, Sofia couldn't help noticing that are that the hotel where the luau was being held looked like a cruise ship.

The jet lag was starting to kick in.  It looked like Sofia was going to fall asleep in the car.  She got her second wind as soon as we sat down and they brought her a kid-friendly adult drink.  Can't remember what it was called. Some kind of sunrise. 

We had a private table really close to the stage and the setting was truly amazing right on the ocean with waves crashing on the rocks in the background and the sun setting as the backdrop.

This particular luau, through dance, told stories of how the Polynesians set out to discover the islands of the Pacific.  Food was really good, The entertainment absolutely kept our attention and kept Sofia interested. The servers were amazing.  The food area was kept clean and well stocked and our server seemed to be running back and forth constantly bringing us fresh drinks or bottles of water.  It was a great evening! 

Big Island Day 1

 After getting to the hotel last night at about 9 PM local time, or 3 AM our time, we took a quick shower and hit the bed thinking we would sleep pretty well.  At 2 AM local time, our bodies said it was time to wake up.  The unfortunate thing is that nothing in town was open at that time, nor would anything be open for  a few hours.  This gave us some time to research some other things we might want to do on the trip, as well as reading various restaurant menus for breakfast.  After some showers and about 4 hours, Walmart opened up.  We were there right after opening at 6 and we were able to stock up on some food for the week.  We were also able to kill some time before the restaurant we wanted to eat at opened at 7.

We chose Island Lava Java mostly for the large delicious looking cinnamon rolls.  They did not disappoint and we were fortunate that the restaurant had a nice view of the water and some other amazing food for breakfast.  We ended up sharing a couple of plates, the LUAU scramble, which is scrambled egg with slow roasted kalua pork, grilled pineapple, onion, cheddar & jack cheese; as well as the Island Style pancakes, which is sliced bananas & island-grown macadamia nuts on top of buttermilk 'cakes served with an amazing coconut syrup.

Since our bodies said it was already 1 PM, we opted for a couple of drinks with breakfast.  Chris had the Hibiscus lemonade (House-made hibiscus lemonade spiked with New Amsterdam Gin) and Jackie had the Hana Hou (Ocean vodka, guava puree, fresh orange, pineapple & lime juices).  

While we were awake for 4 hours this morning, we  had some additional time to research other things we might want to do on the trip which had been previously unplanned.  We stumbled across a "things to do around town" article someplace and learned that we could learn how to make leis for $10 each, which seemed like a bargain, and even better, it was right in our hotel!  After breakfast, we headed back for our 9:30 appointment.  There were just 3 other people learning to make leis with us.  Besides making our own leis we learned the history of the lei, its uses, when not to use, and some meanings behind different leis.  

After going back to the room for a few minutes, we headed out to one of our previously planned activities, visiting a seahorse farm.  The farm was located in an industrial type area near the airport, and if you were not looking for it, you would never know it is there.  Our tour lasted about an hour and apparently others knew about it too, because there were maybe a dozen others on the tour. We learned quite a bit about these little creatures.  The males give birth and usually get pregnant minutes after giving birth, which means they are pretty much pregnant their whole lives.  Seahorses are on the edge of extinction, in the wild only 1 in 1000 lives to be a year old.  They love shrimp.  And we got to hold and feed the seahorses, which was really cool. 

Above:  seahorse food (shrimp)

Above: just tried eating seaweed for the first time!