Kona, Hawaii

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

Today we are in Kona on the big island Hawaii. 

We had to be tendered into Kona today.  At least it is a beautiful day!

This is what we saw when be got off the tender boat. WOW beautiful!

This is where we were waiting for our tour bus at the dock.

 This is our first stop of the day. 

 We walked across old lava flows as seen above. Below is one of a few petroglyphs we saw in the lava.

This is supposed to be a woman giving birth.  This was said to be a birthing stone.

We continued on to the beach to see the Honu or Green Sea Turtles. 

Above is looking out of a replicated hut the natives used to store their canoes in on the beach. Below is more of the beach in the park.  So gorgeous.

 Above is a couple of green sea turtles sunning themselves. Obviously they have been out of the water for a while.  Below is a turtle leaving the water. We saw him working his way up on the sand.

We did get pictures of the green sea turtles in the water but they are hard to see so I'm not including any in this blog post.

Our next stop was the cloud forest which was on the property of the Kona Coffee Farms.

 This is the entrance to our hike through the Cloud Forest which will end the Kona Coffee Company.

The foliage along our path was marvelous.

 There were several cockatoos that had been rescued and lived here.  This one was very vocal.  I caught him with his feathers up.  I have a video of him talking and squacking, but cannot post videos in the blog.

These are buttress roots of a rainforest tree which may be a kapok tree.

This is a rainbow eucalyptus tree. The trunk was so colorful! God's creations are so amazing!

We arrived at the Mountain Thunder Kona Coffee Company.

 This display shows the red coffee bean shell after it has been soaked.  From right to left the light roast, medium roast and dark roast are displayed. The red shell used to make Kona Coffee Cherry Tea.

 This small lava tube was on a wall surrounding the sitting area at the coffee store.

 During our tour of the coffee processing plant, we learned that coffee beans are sorted by size before they are roasted.
Our tour guide was very informative on the entire process from picking of the beans to the roasting.

I got some of the Cherry Tea and Tic got some Kona Coffee. We won't get to try these until we are back home.

It was beautiful today and we enjoyed our tour. We were back to the ship in time for dinner.