Sojourn in the Sun, Part 4: Place of Refuge, and coffee too! 01/09

January 9, 2023

Visiting places that are special for entirely different reasons

TODAY WE VISIT the Place of Refuge and a working coffee plantation. The Place of Refuge is something my wife and I have visited before, but we see it differently this time.

It's a place of great significance in Hawai'ian history and culture, and afforded sanctuary to anyone who could reach it after having committed a violation of the traditional kapu code. There was only one punishment for breaking kapu: death, but many ways to fall afoul of it. Getting to a place of sanctuary (there were eight or nine scattered around the island, of which this is the only surviving example) was deliberately difficult but would give offenders forgiveness, which included a new lease on life and a clean slate, if they were fortunate enough to get there.

Our visit begins with a wonderful presentation by an interpretive ranger. He presents as a 13th-generation descendant of the island's original Polynesian settlers and provides an interesting and informative history of the islands.

The presentation begins with a long blast on a conch shell "horn", from the back of the open-air "auditorium".

Our ranger, wearing traditional garments he's created himself, paces slowly back and forth across the stage while delivering a very well-done presentation. Here, he's telling us about the feather capes worn by the chiefs.

This ornate feather cape, worn only by the highest of the chiefs, contains upwards of 70,000 feathers.

Natives still make offerings. The place is in tension: it's still an active site of great spiritual and cultural significance to the natives but it's also a designated National Historic Site administered now by the National Park Service, making it subject to their rules and policies.

Life springs up anywhere it can find a foothold.

There are several structures- presumably modern reconstructions based on historic knowledge and archaeological data- that house artifacts emblematic of how life was lived.

There are also many tikis scattered around. I don't know whether these are historic or modern re-creations.

The tide / splash pools on the rocky "apron" contain lots of fish life. On our 2007 visit they also had a couple sea turtles but not this time around.

Pressing onward from the Place of Refuge we move to a smallish coffee plantation. The Kona coffee-producing area is not vast: only about a mile across by 30 miles wide. As a result of that, the value of land in Hawai'i, and the cost of labor the final result is quite dear: over $75/pound for the best of it, nearly $55 for second quality.

They aren't necessarily wrong in this claim.

We're given an enjoyable hour-long tour by Nate, a Nebraska native who looks for all the world like a SoCal surfer dude.

You'd never know Nate wasn't a SoCal native surfer dude, just to look at him.

He weaves information about coffee growing, picking, and roasting, as well as about how the only guaranteed way to recognize the real Kona variety is their trademarked "100% Kona coffee" (with digits and the percent sign in place) legend into a free-flowing hour-long dissertation, delivered in what seems to be a stream-of-consciousness style using Nebraska football and cows as analogies. You wouldn't think these topics were naturally associated, and they aren't really, but he somehow finds a way to make the analogies work. His rapid-fire style keeps us thoroughly entertained for the duration of our visit. I've honestly never encountered anything remotely similar.

Here and there, though, I'm distracted here and there by various birds and flowers that exist here but not at home. If you consider it from a sufficiently distant and abstract perspective you could argue that all life on Hawai'i has been introduced; the islands are, after all, volcanic in origin and didn't come pre-populated as they emerged. Once they arrived, the process of evolution turned many of them into species found only in Hawai'i.

But there's a distinction to be made between species that found their way on their own, carried by wind and tide, and those that were deliberately introduced later by humans. Many of the former are now extinct or endangered because of the latter.

100% Kona coffee beans, ripening in the tropical sun.

The African tulip tree is now common in Hawai'i but was brought by humans.

Yellow-billed cardinals also originate in South America; they were introduced to Hawai'i by humans.

Following our morning's outings we return to Kona in the early afternoon, with free time on the agenda for the balance of the day if we so choose.

There's an optional activity this evening after dinner, though: snorkeling with the chance of seeing manta rays up close and personal. My wife and I are all in for this one: on the day in 2010 that I became a certified SCUBA diver, my second dive was a nighttime affair for this same purpose. My wife, not a diver, remained on the surface and claimed she had the better experience. I'm eager to see what she's talking about and she's equally interested in seeing a repeat performance.

We join a boatful of others, some from our tour group and others not, for the five minute boat ride to the site. This operation has modified a surfboard by carving a large hole in the middle and inserting a box of bright, downward-facing lights to attract the krill that are a manta's diet. They've also attached grab loops along both sides of the board; between the loops, the wetsuit jackets we're given and the ankle floaties we're wearing, it's easy to stay at the surface peering into the inky blackness beneath us.

As soon as the lights are activated the krill begin to congregate. That in turn draws a swarm of mackerel, darting and swirling all around. Our first manta comes to visit after only a couple minutes, and we're treated to an immense, graceful ballet of swooping, looping, "flying" manta rays continuously scooping giant mouthfuls of Pacific Ocean and straining it to extract the krill.

On numerous occasions they pass so close to us that we could easily reach out and rub them as they glide past but we all heed the cautions and refrain: mantas have a protective coating that would be breached by contact, causing them harm. Plus, for that reason, it's also illegal to touch them and doing so results in a hefty fine. Really, though, there's no need for tactile experiences: the visuals alone are stunning.

The upper (dorsal) side of a manta is dark, with light patches that "glow" eerily in the blue light from our surfboard's lamps.

The rays swim slowly but gracefully, making giant loops in the water. Experienced watchers can identify specific individuals by the spot patterns on their undersides. We saw at least a dozen separate individuals, with sometimes as many as six in view at once.

The mackerel were swarming around, like moths to a flame.

Seeing the giant maw swimming right at you is a bit intimidating at first but you're only in danger if you're a 1 to 2mm bit of krill.

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