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Old Kona Airport Beach at Low Tide
The last time I strolled along Old Kona Airport Beach Park was more than a year ago, when I shot photos of my last day in Kona. Not very many people seem to populate this area; it’s fairly quiet and secluded, featuring picnic tables under covered canopies.
But yesterday, my husband and I stopped at Old Kona Airport Beach at low tide to check out the sea life and vegetation. Above, is a close up photo of an intricate flower on the velvetleaf soldier bush. Must be a hardy plant to survive on the edge of the ocean.
Here we have sea urchin, with a few shells hanging on. If you step on one of these babies barefoot, you will live to regret that action. I’ve never done it on purpose nor by accident but I hear it stings and burns something terrible.
In this photo, I spied a sea urchin next to a red sea anemone, the beautiful tubular thing. This is where I almost slipped into the water on the wet rocks. Good thing I wore water shoes.
My husband says he thinks these are mussels, but there are so many types of mollusks it would take me forever to pin down this specific type. They could be bleached or a different variety all together.
One of the things I love about tide pools is the stuff you can find that is otherwise not visible to you. When I lived in an oceanfront on the Rincon in Ventura, California, I once caught a squid and put him into a jar with ocean water. He didn’t live, and I was very sad to return his dead body to the sea.
However, for years, I endured nightmares of waking up to giant tentacles attached to my windows, the mama of the squid returning to get revenge for killing her child. There is always karma in life.
This is just the two of us enjoying sitting on a large pahoehoe and watching the sea, wondering when the tide would begin to turn. Any new wave could have washed over us. As luck had it, we were an hour away from the end of low tide. Sometimes you can just sense these things. But never turn your back on the ocean, especially not at Old Kona Airport Beach.
Lunch at the University of Nations in Kona, Hawaii
Darn, I wish I had shot a photograph of the large outdoor cafeteria when I went to lunch at the University of Nations in Kona, Hawaii. But not enough light under the tall roof. It seemed at least 5 stories high. The space for lunch holds hundreds of people, maybe thousands of people. And the positioning of the dining space is such that a strong breeze whips through the area, cooling off even the hottest days. Not to mention, the view of the ocean is hard to beat.
I’ve never been to University of Nations, never even heard of it before I met the couple who sold us their house in Hawaii, P &G. They are missionaries from Canada who volunteer at University of Nations. This outfit works in conjunction with Youth With a Mission with outposts all over the world. The school, which began in 1978, is private with a strong focus on the beliefs of Christianity.
They suggested lunch at the University of Nations so I could experience their campus and see where they work. I very much enjoy new experiences, even if I find some aspects a bit weird. Like the day in 2006 when my husband and I toured the Mormon Temple in Sacramento. Learned a lot from that visit. You can only go on a special day when they allow visitors. California is 2nd only to Utah in the number of Mormons in the state.
It gave us more context when we attended the hilarious musical The Book of Mormon at the Orpheum in San Francisco. We already knew about the gold plates in the desert and Joseph Smith, for example. Which is how the religion began a couple hundreds years ago.
Students from all over the world come to University of Nations in Kona to earn an AA degree or take specialized courses. They can bring their families, too. The AA degree, however, is not recognized by the Department of Education in the United States. It also seems expensive, but all education seems expensive these days. I come from the days of free community colleges in Orange County. Oh, right. The ’70s. Ah, yes, grasshopper, at one time the community colleges in California were free.
The University of Nations get $4,000 and up for classes, which includes food, tuition and housing.
Now, the odd thing, the way it seems to me, is the fact University of Nations collects dues from students and accepts donations. But it does not seem to pay its instructors nor anybody who works at the University. It operates on the strength of volunteers, and they offer advice to volunteers about how the volunteers can do fundraising to afford to work without pay.
I could be wrong, they could pay some sort of overhead, but it doesn’t appear that way on their website.
And according to U. S. News, Pablo M. Rivera, the Chief Financial Officer of University of Nations pled guilty last year to wire fraud. He embezzled $3.1 million from the school.
All in all, if you’d like to have lunch at University of Nations as a visitor, it is $5.00. Can’t beat that price. They offered vegetarian options, too. The lunch menu is printed in at least 7 different languages. I had a fried chicken steak topped with marinara sauce and a side salad because it looked like the best option available. But I was more interested in talking with my friends than eating.
It is an enormous campus with breathtaking view of the Pacific Ocean. I asked my friends whether the University helps people find jobs after graduation. Nope. Students are on their own. And not surprisingly, my friend P says about 25% of the graduates do go on to become missionaries. I did not want to use their names in this blog because they seem like very private people, and I respect that.
Stopping at Kona Brewing After Closing a Home in Elk Grove
Elizabeth Weintraub and husband Adam at Kona Brewing Co.
My husband suggested we stop at Kona Brewing after I closed a sale in Elk Grove to “drink all of their beers.” That whim sounded like an excellent idea to me, and I’m all in for celebrating, unwinding and acting on the spur of the moment while in Hawaii. I’ve closed 3 sales in the past week since we’ve been in Kona, so it’s been a good week. On top of which, we bought a few more things for our house in Hawaii, and that was a bit exhausting.
