Hale Akala is a special piece of Kona.The main home was built in 1895, the cottage in the 1930s by Manuel Silveira Goularte, a Portuguese rancher who raised his thirteen children here. It was utilized by cowboys of the neighboring Greenwell family's Palani Ranch to re-supply and feed ranch-hands in the 1920 and 30s. Abandoned and left to the elements before WWII, it was eventually purchased by Christian's grandparents, William and Margaret of Honolulu, in 1945. Wanting to retire to Kona (where Margaret's great-grandparents Reverend Asa and Lucy Thurston--part of the company of first Christian missionaries to the Islands who arrived in Kailua-Kona, the seat of Hawaii's ruling Kamehameha reign, in 1820 and lived until the 1860s) they chose the cool uplands of Holualoa. Hale Akala has been in the family for four generations. A few cattle roam the surrounding acres of pasture and you'll hear an occasional bull bellowing from nearby Palani Ranch, in the quiet evening hours.