Hawaii: Crew reunion in 5 million dollar beach house

We’ve moved to the sunny Kohala coast and rented a house that is outside the purchase consideration for our entire group, even if we pool our finances and then throw in your finances as well.

The house is a conglomeration of items/appliances that I have seen in magazines but never had any actual contact with.

The $5000 Wolf stovetop:

The $3000 KEF speaker – price per single speaker:

They buy some actual art. Look at this guy, hanging out in the living room:

And then these amazing lights, which I’ve tried to look up online but cannot trace:

It is little wonder that only here, in our Hawaiian rental mansion, have I discovered that Ron has culinary skills he has hidden from me for 20 years.

He has two items in his repertoire.

One: He has discovered that if you take a grape and put it in the freezer, it will freeze. If you come see us here, Ron will offer you one of these frozen grapes from a plastic IKEA bowl.

Here is what that recipe looks like once you have completed all the steps:

Two: If your palate is more refined, Ron can also offer you his other culinary creation. At the Island Deli yesterday, Ron purchased a $35 bottle of Bailey’s Irish Crème. Last night, Ron poured a jigger of Bailey’s onto some vanilla ice cream and offered it to our travel group.

This morning – when we woke at 5:30am, Ron was back at it, pouring another splash of Bailey’s into his coffee and looking upset that the rest of us didn’t want any. True chefs are touchy this way about their product.

The plans for this side of the island are pretty limited but we did set out as a group to tour Greenwell Farms – a small coffee farm south of Kona.

We booked a private tour with Nathan, who toured us around, sharing details of coffee farming, banana farming, and avocados. It’s a good thing our tour was private because, in our attempts to show Nathan that we were interested students, our group dropped our umbrellas, canes, water bottles etc. at least 10 times. Nathan tried to be polite but you could tell he thought 8 adults who can’t keep hold of some plastic umbrellas weren’t refined enough to buy his coffee. It made me want to show him a picture of the stovetop and speakers in our mansion to give us some credibility.

Here is a group (not us: notice umbrellas have not fallen) touring the farm:

Kona coffee is an interesting thing. The main thing I learned from Nathan is that I can’t really afford to drink it – prices for a pound in the grocery store easily start at $30 and go all the way up over $50. But Nathan says it’s all worth it. There is unique soil here because the soil sits on lava rock from the volcano that Ron and I could not locate back at Volcanoes National Park. The lava rock adds just the right minerals into the soil to make the coffee beans special enough that you and I can’t commit to a purchase.

In addition, the coffee beans thrive because the hilly Kona area allows for perfect drainage and the moderate amount of cloud cover prevents beans from getting scorched.

Only 1% of the world’s coffee is true Kona coffee. This is the very limited growing area on the Big Island:

We saw some key stuff on the tour – this is the coffee-picking area’s basket of rejected beans:

This is the drying area:

And here is where the Kona coffee has to be processed through a rusted old pick-up truck:

The best part of the Kohala coast stay is that our big travel group is back together again. We’ve been all over the world together. Here’s Jim and Ron! Of the items they are holding in this picture, Jim dropped the water bottle and Kris, off to the right, dropped the umbrella. Ron wants you to know he didn’t drop anything at all.

It’s good to be together to continue our spirited discussions about art, travel, history, and more. Yesterday, as we sat around the pool, Jim shouted out that there was a mongoose in the tree, and we all whipped our heads around (note to Nathan: no one dropped a thing!!!) only to discover that it was a cat. These photos will help us all understand Jim’s confusion, I think:

Part of the confusion comes from the fact that the Big Island is full of feral cats. There are between 500,000 and a million cats. Ron, anxious to help us understand the feral cat situation, spent some time trying to help us understand that there are “private” cats and “public” cats. The rest of us were completely baffled and what we clearly need is a little 5:30am Bailey’s to increase our cat sorting skills.

I’ll report again in a few days. We’re doing so little that it’s hard to even post. But we’re grateful for everyone who made the trek. Kris and Jim – it’s not Spain, but it’s still good!