Coffee, Chocolate & Sugar Cane

Well since I last made an entry, we have covered half the island of Kauai seeing many new and interesting places. Monday was pretty much a wash-out, there was so much rain it caused flash flooding in many places. We used that time to look at hotels, souvenir shop and eat in local eateries. We also prayed for SUNSHINE! Tuesday burst forth with blue skies, tradewind breezes and sunshine. This was cause for seeking out the surf and sand in front of our hotel and soaking it up for a few hours. After eating lunch at a local diner we paid a visit to the historic town of Hanapepe. The one street thru town looks like time stood still here, which has played to its benefit in that it is often used in movies. We took a walk over the famous Hanapepe Swinging bridge. I love doing these suspended bridges, be it on a playscape with my granddaughter or over the Hanapepe River with my honey, Gary. On our way back to Poipu we stopped at a new visitor attraction, from which the Coffee part of my title comes from. The Kauai Coffee Plantation is new within the past 10 years, since we were last here. With a small museum, a coffee sampling showroom, a gift shop and a self-guided walking tour explaining the coffee growing process, it was an interesting, free way to spend the dwindling hours of sunshine on Tuesday.

Wednesday morning was warm and sunny as we headed out early for a 9AM tour at the Steelgrass Chocolate Farm. While Gary drove thru "rush hour" traffic for all of 10 minutes, I watched and listened to a webinar on my laptop in the car. YEAH! for modern technology that enables one to travel and learn at the same time. We arrived at Steelgrass with time to spare. This is a family owned and operated business and they wear their hearts on their sleeves when it comes to sharing their passion for organic fruit, spice and chocolate farming. Throughout the walking tour we learned about and tasted some unusual fruits, ie: "lon-gone", "hairy eye-ball" and Tahitian lime, along with sugar cane, bananas and star fruit. Everybody was VERY anxious to get to the chocolate part of the tour. Did you know that the theobromines in dark chocolate caused chocolate to be called the elixir of the Gods? Cacao has one of the highest concentrations of antioxidants of ANY food and so with that in mind, the tour ended with a taste sampling of 10 different types of dark chocolate. Hey, somebody has to do this for you, so I hope you appreciate the sacrifice we made in tasting all these samples. The picture is of Cacao pods as they grow on trees. These are almost ready to pick. Immediately following our Chocolate tour we headed off to the Sugar Cane fields. This is where we "flumed the ditches", otherwise known as floating down the irrigation ditches that were built approximately 150 years ago to facilitate the watering of the sugar cane fields. This activity is not for the faint of heart as you ride in a large, sturdy inner tube, in 69 degree water that flows swiftly down hill, thru 5 different tunnels and two gurgling waterfalls as you try to not bump into the rock-walls and outgrowths of greenery. The tour ends with a nice picnic lunch at the Backcountry Adventures Camp. The picture shows a participant entering one of the tunnels. Tomorrow we take our rescheduled Zip-line excursion.