The Big Island--Exotic Flavors

We spent a lazy morning, on October 27, 2016, wandering north along the Kona coast, stopping at one beach after another.  Hapuna Beach, directly west of our Wailoa condo, was reputedly one of the best beaches on the island.  We visited early in the morning, when the sand was bare and we had the beach to ourselves.

 Farther north was a rocky beach, surrounded by volcanic boulders.

We drove northeast along the Kohala Mountain Road, with its stunning views down to the coast. 

During our wanderings, we came upon the Kohala Hongwanji Mission Cemetery, a remnant of the days when Christian missionaries converted the Hawaiians, and then the Japanese sugar workers. The cemetery was deserted, and there was no town close by any more.  The graves had Japanese names and dated to before World War II--a different era.   The Big Island is full of tantalizing monuments of local history, such as this one.

 We stopped by the Laupahoehoe Train Museum, along the north coast.  Trains carried the sugar cane from the plantations to Hilo for processing, along trestles high above the coastal gorges.  The trains were outmoded by the mid-1940s, and trucks had begun to take their place.  The 1946 tsunami sealed the fate of the trains.  Our guide was as interesting as her museum.  She looked Anglo, but was half Native American, and had grown up in a tepee on a reservation in North Dakota. She felt at home in multi-ethnic Hawaii, and had recently returned from living on the Mainland.  She was passionate about maintaining the history of the sugar plantations and trains on the Big Island.

 We drove down the narrow, twisting road from the new town of Laupahoehoe to the old one, where the school used to be.  On April 1, 1946, a tsunami hit the town and demolished it, including killing 27 children at the elementary school along the coast.  We visited the memorial, looked out at the bay where survivors had hung onto any solid thing floating, and considered the photos of the town before the tsunami.  Afterwards, everyone moved to the top of the cliff.

I bought a book of oral histories by Laupahoehoe tsunami survivors and read it as we drove up and down the coast.

 We took a tour of a vanilla bean farm in the uplands near Laupohoehoe.  We learned about all the varieties of vanilla beans, including the quality and flavors of beans from Mexico, Tahiti, and Madagascar.  I bought a kit to make my own vanilla extract, and Dave and I each had a scoop of luscious Tahitian vanilla ice cream.

"Why attend a luau?" I wondered, since I have already fit so many roast pig dinners and hula dance programs into my life.  I'm glad I decided one more luau was an essential part of my Hawaiian experience.  I received a fake Hawaiian tattoo on my leg, saw the imu being opened to reveal the roast pig, and watched the arrival of Hawaiian royalty being reenacted.  It was a balmy evening along Kona Bay, with music, dancing, and good pork, fruit, and coconut pudding.  The event reminded me, forcefully, that I was not in Salt Lake City, or on any random world island, but in the heart of Polynesia.  That was value enough.