Saturday in Hilo

On Saturday we toured the Hilo Coffee Mill. It is run by three women with eight employees. They have 24 acres of coffee trees and do everything by hand. On Saturdays they sponsor a small farmer's market with produce, baked goods and a few other handmade things.

Here is Jeanette showing us one of the two roasters.

They have quite a few free-range chickens, kept primarily to eat the insects. This was a handsome rooster.

Coffee berries are red and you can see some here on the tree. They ripen at different rates, so there are green and red ones at the same time. After the tour they gave samples of various flavors and types of coffee, but since I am a tea drinker, I didn't participate.

After the tour, we went to downtown Hilo, where we met our nephew Andrew and his wife Angela at the Pesto Cafe for lunch. We hadn't seen them for four years (and longer for Dirk and Tracy) and had a great time catching up. After lunch we spent some time visiting at their lovely home on a hill above the town.

As we left, we stopped at a place called the Boiling Pots on the Wailuku River. It was a lovely series of falls, pools and rapids. Although there were signs warning of the danger of going down to the water, we saw several groups of people climbing around down below.

Not far away was the Rainbow Falls on the same river. It was stunningly beautiful.

Here are the eight of us at the Boiling Pots. What a great visit!