We have a 11pm flight today so we had an extremely relaxed start, breakfast in the room followed by packing then we just sat on the balcony until we had to to check out at 12.00, so we loaded up the car then set off for Kailua-Kona which is the second biggest town on the island, it is also the site of the Hulihe’e Palace which was the home of the second governor of the island. Before going in we walked round the outside and there was a canoe race going on, talking to the lady in the gift shop it is the first race of the season, today is the start of summer and there will be a race almost every weekend until the end of summer. It is a massive event, each race seemed to have at least six teams and we watched a number of races so I think it may have gone on all day! After watching a few we went into the house which was built in 1838 a year after the church was completed. It was built by foreign seamen using lava rock and it was the principal residence of Kuakini and was a favourite retreat of the royal families. In 1883 Princess Ruth passed away and as she had no surviving children the house was left to her cousin who sold the house to King David Kalakauna. It has a kitchen that was slightly separate from the house but linked by an opening where they passed food through to be served in the dining room. Most of the rooms contain furniture of the late 1880’s the royal family were very fond of European ways and there are a number of photos of them in European dress, upstairs there are two bedrooms both with original furniture and one has the biggest chair I think I have ever seen I am not sure if the Princess was a big woman or liked to curl up in her chair but it was massive! She also had a box that was made from the trunk of a coconut tree which she used to store her hats in! There is also a massive trunk she used when she sailed to England for Queen Victoria’s jubilee. After walking round the house we crossed the road to Mokuaikauna Church which claims to be the first church built on the island, although some of the paperwork suggests it was actually the first stone church to be built on the island. All the same it was quite impressive, very plain but built rather like a New England barn, when we spoke to the “Ambassador for Christ” he explained that the original church burnt down and the missionaries who were from New England said we can build a new one, but the only thing they knew how to build was a barn so that is what it looks like that. After we had walked round the town we stopped for lunch in a restaurant that overlooked the bay and watched the canoe races which was really nice, then we continued on our trip round the island. We had decided that today we would head up north as that is the one part of the island we haven’t covered yet, and it is actually quite spectacular. We stoped at Kaloko-Honokahau state park but unfortunately they were closing at 4pm but helpfully suggested that we went down to the bay and we would be able to go for a walk along the shore front from there so we drove back the way we had just come from and parked up, the main reason for stopping at this park was the there are some Petroglyphs there and as we hadn’t been able to see any of the main ones in Volcano national park we decided we would take a walk to them. First we stopped on the beach which wasn’t actually much of a beach as it was where one of the ancient volcanos entered the sea but quite spectacular because of that, then we walked to the Ki’i Pohaku (petroglyphs) and despite looking quite hard the only one we could oringally see was the checkerboard of small holes they used as a game board for Kona next which is similar to checkers, then we realised that each of the drawings had a number which corespondent to our leaflet so we went back to the beginning and started again looking for them! Some were easier to sea than others but eventually we spotted most of them although there were a couple we couldn’t see. We then got back in the car and drove to the top of the island which was probably one of the better scenic drives we have done although it wasn’t actually a scenic drive, but as with most things on this island we ended up climbing to about 4,000 feet and it started raining again! All the same the drive was really nice and worked out really well as we got to the airport about 7.30 so although we were a little early it meant that we didn’t have to do too much driving in the dark. We were able to check the bags straight away then sailed through security and found a place in the bar until the flight was called and we start the final leg of our journey.
