Hawaii – Painted Church and Place of Refuge

Posted by Karen on 02-Sep-2007

(Click on photo for 109 photos)

We have no tours scheduled for today, so Maria and I slept relatively late and joined our hostess Pat for a scrumptious breakfast which included locally grown fresh fruits.  We decided to go check out the Pu’uhona O Honaunau National Historic Park, the Place of Refuge, that is just a few miles down the hill from the B&B.  On the way, we stopped and checked out St. Benedict’s Painted Church.  It’s a lovely little old church and the inside walls are beautifully painted to tell Bible stories; almost all the walls and ceiling are painted.  There is a old cemetery next and it was just a very peaceful place.  We continued seaward {makai) towards Kealakekua Bay and the Place of Refuge.  Everything we’d heard, said it was beautiful and it was.  White sand beaches, blue waters, palm trees waving in the breeze and giant turtles basking in the sun–this is the Hawaii postcard you think about.  We went back to the Kona Coffee Museum to spend more time exploring it and buying souvenirs.  We went back to the Place of Refuge and enjoyed the sunset and the basking turtles (I’m enthralled with these turtles if you can’t tell).