Hawaii Day 4 - On Our Own Part 1

Friday we were on our own. That didn't mean we were resting. We got up early and had to go to the Suns & Buns, a local bakery. I had left my shoe in the tour van and our guide said she would leave it at the bakery for me. We had breakfast and headed south on the Kona Coast. We saw so many coffee farms and then it hit me, oh yeah... Kona Coffee, doi... so we stopped at a coffee farm and bought some for our friends back home.

Our next stop was Pu'uhonua o Honaunau or the "Place of Refuge." It seems the Hawaiians had many kapus or "no-nos" and if you broke one you could hightail it for the Place of Refuge and if you actually made it there (with the other folks chasing you and wanting to kill you) the Kahuna could reprieve you. As we drove down to the "PoR" I saw why. It is down steep cliffs with lots of open areas, so getting to the PoR wasn't really all that easy.

Once there it is a beautiful place, just like any magazine would portray Hawaii, lots of open sand, lots of black rocks, blue green waters, palm trees and shady spots. It looked like a post card. This here is the equivalent of Hawaiian Checkers except people would play it to make decisions, i.e., win you live, lose you die.

The PoR was also a resting place for the Ali'i. I could see why, it was restful and peaceful even with all the people all over it. There were little huts and a map that told you what things were.

It was pretty sandy and quite a walk. Laura and I are neither good at walking long distances and Extremo found these dune buggys for invalids at the front of the park. We took turns getting whirled around the grounds!

Extremo was going all native on the rocks.

There were even tikis!

The displays all said that turtles were plentiful but I didn't see any.

After a while there was some native dude doing some kind of native thing in here. By then we were tired and hot.

I asked Extremo to walk out to the point and take pictures for us. Of course, he took self-portraits, for general interest purposes. Back in the rental car we were off to explore on the next leg of our journey.