Kailua-Kona

Coffee has been grown on the slopes above the town since 1828 on ground so young and so steep that machines cannot work it, which is why the harvest is still picked by hand and sold by the farm rather than the region. Kamehameha died on this shore in 1819, and since 1981 the Ironman World Championship has started in the same bay, swimming out from the pier he is buried near.