Big Island: Day 4

Yesterday, Day 4 of our trip, we drove around the southern part of the island to reach our final destination of the trip: The Hilton Waikoloa Village!

Shortly after checking out of our cabin, we had to pull over for a pit stop and ended up finding a neat little park with some impressively large trees. Ely took photos of the trees on his camera so I will have to post those later :-)

Lucas hasn't mastered the art of taking a selfie yet ;-)

Daddy and Noah racing back to the van. Noah is in a stage right now where almost everything is a race and he wants to be the winner! 

Our first official stop on the drive was at Punalu'u Beach. The beach is famous for its black sand, which you can see in the photo below, right before the reef that Ely and Noah are standing on.

There were several sea turtles swimming around the reef that we could see popping their heads up out of the water!

Noah and Daddy checking out a tide pool

Our next stop was at Punalu'u Bake Shop. 

They are the "Southernmost bakery in the USA!" 

Ely had a delicious malasada with lilikoi frosting, I had a mango malasada, and Noah picked out a chocolate cupcake with peanut butter frosting. (His exact request was for the "black cupcake" but he hardly ate the cupcake part, he mostly just ate the frosting :-)

 

After all that frosting, Noah started running laps around this circle! I lost track of how many times he actually went around!

(You might have noticed that Noah is in a completely different outfit than he was in earlier in the day. It should come as no surprise that he managed to fall into a tide pool at the beach!)

We also stopped at Pu'uhonua o Honaunau. Ancient Hawaiian royal chiefs established one of their most important residences here, but it was also a place of refuge. Separated from the royal grounds by a massive wall was the pu'uhonua, a place of refuge for defeated warriors, noncombatants in time of war, and those who violated kapu, the sacred laws.

In 1961 it became a national historical park where they try and maintain old Hawaiian ways.

The boys "playing" konane, a game involving pebbles arranged on a papamu (a stone surface)

Noah and Mommy with two ki'i, guardians of the place of refuge.

King Kamochimochi ;-)

Since the grounds are part of the National Park Service, Noah was able to become a Junior Park Ranger by completing a few tasks in a book and taking the Junior Ranger pledge! He took it all very seriously and worked really hard to earn the badge :-)