Green Sand Beach + Kona Coffee Farm Tour | Big Island Day 6

Honestly, this was just one of the coolest experiences ever. Tacos. Well, it is our last day on the big Island. It's a big, but we are starting the last day at what is called the green sand beach, otherwise known as Papa Kolea beach. I think that's how you say it. So we debated back and forth if we were going to come to this beach for a couple of reasons. So it's a two to three mile hike, or maybe walks a better term out to the beach. So you park in this dirt parking lot and then it's two to three miles. We haven't really found a solid answer of how far it is to the beach. And then we also hear that it doesn't always look green. It's maybe more of like an olive or a golden-y green color. I think it depends on the lighting. So we hear from some people, it's not worth the trek out there, but I really wanted to see it. We just kind of wanted to see it for ourselves. We wanted to find out for ourselves. Yeah. But it's quite a trek out here from where we were, especially in Hilo. But you get out here and it's beautiful country getting out here. And so we showed up, but, uh, it's like, not hurricane force, but it might not be far off. It's pretty windy out there. The trees are gripping to the ground. They're trying to stay in the ground and I don't know, we should have brought a squirrel suit or something to fly there. Yeah. It's so, I think the path to the beach is really dusty and there's dust flying everywhere. So we'll see how this is going to be. So we just left the beach. We're on our walk back. We wanted to vlog more of our journey there. We had all these ideas of like cool drone shots to get, but my dad thinks the gusts are 50 miles per hour. I'm no meteorologist, but it's, it's, it's really, like 20 to 30 mile an hour winds. And then like 50 mile an hour gusts. It's like, it's tough. Cause you're walking on the way out. We were walking against the wind, at least like it was like a cross, but in your face. And then like you get to some really dusty parts. And especially at the beach, it like kicks up the sand and it's just like needles and daggers all in your eyes, my mouth, all over my skin. And it, yeah, it just kind of stabs you like daggers. Cause it's pretty sharp. I have like a dusting of dirt on me. We're hiding behind this like dirt wall right now that's protecting us from the wind. So we can talk because it was just way too windy to even talk on the camera on the way there. But that was, I think it was totally worth it. Yeah. I mean, I feel like most of the time when people come out here, it's not this windy, but I don't know. It was fun. Never forget it. Yeah. So one thing we wanted to mention is why the sand is green. And we actually both agreed that the sand did look kind of green, like a darker olive green. There were these like flecks of gold in it. So it kind of had this like shimmery sparkly look, but it's green because it has this thing called olive vine, I believe is the name inside of it. So when you pick it up, you can kind of see some of the crystals in there. It's really neat. This is one of four green sand beaches in the entire world. The other ones are in Guam, the Galapagos and Norway. So we'll have to go check those ones out. But we're about to make our trek back. It was about an hour walk or so out here. Not too bad. Very breezy. So it helped with the sun and the sun was kind of covered, but we hear that it's best to come early because the walk back in the sun can be really, really hot and brutal. There's no cover. Yeah. As you can tell, the clouds have kind of passed a little bit from earlier. And so it's, it's going to be a little bit warmer on the way back. But I'm so glad we did this. It's probably my favorite beach we've seen. So I'm glad we made the trek. Most unique for sure. Absolutely. We made it back to the car. We are very dirty, but we made it. One thing I think I forgot to mention is that the hike to the beach really isn't that bad. Like we said earlier, it's between two or three miles. We're not totally sure. It is pretty flat, some uphill, it's mostly dirty, but you are along the ocean the whole time. So you have really nice views even though you're kind of just walking under for like an hour or so. Also, when you get to the beach, you'll see that you can get down to the beach and it looks kind of scary from afar. But when you actually go to the top of the beach, there's a staircase to go down and then you basically just step down a bunch of rocks to get to the bottom. It's way easier than it looks from afar. So don't let it scare you at first. Definitely go up to it and try it. All four of us did it just fine. And some of us are a little more scaredy cat than others. All right. After our gusty, windy, windblown hike, we worked up quite an appetite and we drove north to just south of Kona to the Captain Cook area for you know what? Tacos. These look delicious. We're at a place called Shaka Tacos. It's a little food truck, but behind the food truck, they have this area where you can sit inside or you can sit outside on this patio and they have a kind of a bar with barstool situation overlooking the ocean. So tacos with a view today. We both got four tacos, although we wanted 10. We're self-control. We hopefully have more treats coming later today. I got one fish, one pork, one asada, one chicken. So one of each. And I was very impressed with myself for getting fish because I'm growing up. You guys, I'm growing up. Yeah. And I got two asada and