A Street Fair and Drive to Kilauea
We woke to the sounds that lulled us to sleep. We'll will never get tired of hearing the sound of the waves against the shore. The condo is right on the ocean.
We had breakfast at Lulu's including a huge cup of Kona coffee; could they find coffee mugs any bigger? By now we had a new addiction. Kona coffee is a wonderful way to start the day.
After breakfast we walked up the street along the shoreline to an outdoor farmer's type marketplace and purchased some souvenirs. We found that there would be a street fair starting at 1pm and a concert in the park at 4:00 pm so we went back to Lulu's for a cold drink, watched some football and waited for the booths to open. A huge variety of amazing craftsmanship was displayed there, jewelry, wood carvings and blown glass, to mention a few.
We wound our way around the booths and displays and before we knew it, it was time to make our way to the park for the concert. A prayer was said and the group sang the Hawai'ian state song in Hawai'ian. Then sweet young girls dressed in white with ruby colored flower leas around their necks and flower tiaras in their waist-length or below waist-length hair, danced a traditional hula using bamboo sticks. Later, we walked some more and decided to have dinner at Bubba Shrimp. We saw another great sunset during dinner. Back at the condo we sat on the lanai and enjoyed a glass of wine and the evening tide and surf.
We slept 10 hours that night, guess it finally caught up with us. We enjoyed a cup of Kona coffee on the lanai. We drove South today and found a green sand beach, a black sand beach, and had lunch at the Southernmost restaurant on the island. We found 4 geocaches and a travel bug! Drove to the east side of the island to Volcano National Park. The desolation from the lava is unbelievable. The craters are amazingly huge, and the steam coming from the active volcano is frightening! Some of the steam we learned is gasses emitting from the volcano. Where all of the lava comes from either flows under the surface or is forced out through eruption, yet it continues to flow; never seeming to run out, such an awesome mystery.
We got back from our drive and had dinner at Huggos and then over to Huggos on the Rocks right next door to listen to live entertainment. We went from there to Bongo Bens where the service and the music were much better.
After sleeping in the next day we awoke to yet another beautiful day and had a couple cups of Kona coffee and enjoyed a lazy morning. We went for a walk up and down along the sea side of Kona looking for geo caches. In one cache there was a Pathtag Sherpa just waiting to travel from cache to cache. We stopped for some lunch at Koko Nutz and enjoyed some great homemade tamales, a wonderful breeze, and a great view of the sea. We decided to go snorkeling, so we stopped in at Bob's Snorkel Shop and rented some gear. They had goggles with prescription lenses! How cool is that!! We went out to a small beach area just South of the condo and geared up with the masks and fins. There were a lot of rocks, big rocks under the water and a huge wave knocked Jeff against one of the rocks. When he put his hand down to break the fall, he cut the heal of his hand. He also hit a sea urchin that embedded a small cluster of stingers on his palm. The cut was not that big, but wouldn't stop bleeding so we hiked back to the room in search of first aid. Band aids, tweezers, and of course, peroxide. We abandoned snorkeling for the day. After a shower we were ready for some dinner. We turned in early because we were getting up at 4am to go to the heliport for a helicopter ride over the island the next morning.
