Where a Kona Cacao Pod Becomes Chocolate, and Then Soap
Two mornings a week, a working farm above Kona lets visitors in. Cacao and coffee grow on one slope, and both end up in the factory at the end of the walk.
The drive climbs out of Kailua-Kona and keeps going. By the time the road reaches Holualoa the air has cooled, the rainforest has closed in on both sides, and the ocean sits somewhere below the shoulder of Hualalai. The farm puts its own vantage point at around 1,200 feet above Kona.
The gate opens two mornings a week, Tuesday and Thursday, and the walk starts at 9 am sharp. The rest of the time it is simply a working farm. The company's own FAQ says so plainly: the farm is not open to the public and requires authorization to visit.
Three hours is the whole of it. You walk the orchard, watch a cacao pod get opened, taste what comes out of it, and finish inside the small factory where the same crops turn into soap.
Kona Natural Soap Company started in 2005, built out of an old five acre rock quarry pit. The owners, Marty and Greg, tell that story on their own About page, and it explains the ground you walk on. Watch your footing in the grassy stretches. The meeting-point notes warn about protruding rocks.
Cacao came later. The company says it has been a major producer for Kona's cacao growers since 2008 and only began making a chocolate product of its own in the last few years. Coffee grows on the same slope, and the morning includes a tasting of both.
Award Winning Farm Tour: Coffee, Chocolate and Unique GiftsThree hours at the farm in Holualoa, Tuesdays and Thursdays at 9 am. Guided in English, from USD 50 per person.www.viator.comWhat the Judges in Paris Actually Tasted
The tour leans on an award, and it is worth knowing which one. In 2019 the Cacao of Excellence programme listed a Hawaii entry among the Best 50 cacao samples of that edition. The entry is logged as CoEx Code-113/19, and it is a joint submission from three Kona farms: Likao Kula, Kokoleka Lani, and Pa'ani. The address recorded against Kokoleka Lani in that listing, 78-6749 Mamalahoa Hwy, is the driveway you park in.
Two things blur in the retelling. The award went to cacao beans. And the company's About page describes it as winning best chocolate in the world, which goes a step past what the programme's archive records. What the archive supports is a Best 50 placement for the beans, shared across three farms.
That does not make the chocolate less interesting. It makes the walk through the orchard more specific. These are the trees behind a sample the judges singled out.
Chickens, Banana Blossoms, and the Soap Room
A farm tour that only covered cacao would be a shorter farm tour. This one wanders. Banana and star fruit grow between the rows. There are chickens, and one of them turns up in the farm's photo library captioned simply as famous.
The last stop is the factory. The company makes its soap in Holualoa, hand cut and hand boxed, using botanicals from the same ground. The formula is deliberately fragrance-free, with no synthetic perfumes, no petroleum products, and no artificial colors or preservatives. If you are allergic to a particular plant, say so before you go in, because what you smell in that room is the plants themselves.
Most of what sits on the shelf at the end is something you just watched grow.
Who This Morning Suits, and Who It Does Not
- Children: the operator does not recommend the tour for anyone under 12, and asks that children stay supervised throughout. Every traveler aged one and over is sold as an adult ticket, so a toddler costs the same as you do.
- The listing also carries a standard tick saying infants and small children can ride in a pram or stroller. That sits awkwardly beside the under-12 guidance, and the under-12 guidance is the operator's own wording.
- Wheelchairs: the listing ticks wheelchair accessible, and the operator's note on the same page is more specific. Access is easy, with one small step into the soap factory. The parking area is grass and loose rock.
- Group size: one booking takes up to six people. That is a cap on your reservation. It does not say how many people will be on the farm that morning. Larger parties are asked to contact the company directly.
- The guiding is in English.
- The tour is held rain or shine.
Getting Up There
The farm sits on Mamalahoa Highway in Holualoa. Look for the first concrete driveway on the right, just north of the Humane Society's dog park, then follow it about 300 feet to the parking sign. Parking is free and there is plenty of it.
Allow more time than a map suggests. The listing puts the farm roughly 40 miles south of the Waikoloa and Waimea resort areas and asks for an hour of driving. Nine o'clock means nine o'clock.
Booking closes four hours before the start and confirmation is immediate. Cancelling a day or more ahead returns the full fare, and cancelling inside 24 hours returns nothing. The company also notes that a departure can be called off if too few people book it.
One more address to keep straight. The retail store on Ali'i Drive in Kailua-Kona is a different place, and the company's FAQ says so directly.
You come back down the hill before lunch carrying chocolate, coffee, and soap that all came off the same slope. The road to the coast is the one you drove up. The ocean is in front of you the whole way down.