(Reminder: half the story is in my photo captions. Sort of.)

We’d planned to drive to Volcano National Park, but the sudden rain in that area, the long 2.5 hour drive it would’ve been, the fact that other wedding people that went there said they didn’t see anything interesting as the lava flow had changed direction to somewhere inaccessible, turned us off. We had a chat with a friendly souvenir shop salesclerk Duane who was born and raised on the island and he recommended his favorite snorkeling and dive spot 20 minutes away, so off we went with our gear and swimsuits (after stopping by WalMart again to buy an underwater disposable camera). The highly-touted Kealakekua Beach not only had ample parking (a rare find on the Big Island), tons of great fine salt-and-pepper uncrowded sandy beach to hang out on, and fish everywhere, but also yielded three yellow turtles chomping away on some rock moss a few feet away from the shoreline. I literally stood thigh-high in beach waves looking down at them, as they washed to and fro with the surf. Occasionally a yellow and black spotted fin would flip out of the water, and sometimes it’d be the back end of the shell with a pointy tail. More often it was a little yellow head with round black eyes that would pop out, take a gulp of air and blink at us, then disappear again.

A local who kayaked out to sea had his black dog run excitedly up to the water to greet him when he returned, and as I was nearby, the dog dropped what I thought was a tennis ball in front of me and crouched down low with a whimper. I picked up what turned out to be a small tennis ball colored furry coconut she’d found on the beach somewhere, and played catch with her for awhile. I had a great time deepening my strange tan (seriously white ass) and Mr. W worked on his sunburn.


We drove by a Kona coffee mill on the way back and decided to go in for the tour and watched the coffee processing methods.

Ever seen a coffee plant before it’s reduced to coffee beans? The berry that houses the bean is called a “cherry.” 100 pounds of cherries yields 20 pounds of coffee beans.

The raw coffee beans (called “parchment”) are poured into this big roasting machine.

While the beans are roasting, they have to be guarded very carefully because within seconds it’d audibly crack once, and then again, and at the 3rd crack, the beans are constantly checked to get to just the right darkness, then released into this spinning thing to be turned and turned. I don’t know what the spinning thing does or what it’s called cuz my attention span gave out at this point and I’d wandered off.

After the beans spin for a few minutes, they’re packaged and ready for grinding.

A lot of the mills buy outside cherries around the area, too.

Coffee is the second-most traded commodity in the world behind oil (as in crude oil for gasoline).

While at the mill, we looked at the plantation’s back lot and saw, beyond the coffee plants, was another lava tube!

Mr. W sprayed me down with DEET insect repellant and we went off to explore.


This tube was short, only 100 feet or so, but we got pictures this time! Apparently all lava tubes are drippy drippy, tho.

After we exited we saw some pretty things I’d like to share.

This one is for my girl Jordan:

After that we came back to town, walked to a new favorite beachside diner and had fresh opa fish as I made a new silver tabby friend and fed the tiny skinny thing half the grilled fish from my fish tacos. This is the first vacation I can remember where I wasn’t ready and itching to go home after 3 days, although on the 3rd nite I did have a nightmare that something was wrong with Dodo and that it was my fault for neglecting him. Mr. W said it’s a sign we should retire here. Tomorrow night’s the flight home.