Since we overnighted in Hilo, we needed a short excursion to fill the short day. We didn’t want to cut our return too close to the all-aboard time, but we didn’t necessarily want to have to get up and leave the ship in the wee hours either. We chose a farm-to-table tour — my thought was how bad can something that involves food and beverages be? It ended up being a fantastic day!

Most of our morning was spent at OK Farms, located in the hills above Hilo. They grow an incredible variety of fruit, nuts, coffee, and spices on their property, and they also supply fruit to Ola Brew for their craft beers, ciders, and hard seltzers.

We started our tour with freshly brewed coffee, and then drove around the property sampling fruits and spices right off the trees!

We were also treated to some relaxing food and beverage stops with views of Kaiemukama Falls and Rainbow Falls.

No visit to a working farm would be complete without a stop in the gift shop! Since everything we tasted was so good we took the opportunity to stock up on gifts for friends and neighbors and bought some gifts for us too! I’m still hoarding the delicious Macadamia nuts we brought home, and I only allow myself 2 or 3 at a time!😂

Even though our farm visit was over, the tour was not! We enjoyed a delicious lunch at Ola Brew where we were able to sample the beers and hard seltzers made with produce from OK Farms,

If you’re looking for something different to do in Hilo, I highly recommend both OK Farms and Ola Brew. If you don’t have time in Hilo, don’t worry, there’s an Ola Brew in Kona!
https://www.okfarmshawaii.com
https://www.olabrewco.com

We got back to the ship about 1:00 and actually had some time to relax, sit outside for sailaway, and enjoy a few hours of not having to be anyplace! I took advantage of the downtime in the afternoon to go through e-mail, download pictures, and do a load of sink laundry.

Sunset was just before dinner. It was too pretty to miss…they all were!

Dinner was at Teppanyaki and it was fabulous! Our chef/performer Mario was great and really helped make the meal entertaining and memorable.

After dinner I was done! It was all I could do to put one foot in front of the other to walk to our cabin so I could have a close encounter with my bed! We had three more fully packed days ahead and I wanted to be able to take advantage of every minute!