Cooofffffeeeee...

This morning after breakfast, we drove down to Kona, which is about a half hour south of here. It's a bit more touristy than Hilo -- we've decided that most of this side of the island is reserved for tourists, seeing as it's generally sunny and warm. And the locals all live over in Hilo. We think eventually, the locals will stage an uprising and decide they'd like this side of the island back... there will be a mutiny, because they're sick and tired of living in the rain (and why should the tourists have all the fun?).

Anyway... Kona is not only tourist-friendly, it's home to world-famous Kona coffee. I've been looking forward to the Kona coffee ever since I realized we'd be on the same island where the stuff is grown. There's a Starbucks right down the street from the hotel, but this morning I decided to forgo my usual Starbucks fix and wait until we arrived in Kona before indulging in some caffeine. After parking in a lot in Kona and wandering around some of the shops, we found a tiny little coffee kiosk with a very persuasive saleswoman. She was giving out free samples of the award-winning coffee (I believe she said it was considered "number one in the world" or something like that... it was like the winner for Best Java in the Coffee Oscars...). We tried a medium roast, a dark roast, and a flavored macadamia nut vanilla. Each one was served black -- no cream or sugar -- yet had no bitterness whatsoever. The macadamia nut vanilla even tasted slightly sweet -- as if someone HAD added sugar without anyone's knowledge. I was sold -- I bought a bag of dark roast and the macadamia nut vanilla. Even Rick liked them -- and he's a lot more picky about his coffee than I am. So now I understand why there's so much fuss over Kona coffee in the world of caffeine conoisseurs...

We're trying to get to sleep early tonight, because we're hoping to get an early start in the morning -- we want to drive over to the volcano tomorrow, which is a two or three hour drive (depending on who you ask...). So hopefully I'll have some cool volcano pictures tomorrow. But here's some pics from today:

Something we've noticed as we've driven around -- people use white coral rocks to write out things on the dark lava rock -- it's like this all over the highway...

Walking through Kona...

The Kona Coffee Cafe -- yum...

After we got our coffee, we walked down to the beach and sat on the seawall...

As we were watching the waves roll in, I noticed shapes in the water -- eventually I realized it was fish... they were being lifted up by the waves, and for a couple seconds before the waves broke, you could see them through the water -- all those yellow spots are fish...

The beach at the hotel -- it's sort of a protected cove, so the water is very calm...

Endangered sea turtle on the beach near the hotel -- they have a little section of beach fenced off for the turtles...

Sunset...

Me and Rick and the tiki torches...

Hanging out after dinner...