We slept fitfully but all night long, awakening by about 7:30 Hawaiian time. We made our single packet of coffee and enjoyed it while waiting for our agreed upon time of 8:00 to call Kris and Heidi. I went down to see if I could use the Wi-Fi in the open air lobby of the Bali Kai (I could!) and then Marv came down to say we were going to get our pals. They had watched the tourist info channel and found out that there is an every Saturday organic farmers’ market right nearby. It is held in the parking lot of the Keauhou shopping center so we could kill several birds with one stone. Each couple shared a large breakfast plate from one of the vendors. After tasting the coffee at several stands we each bought 100% Kona coffee to have here and some to take home. We meandered and sampled and enjoyed the live Hawaiian music being played on a stage. When we had our fill, we went to the drugstore and supermarket for other breakfast and lunch foods, and went back to put them in the fridges in our rooms. We loaded up the car to be gone for the afternoon and drove south to the Pu’uhonau O Honaunau National Historic site. Our picnic on the lava rock beach was welcome before we climbed around on the rocks and examined the tidal pools alive with corals and tiny fish and crabs. Then we were thrilled with our first sightings of two humpback whales, quite close to the shore. Most of the humpbacks have now begun their journey to the Arctic Ocean so we were really pleased that we got to see a couple. We returned to the self-guided interpretive walk around the sacred grounds which only royalty could enjoy or even see and learned about the strict rules which governed the populous between 1550 and the nineteen hundreds. For example, a commoner could be put to death for even casting a shadow on the sacred grounds within the 17 feet thick, 12 feet high stone wall. Interestingly, the shore of the point just outside the wall was a Place of Refuge. If a person could reach the Point of Refuge (usually by swimming across the bay) then they were safe and, after purification by a priest, could return to his/her place in Society, absolved of the crime. As we walked around the area, Ken kept us updated on the Butler/ MSU Semi-Final game. Things seemed to be going well until we didn’t hear from him for a while and then got a sad, one word text: LOST. It became gradually cloudier as we explored but the woman in the gift shop said it wasn’t clouds, it was “vog” or volcanic fog from Mauna Loa. Be that as it may, we did drive through some very light rain in the same area. We took a different route back and stopped at the Painted Church. This Benedictine Catholic Church was built down near the coast, but when a new priest came in 1832 he supervised moving it up the hills into the cooler climate where the village people were moving. Then he began painting the interior with decorations and murals of important Bible scenes, modeling his work after a Spanish church. He died before finishing all the murals but the church is being kept up as he left it and has an apparently active membership with Mass the first Sunday of the month. We continued on to the Paleaku Peace Garden but drove past without stopping. We hoped to visit the Kona Coffee Living Museum but found that it had limited hours and days when it is open and was closed. Donkey Balls chocolates proved to be too expensive for the likes of us, so we drove on to two scenic overlooks and then dropped back down to the La’ Aloa Beach, just down the Ali’i Road from the Bali Kai. There a small swatch of fine white sand beach is surrounded by black lava rocks. There were lots of kids having a great time playing with their boogie boards in the surf. While we watched them, a man yelped that he had stepped on a sea turtle. Our attention turned to observing two large turtles feeding without concern for the buffeting waves that sometimes brought them perilously close to the large lava rocks. We were disappointed when two people told us that just a few minutes before they had seen a humpback whale “dancing” and breeching just off shore. As one of the turtles swam off we decided to return to the Bali Kai and rest up before going down to the shore area there to see if there would be a sunset worth watching. We also agreed to try the nearby Kona Brewing Company for dinner. The sun peeked out for a few minutes just as it reached the horizon and was well worth seeing. However, Kris and Heidi arrived just after the sun set so they missed it. Kona Brewing Company and Pub turned out to be a great choice. We ate outside under a sort of open sided umbrella tent. They had good sandwiches, really good beer and an amazing brownie and ice cream dessert which the four of us shared. Yum---my!!! Back at the Bali Kai, Marv, Heidi and I opted to go in the hot tub and pool for a while before we all hit the—very welcome—sack.
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