that's beef and two fish. Of course. They say the best fish tacos on the island. Yeah. On the island. She said, we will see. We have not had many fish tacos on the island, but they're very colorful looking. The tortillas look really good. Yeah. They put all kinds of lots of good sauces and stuff. Let's eat. Good hunk of fish in there. I saw like all the goodies on there. The fish is, I don't know what kind of fish it is, but it's like a white fish. Good flavor to it. Soft, fresh. Excellent. I'll try the fish one first as well. I haven't had many fish tacos in my day, so I don't have much to compare it to, but we'll see. It's definitely not too fishy at all, which is a huge win in my book. All the sauces and the guacamole on top, which by the way, the guacamole was free. When does that ever happen? It just tastes awesome. Has such good flavor. I definitely like my fish tacos with more sauces on them to try to mask any fishy taste that it might have, but the texture is really good. The flavor is amazing. I really like this tortilla. It has a little bit of a crunch to it. It looks like they threw it on the grill or something. I don't know if it's homemade or not, but it looks incredible. It's a corn tortilla. I love this place. This little guy right here is trying to steal our tacos. He just wagged his tail at me. He's so cute. Not today, little buddy. Those are some of the best tacos I've had in a long time. All four of the meats I tried were so delicious. I can't really pick a favorite one. They're all so good. I highly recommend if you're in the area and bonus points, if for whatever reason you're here by yourself, you'll have friends because while we were eating on the little back porch, there was geckos all over the place. They were so cool. We could have sat there and watched them forever. They were the cutest little things. They come right up to you. Yeah, I think they wanted our tacos for real. Like they didn't want the lettuce. They wanted the tacos. For all of you coffee drinkers out there, you've probably heard of something called Kona coffee and Kona coffee is a coffee that's only grown in the Kona region of the Island of Hawaii, also known as the big Island. And it's one of the most expensive coffees in the world. It's not uncommon to find a bag for like 30 plus dollars. We've seen some pretty expensive ones since we've been here. And today we're going on a coffee tour. And if you're new here or if you just don't know, we named our dog Kona because of our love of coffee and Hawaii. And so we're here at Heavenly Hawaiian coffee farm to get a tour and try a bunch of coffee. Yeah, they've already given us a bunch of samples, so I'm really excited. We're already buzzed. It turns out our tour guide lived a block from us in Seattle, so that is crazy. Small world. And before we get started, they have a guava tree and we picked some guava. My dad got one down for me. So we just went through the tour, which was completely awesome. So they walk you through like the whole process. So starting with, they walk you down to some of the trees down there. And so your little coffee 101 goes like this. So they're looking for the coffee berry to be ripe, which is a dark red hue. Okay. So they pick it from the tree there and they process it. And then they dry it for two weeks on what's called a hashidana. And that's just like a, basically like a deck and it dries the bean out. You rake it. Yeah, you rake it so that it dries evenly. And then they store it for 60 days down in their vault. They didn't show us the vault, but we believe them. And so then it's processed again where they peel off two of the dry layers that comes off and then it's ready to be roasted. We have a cheat sheet. Alex from the coffee bar or who works here. Yeah. Helped us out a little bit. Cause it was a lot of information that we learned at once and we got to see them roast it. What was really cool about the roasting is the guy who was roasting uses this really old machine and it's not like the high tech new machines where there's all this technology. He doesn't do temperature, like he doesn't. There's no gauges. There's no temperature gauge. There's no machines, timers, nothing. It's all by feel. Yeah. So it's a true art form. He's been doing this for, he learned 15 years ago. His dad's been doing it for like. Yeah, he learned from his dad and his dad actually traded like bags of coffee for this machine. And the inside of the drum is like a cast iron drum. He learned from his dad. He would roast the pea berries in it and so cause he wanted to train and learn like with the best berry. So what he does like to test the temperature, all he does is take his hand, tap the outside to feel how hot it is. Yeah. It's like all by feel. He's also listening to like a cracking sound with the beans and he was telling us like the light roast will be like slightly chewy and then you know, more crunchy the more you go on. And so he'll pop one in his mouth to test it and he'll be like, Oh, that's a little chewy. And he spits it out. So he tries to never have it touch his tongue cause it's really, really hot. I was floored when I saw him throw it in his mouth. Yeah. So we got to see him test it. And then when he finally dumped it and he didn't see it spin around, he let us try some of the freshly roasted ones. Honestly, this was just one of the coolest experiences ever. This and the manta rays were probably like my two favorite things we did on this trip. This tour was a hundred percent free. So we spent a