I had initially intended on going on a tour of the only chocolate plantation in the US, but apparently those tours book up fairly fast. Luckily for us, we love coffee just about as much as chocolate, so we headed to one of the many coffee farms for a tour instead.
Coffee looks so unassuming on the tree. These are all unripe berries - they turn red once they are ripe. We actually found one and the guide let us peel it open to see - gross! Coffee beans look like they are covered in snot before they are dried and roasted. I'll spare you a photo. ;)
The farm was an small organic one with lots of other plants and several other animals. The donkeys were the cutest of the bunch. Apparently the donkey’s were unnamed until a tourist from Canada named them. This one is Paco.
And the slightly shier donkey is Douglas. I don’t think they have any functional use on the coffee farm, but they sure were cute!
This guy followed us around and crowed quite a bit. The tour guide did not seem like he was overly fond of the rooster. Apparently he doesn’t limit his crowing to the morning hours and that has not made him many friends, He was more than happy to pose for some photos for me though!
We drove down to the southern most tip before stopping to eat lunch. The southern point of Hawaii is the southern most point of the US, so it seemed a fitting locale to stop and enjoy the day. The waves spent the whole lunch hour beating on the cliffs, so we even had some nice background music. :)
We, of course, rented a Jeep for the Hawaii portion of the trip. So we spent as much time as possible today driving off road. We also spent most of the day with the top down! We did reapply sunscreen pretty frequently, but it was just nice to have some pretty weather!
We spotted a rickety wooden ladder rising up out of the water and wondered if there was anyone brave enough to be jumping in? Sure enough, we got to watch a few guys jump in. The spot they were jumping in looked fairly calm compared to the rest of the cliffs, but there was no way either one of us were jumping in!
After lunch, we decided to try and find the green sand beaches nearby. There was a single sign with an arrow, but no other directions. Once you got off the actual roads, there were so many jeep trails along the coast you could follow. It was a bit of a choose-your-own-adventure! We drove along, stopping occasionally to check out the sights. And I know it looks like awful weather, but the rain held out on us until we were done exploring! :)
The beaches were mostly rocks and busted up pieces of coral. The Big Island (Hawaii!) is the newest of the island chain and therefore has the poorest beaches. There are some and they range in colors depending on where you are. Here is a big chunk of basalt with abundant olivine crystals. The olivine is what makes the green sand, being more resistant than the basalt.
Also note my fancy new shoes - I made a last minute shopping trip to REI and this awesome salesman picked out this pair for me when I told him where I was heading. I wasn’t in love with the colors, but functionally I couldn’t have asked for a better shoe!
We finally found the green sand beach! Look how tiny it is!! There were actually a lot of people there and they had planned ahead with swimsuits. We decided we were having more fun driving than we would swimming, so we took some photos and headed back to our trails! :)
We ended up taking longer than we had originally planned to get over to Hilo, so we decided to stop and call home from the Jeep. We’ve been trying to minimize the kids missing us by spending time every day with them on Skype. Thanks to the wonders of technology, we can video chat with them even from the “remote" fields of Hawaii. Don’t they look excited to see us?? Actually Thomas saw me get my camera out to take a photo and started yelling at me not to use my flash - ha!
We are certainly missing each other, but so far they seem to be hanging in there and enjoying the time with their Nonni! :)