KONA, HIAWAII trip ... 4/25 - 5/2/08

Four days after our return from Kentucky, the three of us flew to Kona, HI for a week. We shared a rental house right on the ocean, with a couple of friends who flew there from their home in AZ.
The whole time we were there we barely saw the sun .. the volcano was very active and we were socked in by "VOG" ... volcanic fog. It was like a light fog or haze, and didn't keep the temperatures down or lower the humidity at all.


This was looking left off our deck. There's very little beach in Kona .. sandy beach, that is .. but lots of black lava rock which is very striking at times.




The flora and fauna there are absolutely magnificent ... here's a photo I took from the car on one of our jaunts.


Here's another view from the deck ... I bought myself an island-style muumuu so I could wear something more 'formal' for a birthday dinner for one of our friends. Everyone wears shorts and tops there .. it's a very casual place. And of course, it's in the 80°s most of the time which is way too warm for long pants and shirts.



We visited a SeaHorse breeding farm and this photo shows a cluster of them in one of the tanks. They interlink their tails and 'socialize' .. The Japanese boats, over-fish the seahorses in the ocean ... then kill, dry, and crush them and this powder is supposed to help with men's virility. (expletive) This group raises them .. some for release into the wild and some which are raised for pet stores ... to prevent people from taking the wild stock. They're very difficult to care for because they only eat a certain kind of live food ... so people buy them, put them in a tank and feed them food they will not eat, and when they die, they buy more and the process repeats itself. The ones that are raised for the pet trade are raised on dead food so they'll have a much better chance of surviving in a tank at home.

At the end of the tour, we get to 'hold' one of the seahorses. They're so light you can't really feel them but you have to spread your fingers apart and touch your hands together, to simulate coral, then the tour guide puts one of the little guys in your hands, and he hooks his tail around your fingers.


Everywhere you go in Kona, you run across little blue-eyed geckos. One evening when we were leaving the dinner restaurant, we noticed this little fellow who was warming himself inside one of the lights on the stairway.

We had regular visits from these lovely little birds on our deck. We put bread and crackers out for them every day. They are a little larger than house sparrows and are Yellow-Billed Cardinals .. native to South America but are also found only on the Kona coast of the big island of Hawaii. Their heads are scarlet, with charcoal colored back, pale grey undersides and black on the upper chest. I've never seen them before but I won't soon forget them either.