For example, when I asked the guy from Aina’s Electrical, who was installing our beautiful new super quiet ceiling fan in the master, where we could go to find a couple of rugs under which geckos could hide, he suggested Amazon or eBay. What about keeping your dollars in the community? Well, says he, you could do that, too. Then he announced the fan was as good as he could do, yet it still wobbled. Hated to say this, but he needed to do better. He eventually stopped the wobbling. I knew he had it in him.
We went into a store to look at a few rugs, but it became apparent what we really needed to do first was buy a new sofa. You can’t lie on the sofa we have. No support in the cushions. It’s fairly uncomfortable. It’s the type of sofa one could use indoors or outdoors, so out to the lanai it goes. It was the previous owner’s sofa anyway. Then we traversed several other stores to pick up supplies and basics. Which is what caused my husband to bring up Kona Brewing.
Earlier in the day, I had submitted a new listing with multiple owners for MLS entry. Ordered the photographs, sent the paperwork to my office, sans one signature, and prepared every document required. Then the hold-out party emailed to say he did not want to participate in standard listing disclosures and took it upon himself to print, alter and sign the listing. He was also fairly adamant about a clause you might find in a luxury listing in Miami but not a small-change vacant lot under the freeway in Sacramento.
I’m too experienced and too old for this nonsense. I draw the line with impossible people. Life is short and then you die. It wasn’t too much work to cancel the listing, stop the photography and discard the paperwork. Still, it was very strange and odd. I’m confident somewhere down the line the sane people in that future transaction will pull it together, and it will work out.
Just not on Friday. I’ll still be ready to assist sometime next year, whatever.
So Kona Brewing was a welcome spot to rest and reflect on the bad but mostly good parts of the day. Good always outweighs the bad. If you’re ever in Kailua-Kona and want to stop at a craft beer place, Kona Brewing has great food in addition to creative and standard pours. I’d say so far the Kua Bay is my favorite.
Ahi Tartare at Kona Brewing has just enough spice for a kick.
The Coffee Shack in Honaunau on the Way to Two-Step Beach
Lanai view from The Coffee Shack in Honaunau reveals 26 miles of coastline.
You’ve got to stop at The Coffee Shack in Honaunau on your way to snorkeling at Two-Step Beach, said our tenants, as they were digging through their box of snorkeling fins. I wasn’t paying much attention to their suggestion as I was more concerned about what kind of idiot packs only one snorkeling fin? Well, you’re reading her blog, that’s who.
My first clue would have been there was only one fin in the clear plastic bag that I took down from my closet shelf but I was so busy packing in November that I didn’t notice the fin was missing its mate. Things could have been worse, I suppose, I could have left behind in Sacramento my snorkel and mask, which I did not.
Adam Weintraub studies the menu at The Coffee Shack.
Our tenants were absolutely correct about The Coffee Shack. This was a fabulous place to stop on our way through Captain Cook. It’s a mile south of the Captain Cook Post Office. The restaurant serves great breakfast and lunch items, including personal pizzas, plus its pastries and baked goods are to die for.
We started with an iced Kona coffee with a sugar-free vanilla flavoring, but they carry a wide assortment of flavors such as macadamia nut, caramel and almond. I ordered a cup of salty clam chowder made with celery, of all things. I am always surprised to see celery show up in odd places like the Leaning Tower of Pizza in Minneapolis puts celery on its pizza. It seems like such a Minnesota novelty to me because I grew up chopping celery into almost everything.
Lilikoi cheesecake at The Coffee Shack is out of this world.
Most of the sandwiches at The Coffee Shack are as big as your head. Enormous. Served with a side of chips. I selected a sensible Greek salad, adorned with tiny bits of pickled red pepper and capers, and had just finished shoveling the last of it into my mouth when my husband said with a sneaky grin, “How about dessert?”
Well, one look at the menu and I had to order the Lilikoi cheesecake (pronounced lee-lee-CO ‘e), which is a passion fruit and the yummiest of all sweetness. I’ll eat a frog if there isn’t a ton of brown sugar in that crumb crust, too.
Two-Step Beach in Honaunau is perfect for snorkeling.
With extremely full tummies from The Coffee Shack, we rolled onto Two-Step Beach and scored a parking spot right in front. What you see here, the dark stuff, is lava. Mostly pahoehoe. There are two primary types of lava: pahoehoe, which looks like ropes and blankets, and a’a, which hurts when you step on the jagged edges; hence, the ah-ah name.
I love snorkeling so much that I could do it every day. When I’m observing the fish, I try to memorize the distinctive colors, stripes, shapes so I can identify them later. There were many butterfly fish and coral fish, plus the largest parrot fish I’ve ever seen. That fish was almost 3-feet. Those are the female fish that can turn into males when needed.
Then, just when I think I’ve seen all the fish I could possibly see and they all start to look nearly identical, suddenly I spot a new fish I’ve never seen before, so I can’t stop snorkeling. The water was warm and welcoming, the temperatures in the low 70s. It just doesn’t get any better than that.
Mele Kalikimaka from Kailua-Kona on Christmas Day!
