Day 7: Bay View Coffee Farm / The Painted Church / Pu’uhonua o Honaunau

October 11 

We got to "sleep in" all the way to 9 am this morning before we were on the bus for three excursions.  Fortunately, unlike yesterday, we were only travelling about half an hour to the first stop.  Then the next two were within ten minutes of the first one.  Our first stop was at the Bay View Coffee Farm.  One of a few coffee farms in Hawaii that does the entire process from growing to production, to selling of Kona coffee.  We discovered that (a) it's a lot more difficult to produce coffee than you'd think, and if you're a fan of Kona coffee most is NOT really true Kona coffee.  After seeing the various stages of production we were able to stroll through part of the coffee fields.  Then we arrived at the shop to sample some Kona coffee and if anyone wanted to buy some, they could.

The coffee making process.....pick the coffee beans (top left); peel and dry (bottom left); separate them by grade (bottom right); and finally, roast them (top right)

Some phrases to live by :)

Amidst the coffee fields

Hawaiian sign language (don't say I never taught you nothin'!)

From there we went to the Painted Church.  Very interesting...  First, the church was originally built down by the water.  But when the second priest took over this Roman Catholic house of worship he noted that nearly all the parishioners were workers up in the mountains.  So they took the church apart, and reassembled it where it is now, up in the mountains.  Then this same priest - who was NOT an artist - got some good old fashioned house paint and painted the murals on the ceilings and the walls BY HAND.  That was 125 years ago and the murals, etc. are still there - and in pretty good shape.  Pretty interesting story!

NOTE: at the front, behind the alter, looks like a European cathedral, but along the sides, the posts are "extended" up into the ceiling as palm trees

And our final stop was at Pu'uhonua o Honaunau, which was an interesting story!  Way, WAY back in early Hawaii under the leadership of the king, if you broke the sacred law of the land you would most likely be sentenced to death.  BUT.....if you could flee from the king's soldiers, dive into the ocean and swim to the safety of this place, then you were pardoned.  Of course you had to be "rehabilitated" but at least you got to live.  We heard several versions of this......one was you jumped in on the one side of the cove and then the soldiers through spears and used bows and arrows to try and kill you while you swam.  Another version we heard was that you might be "on the run" for days and when you eventually got to this place you had to swim the cover.  And finally we saw at the site a film that said you would swim "for days" to reach the refuge of safety.  Still - a pretty cool place to walk around.

We were back at the hotel before 1:30 pm to grab lunch and lounge around before joining up with everyone at 5:30 for a dinner in downtown Kona.  Kudos to our tour director Annie because while we were in the Painted Church, she received a text message that the restaurant we'd been booked to go to - and we'd all made menu selections - had to be closed for an emergency.  Within 45 minutes Annie had us booked at a new place!  And what "Lava Java" (the restaurant) put on for us was SPECTACULAR!  As I said to Annie afterwards, "I can't imagine what they'd do if they'd had time to prepare for us!"  Whooooo hooooo!  And of course, the sunset was amazing.......again!

Tomorrow we move on to our third and final island.  Bags out by 5:30 am; on the bus by 6:30 am for the flight to Maui.  We have a short tour and some free time before checking into our new resort in the late afternoon.