(more and higher resolution photos here)
Thursday started off with another Sammy request; Kona coffee. Before doing that though Sam picked out a breakfast place called Basik Cafe, which served granola and acai and various other good-for-you things.
While we were sitting on the second floor open air eating area we noticed that we could see Dolphins doing flips and twirls in the small bay across the road. This bay just happens to be adjacent to our hotel as well.
Before heading up the road to the coffee farm we sat on the rocks by the bay for a bit.
After touring the coffee farm we went to lunch at Umeke’s Poke, which was fresh and fantastic. We sampled everything and had a hard time deciding what to get. Sam ended up getting seared Ahi, which was probably the best (even though it was a poke restaurant). The Ahi was actually better than a $32 plate of seared Ahi we’d later have in Kauai.
It was so good (spoiler warning) that we made a point to go back for lunch the next day as well. So fresh there’s the tuna behind the counter.
We had to drive to the local shopping mall to get picked up for our Mauna Kea tour, so we decided to get shaved ice while waiting.
The drive to Mauna Kea was a long one, but the tour guide had a well rehearsed informative speech that lasted for hours.
At the visitors center halfway up the mountain we ate a prepared dinner (vegetable lasagna) and donned our arctic parkas. The van then took us up the gravel trail the rest of the way to the observatories, stopping once for photos.
There is a set of lower observatories you stop at first before the main ones.
At the observatories Sam and I hiked up to the peak. It wasn’t a long hike, but due to the altitude it was rough both from the wind, the cold and the thin air.
Unfortunately the clouds at all levels were dense that day, so the sunset, which should have been “amazing” up there, was underwhelming. After the sunset the group got back in the vans, and went back to the visitors center (actually a spot adjacent) to look through high powered telescopes at the sky.
The first few things we looked at were far away planet clusters, which honestly weren’t that entirely interesting as they just showed up as little white lights, which is essentially what you could see in the clear night sky anyway. The bad thing was that with all the haze the sky wasn’t that clear for us in a place that is supposed to be the “clearest sky on earth.”
However, there were three more things that increased the interesting factor. First, we saw a meteor burn up and fall over the far side of the mountain. Although Sam and I saw a shooting star over hollywood one night, we’d never seen a shooting star before. Next, we looked through the telescopes at Jupiter and it’s three moons. The moons looked like stars, but you could clearly see the equitorial storms on Jupiter’s “surface” as dark bands. Last, we had hot chocolate and looked at the moon, which was full and bright that night, so bright they had to put several filters on the telescopes before you could see the craters.
