Most Accessable Place To Explore All That Puna Has To Offer

We move from Japan to the Big Island in 1991. We spent 6 years in Japan teach English. We enjoyed traveling around Japan and interacting with the culture there. Kayo was born there and we stayed at her family home on Okayama. While we were there we developed a host of friends from all over the world. We still have contact with some of the. Our friends from down under will be visiting us for a few days in July. Its always great fun to get together. We are both retired now. Roby completed a career in social work assisting people with mental health issues to get services they needed. Kayo work in a Japanese restaurant with her long time friend and recently retired.

Roby was born in Indiana and left that state never to return after graduating from high on 1966. The draft was taking people right out of high school at the time so Roby joined the Marines and served 4 years. After discharge from the service, He worked as a carpenter until he met Kayo. Never having been in another country, Roby decided he wanted to try living in Japan. We wen to Japan in 1980.

Kayo was born in Japan were she went to high school. After high school she went to San Jose Cal. to attend college. She spent 3 years there studying English. She returned to Japan to work for her brother in his coffee shop. She had opportunity to travel with a friend to visit her friend in San Francisco where she met Roby. We have been married for 35 years now.

The Puna district has an interesting history. Hilo and Kau'are linked both geographically and historically through Puna. Prior to the arrival of western civilization there were routes that connected these two very different areas of the island through Puna. The areas they traversed included some stands of fairly intact native vegetation with little modern development, offering a glimpse into the past. The Puna Trail evolved from a trail system generally known as the ala loa or ala hele which served not only to provide travelers with access to resources with a given ahupua'a, but also passed through the entire district of Puna This trail still exists today. One can access it at the end of Kaloli drive in Hawaiian Paradise Park.

After Hawaii's first forestry law in 1839 restricted the removal of sandalwood trees, cattle ranching and coffee cultivation became the leading commercial activities. Before 1900, coffee was the chief agricultural crop in the area in 1899, the Ola'a Sugar Company was founded and the coffee trees were uprooted to make way for sugarcane. Fifteen years later the farmers would return to planting coffee.

Macadama nuts and papaya were introduced in 1881 and 1919 respectively. Papaya and macadama nuts have become the leading cash crops of Puna. About 97% of the states papaya production occurs in Puna.