lot of money in their gift shop buying some treats and some coffee for when we get home. But it was worth it because our tour guide Melissa was incredible. She's the one who lived right by us in Seattle. And then Alex was also really helpful in the coffee bar kind of talking us through the process to do the pour over and all of that. So heavenly Hawaiian coffee farm. But you mentioned the treats though, while you're here, you don't just get to sample some of the coffee. They give you as much as you want. Really. When you walk up, they greet you right when you get here. But like throughout the tour, like before and after you get to try all their little treats that they make with the coffee. Yeah. This was just awesome experience. Could not recommend it more. Yeah. If you're going to come and do a coffee tour, come for this one. And even if you don't really like coffee that much. My mom doesn't drink coffee. She still really enjoyed it. And she had a few sips and she kind of liked it. So the treats are good whether you like coffee or not, but. Come for the, just the smells alone. Like when he was roasting down there, he had like a big bag of the coffee that was just roasted and he lets you stick your head in the bag and it's just, Oh, it smells so good. We could talk about this all day, so we'll stop. We'll stop now. But heavenly Hawaiian coffee farm. Amazing. Everyone's so friendly. It's just so much fun. So man, on our original itinerary, we planned to spend one hour at the coffee farm, but, uh, at the end of it all, we ended up spending three hours there. They just like, treat you like family, treat you like friends. You can hang out all day if you want. You can go through the tour, stay and drink some more coffee, all the coffee you want. It was just incredible. We can go on and on. Like we said earlier about how amazing it was. We just go. You'll absolutely love it. By the time we left, we only had about an hour of daylight or sunlight left. So we drove North to this beach called Kua Bay. We came here on our first day, but we didn't vlog that day at all. And we wanted to just get one more glimpse of it before we fly out in like six hours. We still have a lot of time left, but it'll be dark. So we're just going to chill here for the next hour. Soak up our last one. Soak up the last Hawaiian views, maybe catch a sunset. It's a bit cloudy, but we'll see what happens. There's no, no bad sunset. Hawaiian trip. Sad day. Sad time right now. We came to like a Hawaiian style type restaurant. It's called Broke Da Mouth Grinds. It looks so good. I got the garlic furikake chicken. It's fried chicken. That's hurricane style. This is garlic butter shrimp, tuna mac salad. And then I upgraded to the fried kimchi rice. It looks so good. This furikake chicken is their specialty. It's like on their t-shirt. They love it so much. And I got their braised short ribs, which are boneless. So all this meat right here is a straight up meat, no bones to pick around. And then Kulua pork, which is a classic Hawaiian dish that I absolutely love. And I just got boring white rice in a salad that comes with this papaya dressing that looks pretty dang good. The short rib just falls apart with the fork. It's really, really good. And the pork is super, super, super juicy. All right, let's see if this chicken lives up to the t-shirt hype. See if it's worthy to put on a t-shirt. The outside's crispy. Got some extra skin here. The flavors are just... I got the hurricane style. I mean, they put like, I guess, maybe extra furikake and some other sauces on there. Sriracha and some other aioli. Bomb. Broke the mouth. All right, we are back at the airport getting ready to load up on the plane, head back to the mainland. It's a sad day, but it was another amazing, amazing trip. It has taken us a while to get to the island of Hawaii, aka the Big Island, but I'm so glad we finally made it here. Yeah, I think about our previous trips to the other Hawaiian islands and I can usually be like, oh, this one was like a cross between this one and this one. But the Big Island, I just I can't put my finger on it. I don't know. It's like it's a little bit different than the others. It's so diverse. I mean, all the islands are diverse and we love them all equally, but differently. But this one just had some really unique things like all the lava fields and the volcanoes and the manta rays and tons of waterfalls and beautiful beaches and cliffs. It was just, it had a little bit of everything, which was really fun. Tons of nature, awesome food. We met a lot of friendly people. The Kona coffee's awesome. We've published quite a few blog posts about our trip to hopefully help you plan your own trip here in the future. So if you're headed here sometime soon, check those out. We'll link to those below. We just love this state so, so much. And we know we have many more Hawaii trips in our future. But for now, it is time to leave, unfortunately. But we will see you guys next time. We drove north to just south of Kona, right? Yeah, to the Captain Hook. Nope. Captain Cook area. Captain Hook. All right. Did we get it right? Pick it from there and then they take it over to the Hoshimoto, Hoshidana, where it dries. Then they take it to the Hoshimoto, Hoshidana. I don't know where I get moto. And then they take them to the Hoshidana. Got it. Alex made this for us. She's awesome. She's making sure we're getting our stuff straight. The short rib just falls apart. When you put the fork on it, like butter. Is that a thing?