I went to a blogger event on Thursday and felt so bad about my stupid blog hiatus that I’m going to try to give her another whirl. And what better way to come back than to try to wrap up my honeymoon posts from 6+ months ago!
In case you forgot, we spent a lovely two weeks in Hawaii. You can read the previous honeymoon posts here.
For our final stop, we were heading to the west side of Hawaii and the Kailua-Kona area. And of course, the day we left Hilo was the only non-rainy day we were there.
We were heading to yet another Airbnb and when we got there, not only were we greeted with a huge bowl of fruit from their yard, we were greeted by Freddy the Peacock! Who would continue to stalk us for the rest of our time there.
After we threw our bags down, we headed to Kahaluu Beach Park which was close by and ended up being a very neat snorkeling beach. Of course, we had no snorkeling gear, but even so, spotted a bunch of fish just by walking in the water.
The sand also had a really cool salt and pepper look to it. And of course I only took this one lousy picture.
We didn’t stay at the beach very long because it was getting late, so we grabbed some dinner and called it a night.
The next day we headed to probably the most gorgeous beach I have ever seen in my life, Kua Bay.
The waves were bananas though so yours truly kept her butt firmly planted in the sand for the majority of the time. I did go in once, about waist high and as I was trying to leave and return to shore a wave knocked me on my ass and my sunglasses went flying. Luckily, they got hooked on my bathing suit strap and they were not lost to Neptune. I lost a *different* pair of sunglasses a second time, but luckily Keith used his super-human swimming abilities to save them for me.
It may have been this evening that we discovered one of the grocery stores nearby had KILLER poke for super cheap. We ate there multiple times, 1/3# of poke and rice for $7 or something like that, and double the poke for $9. I’d kill for that in Pittsburgh. And it would likely kill me because I would eat it every. single. day.
We also got Scandinavian Shave Ice because I had to do my ancestors proud.
The next day we went to Kona Brewing for a tour and lunch.
We had a tasting after the tour and the Lemongrass Luau was so good, I’m still thinking about it.
After our tour/tasting, we stayed for lunch and then back to the beach! And more poke for dinner!
Our Airbnb was so far up the side of the mountain that it got these incredible sunset views. If you look closely, you can see the ocean over the tops of those trees.
The next day, we went to Mountain Thunder Coffee for a tour. They are located in the Cloud Forest, which is like the Rain Forest, but way cooler. As soon as we got out of the car, we smelled peanut butter cookies. Both of us hate coffee, but for some reason the roasting coffee smelled like cookies to us and we were super into it.
This was Lea. She was a great tour guide.
We learned about the different blends of Kona coffee and the variety of beans and I pretty much forget everything now but I definitely remember how terrifying those geese were.
We left and of course went to the beach and then went home and packed because we were leaving the next day.
Now, poor planning on my part, because our flight wasn’t until 11 p.m. but we had to check out of the house at 11 a.m. We couldn’t go to the beach because we’d be all sandy and gross for the rest of the day. We *should* have saved our tours for that day, and I’ll remember that the next time I have a redeye.
We ended up driving north to Waimea and went to Big Island Brewhaus for lunch. We had a great lunch and I had a delicious lilikoi margarita while Keith sampled some beers.
And I made a friend!
And then lunch was over and we still had hours before our flight so we just drove around and around and around. Too bad everything is so ugly over there.
You can just barely see Maui peeking through the clouds.
And then it was time to leave. Aloha, Hawaii. Until next time.