The Hawaii Vanilla Company

Watch a video of my farm tour here.

I recently toured the Hawaii Vanilla Company; the first Vanilla farm in the United States. You can read more about them or book a tour on their website.

I booked the farm tour with lunch. When I arrived, we all sat down to eat. While we ate, our tour guide described each course and how vanilla had been added to it as a way to enhance the flavors of the foods. With many locally sources ingredients and vanilla grown on the property, it was a delicious meal.

After lunch, we walked down to one of the grow houses where the vanilla vines are located. For those who didn’t feel up to the walk, a shuttle was provided. One of the women on the tour with me was there for her 80th birthday, and she had an easy time getting in and out of the shuttle. I would say that the tour is very accessible.

Once inside the vanilla grow house, we were treated to a very detailed history of the vanilla vine, the story of the farm, and then a live demonstration of how the vanilla flowers are pollinated.

I felt very lucky to be visiting in August, when the vines had flowers and beans on them. Check out these pictures of the grow house full of vanilla vines!

My tour guide, Zak, was extremely knowledgeable and took time to answer everyone’s questions. This brings me to a thing I remember every time I do some of the tourist activities here in Hawaii: Please tip your tour guides.

I know it can feel like you shouldn’t have to spend more money after you have already paid for a tour. Some of you will want to spend any leftover money in the gift shop, and I understand that. I know local businesses appreciate you paying for tours and spending money in gift shops.

Many tourists from cultures that don’t have tipping find the concept offensive. Honestly, I wish Americans were paid well enough that the custom was no longer necessary. However, it is customary here to tip your tour guides, waiters and waitresses, bellhops, and other service industry workers. Please factor this in when you are budgeting for how much you will spend on activities during your vacation.

The standard gratuity for a tour guide is between $10 and $20, depending on how much information they shared and how much fun they made your experience. I just want to share this for folks from places like South Korea and France who don’t know about this custom, since tipping is not standard in their countries.

The tour ends at the gift shop, which has a wide range of products. For those who are planning to buy gifts for family and friends back home, plan on spending some money for the variety of products from vanilla extract to vanilla sugar. It’s a delightful array of foods, as well as other products like clothing and coffee mugs.

The Hawaii Vanilla Company is in a beautiful historic building surrounded by eucalyptus forests. The bathrooms are clean, the eating areas are beautiful, and the food is amazing.

I would definitely recommend this tour to anyone visiting Hawaii Island.

Note: I am lactose intolerant, so I opted out of the coffee and ice cream at the end of the tour. The other guests seemed to really enjoy this finishing touch, so you’ll have more to look forward to than what you see pictured in my post.

Before I left the farm, I walked all around the building to appreciate the garden. If you are there when the weather is nice, I highly recommend taking the time to do this. From the food plants to the flowers, it’s a very impressive array of plants.

Of course, nothing there is as fabulous as the vanilla orchids. They really are marvelous plants.