Bed and Breakfast on the Kona Coffee Belt

While most people don’t associate coffee farms with Hawaii, it is the only state in the Union that has the climate and soil where coffee plants can flourish. Rich, slightly acidic volcanic soil, sunny mornings with cloudy afternoons and over 60 inches of rain during the summer months provide the perfect environment to grow primo coffee.

There are numerous traditional Hawaiian coffees cultivated in the Hawaiian Isles, but for this trip, I chose to visit the Big Island of Hawaii to tour the agricultural region where Kona Coffee is farmed.

To further experience the real “aloha” of Hawaii, husband Shaun and I opted to kip at two very distinctive Bed & Breakfasts nestled in the Kona Coffee Belt instead of the typical resort hotel where most palm tree smitten tourists go.

Roger Diltz, proprietor of Aloha Farms Bed and Breakfast formerly A Place of Refuge B&B, gave us crucial directions to find his home (elevation 800 feet) in between Kealakekua Bay and Puuhonua O Honaunau National Park (City of Refuge). When trying to find any location in this region, it is wise to drive during daylight as the roads are not well marked and street signs that not so easily discernible during the day are almost invisible at night.

Prior to our arrival at this eco-tourist B&B, Roger, off fishing for the catch of the day, left his dog Koa and a note on the door to greet us. Disarming at first, this Rottweiler/Lab mix became our companion for an early walk of the grounds before breakfast at 7:30 a.m.

We thought an alarm might be necessary. But as daylight broke, the sounds of the “jungle” began as single twitter and within 20 minutes the birds had orchestrated their calls into a full blown crescendo of tweets, cackles and whistles.

The aroma of Kona coffee wafted through the house as Roger prepared a rib-sticking breakfast complete with Jaboticaba syrup over coconut hotcakes. The view during breakfast from the lanai (covered porch) was exactly as you would imagine, a tropical forest of exotic flora backdropped by an indigo ocean as far as a person could see.

The evenings at Aloha Farms were quite amusing. We were invaded by hordes of nocturnal Geckos as they arrived in full force sticking to the walls like gum to a shoe. These timid chartreuse lizards kept the mosquitoes at bay as did the potted Citronella plants. In the distance, the echoing thump of five-pound avocados dropping from over-burdened tree limbs would usually lead Koa to investigate just in case it might be a wild pig.

Still each morning we didn’t plan the normal tourist diet of snorkel, kayak or swim-with-the-dolphin excursions. Instead, we tediously tried to map out the hidden farms nestled in this region that is only two to three miles wide, twenty miles long and spans the southwest coast of the Big Island of Hawaii. We wanted to find out how Kona coffee was grown, picked, pulped, fermented, dried, milled (hulled) and roasted. (You didn’t realize that there were so many processes to get that eye-opening cup each morning, now did you?)

source : articlesbase