Kona – Greenwell Coffee

Today we had a bit of a quieter day. No real deadlines or activities that we had planned to get to. So, we headed south on one of the many roads and ended up at the Greenwell Coffee Plantation.

It is the oldest coffee plantation in the Kona area. As you could imagine they have a lot of coffees to taste and all classify as Kona Coffee. Which means they come from a very specific area of the Kona region and a very specific elevation of the Kona region. Anyway, the coffee is delicious, full of aroma and taste. If you are a coffee aficionado you either love or hate the taste of Kona Coffee.

Coffee beans grow on coffee bushes/trees, all are harvested by hand and it takes 7 pounds of harvested beans to get 1 pound of coffee beans for your grinder………… and there  is your free coffee lesson for the day. Believe us when we say it sounds like a lot of work.

The one neat thing about Greenwell Coffee Plantation is that they originally started out as a cattle ranch and fruit farm. However this was not profitable, so they switched over to growing only coffee. Therefore, there are a number of avocado trees, orange trees, papaya trees, tangelo trees, etc. on the property and the farm has no use for the fruit they bear. So, as the fruit ripens the staff picks it and places the fruit in large wicker baskets near the gift shop and if you are lucky enough to be there at the right time you can get some pretty sweet produce.

Just take a look at the size of the avocado we had for dinner tonight. That’s a full size dinner plate it’s sitting on and a packet of sugar to show you some comparison of size. Yummy!

After the coffee plantation we headed back to Kailua-Kona and even though we were not officially lost; like they had to send search and rescue for us. We did manage to find some pretty interesting scenery and a unique one lane route home through some pretty desolate volcano field.

More adventures tomorrow.