Saturday, August 19, 2006
Summer Excursion: Coffee Country
¶ Saturday, August 19, 2006 
 | Max had a little bed-head in the morning. He almost wouldn't let us comb it -- that edgy fashion sense of his.... Fortunately, he's never actually seen a mohawk, or other really punk hairstyles. |
 | West Hawaii, of course, is the Kona Coast, coffee country. Though I've not drunk much of it this summer, I admit that we didn't stint on the samples offered. We went to our favorite coffee plantation, Greenwell Farm, for the tour. This is coffee cherry on the branch. The best stuff is picked by hand, so only the truly ripe cherries are selected. |
 | The unroasted bean is apparently even higher in caffeine than any roast, but, or course, doesn't taste as good. The cherry itself is very sugary, though. |
 | Aside from incredibly consistent weather, what makes Kona such good coffee land is the volcanic soil. This is a small lava tube at the Royal Kona Coffee Museum (which is really just a bean processing operation with a gift shop overlook and one big lava tube), where Max asked to taste the coffee, too. He tried a bit of decaf, of course, and pronounced it good. |
 | Here's a small taste of that Kona traffic I mentioned before. This whole island is linked with one highway, two lanes and no more across most of its length. They're working on widening this section to four, but that'll just barely hold the load it's got now. |
