Brett and Debbie: November 2008 Archives

We had a great vacation in Hawaii, where we spent 8 days and returned about a week ago. We chose to visit the Big Island for its variety of things to do, including lots of places where things are made, which we always love to learn about. We did some relaxing, but not too much!

We stayed in Volcano on the rainy and lush side of the island, Waipi’o Valley in the north, and Captain Cook (near Kona) on the dry, west side of the island. This gave us ample opportunity to experience hiking on (cooled) lava, seeing active volcanoes and steam vents, visiting great local farmers markets, touring coffee farms, visiting a cacao farm where they make chocolate bars from locally grown beans, doing a lot of snorkeling with beautiful fish and coral, and relaxing on beautiful, remote beaches.

It was especially exciting to see the volcanoes. We took a surreal guided hike through a 1974 lava flow that led us to the summit of Mauna Ulu. At the edge of the Mauna Ulu crater we were warmed by the many steam vents surrounding us while at the same time being battered with wind and near-horizontal rain. Fortunately we found a naturally heated area that somewhat protected us from the rain until the squall passed. We got to see an active eruption of Kileaua Volcano’s Pu’u O’o Crater, where the lava was flowing into the ocean and making huge clouds of steam, which at night glowed orange as they reflected the glow of the molten lava. Although we had hoped to be closer to flowing lava, this was probably safer at 3 miles away.

The snorkeling was the best we've experienced, with an incredible variety of sea life, including surgeon fish, trumpet fish, needle fish, trigger fish, butterfly fish, Moorish idol, box fish, puffer fish, lots of coral, sea urchin, and huge Hawaiian green sea turtles!

My usual investigation of local beers mostly changed in favor of the tasty Mai Tai's and various fruit drinks because beers available were very common. The most interesting of the beers there was Kona Brewing’s Passion Fruit Wheat Ale with its tart fruit flavor.

We really enjoyed the coffee while in Hawaii - we have a newfound respect for 100% Kona coffee! We helped Joanie (the neighbor of the B&B we stayed at in Captain Cook) pick some coffee cherries (and they do look quite a bit like cherries), then got a personal, tour of the small scale processing facilities at Rowesview Coffee. There are many small coffee producers through the region, so nearly everywhere we went, especially farmers markets, we got to taste many different local coffees. Yum!

We hope you enjoy our photos: