Hamakua Springs Country Farms is located outside of Hilo, Hawai‘i. It’s our “big town,” which is never as big as during the week of the Merrie Monarch Festival each Spring.

That’s this week, when thousands of people come from around Hawai‘i, from the Pacific Islands, from Japan and Mexico and many other countries for the annual hula competition and festival. The long-running competition is named for King David Kalakaua (1836-1891), who was nicknamed “The Merrie Monarch.”

It’s a week when store owners go all out to celebrate the history of hula and the monarchy. Here’s the window at Phoenix Rising on Waianuenue Avenue, where you can see the beautiful display of gourds and other traditional hula implements, feather leis and a feather cape, a photo of Kalakaua and more, all within the reflection of buildings that have stood across the way for close to a hundred years.

In town, over and over again during Merrie Monarch week, you see simple and spontaneous but elegant demonstrations of this lovely place where we live, like this visitor’s woven bag with Hilo’s unofficial flower, the red anthurium, spotted at a coffee house.

And then there’s the Merrie Monarch festival itself. History, culture, tradition, music, dance, chant, language, oral history, beauty—you name it, it’s there.

Merrie Monarch photos by Macario

– posted by Leslie Lang