Actually Finally the End of the Hawaii Trip

We made it! This is the end of the trip stories! Less than a month later (barely).

My last day in Hawaii was Friday, January 24, and we packed a lot in (on top of, you know, my actual packing).

We took a tour of a chocolate farm! The Original Hawaiian Chocolate Factory is the only one in the US, or at least the only chocolatier that grows all the cacao beans it uses.

It was another beautiful day.

And of course I love seeing chocolate in the wild, so to speak.

No entry, but the tour is allowed through.

To see the nibs sunning themselves.

I loved how these trees were coexisting, one straight up through the other.

The tour guide was very informative.

And we went in among the trees to see the beans at various stages of ripeness.

Then we went to another area so he could crack one open and show us how it looks inside.

I will admit that it looked pretty gross to me. Slimy white coating on the nibs!

The geckos love it, though.

And come along to lick it off. Not that that's part of the production process! Imagine how labor-intensive. But they clearly knew what tour time meant.

I wonder if that's how it was originally discovered? Because I can't imagine opening one and deciding that there might be something delicious in there, but if you saw something eating it, maybe that would get your attention.

Anyway, onward.

We spent some time in a really nice book-and-gift store called Kona Stories (that's where I got the toffee, as well as other things), and it turned out that they had store cats! One:

More friendly.

And two, fluffier and less interested in being social.

I was missing Maggie very much by then, so really appreciated a little cat time.

There were some fun things that I didn't get:

And I was surprised that the door is left open, and the cats can go in and out. Obviously it works, though.

 This is the view from the shopping center parking lot. Hawaii is crazy-beautiful.

On our way home, we saw that we had picked up a hitchhiker. See the gecko on the window?

He tried very hard to be casual.

"Nope, nope, you don't see anything. Or anyone."

After lunch, we went down to the farmers market and had a good wander through.

Look at the shell necklaces!

Don't the yellow ones look like corn?

A really clever way to display shells.

And just for fun:

This bush looked like it was designed by Chihuly.

And this amused me no end. Kona Lisa!

For dinner, we ate right on the water. The food was fine, but the water-and-sunset-light views were enthralling. I took dozens of pictures, and I will leave you with some of them here. All right, a lot of them, but it's not even half of what I took!