the south side -- green sands, black sands and turtles!

I missed a day blogging because Heather and I spent 16 hours traveling yesterday (400 miles). Yep, on an island. Good times. More on that in a bit. Now, let's talk the Southern region of the big island (the Pau district -- where I found the maker of my favorite Hawaiian coffee, Will and Grace). Grace runs a little variety shop to help make ends meet. Will does construction as a second job. They have a 7 acre estate, producing about 20,000 pounds a year. The coffee sells for about $35 a pound, is featured exclusively in several high end restaurants, and has one several awards. Yet, they struggle to live on the island, it seems. So much for the image of "estate" coffee owners.

Anyhoo, the Southern side. We went to the southernmost tip of the U.S., then we offroaded to one of two green sand beaches in the world. It may be hard to tell from the pic above, but it really was green. Crazy! From there, we took to the highway again to one of several black sand beaches where we saw our first sea turtles resting among the human inhabitants on the beach. Very cool. We also went to the city of refuge, a place where the ultimate game of "tag" played out. Basically, if you violated a kapu (any law from the whims of the king), you would be killed -- unless, you made it to home base, a small sanctuary where all sins were forgiven. All you had to do was make it home, and you were accepted back into the fold. This applied to both royalty and commoners. King Kamahema (sp?)'s wife, for example, apparently made several late night trips to the place of refuge. 

Here are some more pics...