Our first full day back in Kona we headed to our favorite snorkeling beach and spent most of the day in the water. It was a lot of fun I finally got to swim with a turtle!
I brought our little waterproof digital recorder and took a few pictures with it too. It’s not the highest quality for underwater, but I was able to get a few good ones of the fish. I only took a shaky video of the turtle (trying to swim and record is hard :)), so no pictures to share of him.
After the coffee farm we hurried to see 3 more sites before sunset. Our first stop was a quick look at the Captain Cook monument from across the bay commemorating where Cook died. The only way to get close to it was either by rugged hiking trail or by boat.
Next we drove to the City of Refuge and walked around the ancient settlement with unique huts and carved wooden statues. Our last stop was to see the beautiful St. Benedict’s Painted Church.
After the sea turtles we found a quaint coffee plantation (Greenwell Farms) that offered free tours and samples of their 100% Kona coffee. The farm also had a few animals that Ada fell in love with, especially this dog. The dog followed her during most of the tour and kept her entertained, it was pretty cute.
We said goodbye to Hilo and headed back to Kona for our last 4 days. It took us all day to drive 120 miles but we managed to squeeze a lot in. We visited the VNP one more time to see the volcano in daylight, stopped at Punaluu Black Sands Beach to see the sea turtles, visited a coffee plantation, viewed the Captain Cook monument, walked around City of Refuge National Historical Park, and lastly before dark, visited the Painted Church.
The black sand was amazing. It looked like coffee grounds and rolled right off of our skin, not like normal sand that sticks for a long time. I guess we were not supposed to get that close to the sea turtles but we didn’t know it at the time :)
