Joe and Françoise's excellent adventures!: Strong coffee and gentle turtles….

I mentioned yesterday that I had gone snorkeling and saw some sea turtles, and was hoping to see them again today, this time with my underwater camera. I was not disappointed!!!! What an amazing treat!

But that was in the afternoon. In the morning, we actually got to take it easy as our day didn’t start as early: we enjoyed a leisurely breakfast on the beautiful grounds, before heading to Kona, south of where we are, and in an area that has not been affected by lava for a very long time.

Consequently, instead of the lunar landscape we left behind, it is lush and tropical.

The road is lined with beautiful plants and flowers, and the views as you go up are beautiful.

The slopes of the long instinct volcano provide the perfect setting to grow coffee: Kona coffee can only come from this very small strip of land (it’s like champagne, if it’s not from this very specific region, its just not called Kona coffee, it’s just coffee).

On our way to a historic coffee farm, we stopped first at the painted church, which was built, and painted single-handedly by father John around 1899. He was not even supposed to be here, but was on his way to South America, when a yellow fewer epidemic delayed him on the big island and he decided to stay and build this church. It doesn’t look like much from the outside (although impressive considering he built it by himself), but what makes it special is the inside:

He was not trained as an artist at all, making it an even more amazing achievement: the altar is painted to look like a gothic church: note the rather impressive depth he manages to convey!

The Pilars are painted to resemble palm trees- the dead leaves face away from the altar…. Away from God. The church is indeed full of symbolism and very impressive (more of the paintings at the end of the blog).

We then went on to a museum that recreates the early coffee plantations: most of the farm were owned and run (still are) by Japanese immigrants who had first come to work the sugar plantations, but managed to get ownership of small plots of land to grow coffee, which was a better life (though not easy).

We learned about the early ways to harvest and process coffee cherries (that’s what they are called): while the processing has improved a lot, they are still harvested by hand.

The harvest is over a few months because the trees bloom multiple times in the spring and, on a single branch, you find cherries in different stages.

Donkeys were very important and most farmers had at least one to carry the harvest down the slope and whatever equipment needed back up. The current donkeys on the farm have a much easier life.

The house itself was very traditionally Japanese, and our guide pointed out many items (such as the traditional rice cooker) that was uniquely Japanese. She mentioned that her grandmother’s house (in Japan), basically looked exactly like this one. The Japanese farmers were allowed to stay on the farms during WWII and were not imprisoned like others of Japanese descent, because farms were protected. While this was better than the alternative, it was not really freedom as their travels were strictly restricted and they were not allowed to speak Japanese at all. Their descendants, who still work the farms, are very proud of their heritage.

This little guy had nothing to do with coffee growing or history, but he was there and I think he is very sweet.

We moved on to a working and new coffee plantations - started by a Californian man who thought that used the same trellises for coffee as for grapes would help with production.

I don’t know if it does, but the coffee there is sill REALLY expensive (note that this is for 8 ounces…. I did not buy any…). But it was a cool place to visit ( we did get a sample of the coffee. It was good. Just not THAT good).

The entire area around Kona is full or tropical flowers and fruit of all kinds. Our guide got us some of these small bananas (called apple bananas), that are unique to Hawaii and very good. Sweeter than the typical ones. Note sure why they are not grown other places or imported from here. More pictures of flowers and fruit at the end of blog.

In the afternoon, I went back to snorkeling and it was great! A couple of teenagers and I got so excited by the turtles( see top picture) that we all ended up swallowing quite a bit of sea water. It was worth it. The tropical fish were cool too. See a lot of pictures at end of blog.