48 MILES IN 8 HOURS, PART I

Yesterday Jim and I set out for an exploratory road trip up the coast to the north. We had no particular objective except, perhaps, viewing a waterfall. After only a few miles we saw a sign that said, "scenic route, 4 miles." We turned off on it. We had only gone about 1/2 of the 4 miles when we came upon a sign for the Tropical Botanical Gardens, a place we had planned to visit, but hadn't yet looked up on the map.

These gardens were literally carved out of the jungle with a machete. In the 1977 a San Franciscan, Dan Lutkenhouse and his wife Pauline, moved to the Big Island and bought 17 acres of ocean front property and spent the next 6 years getting it cleaned up (old cars, dumped appliances, trash), cleared out (impenetrable tropical jungle) and re-claimed (beautiful Onomea Bay, site of an old settlement). Later they bought an additional 20 acres and then donated all 37 acres as a non-profit nature preserve. We were told that the 1.3 mile trail would take us about 2 hours. It easily took us 4 hours. Here is the first thing we saw right at the entrance to the gardens.

The beginning of the walk into the garden is a 500 foot boardwalk heading downhill 120 feet. Everything was amazing so this part took us quite awhile. For example, here is Jim demonstrating a young bamboo shoot.

The flowers in every direction were stunning.

This one is called "Pink Quill" and is a bromeliad from Ecuador.

This garden has an incredible variety of gingers, of which there are thousands in the world. Here are a couple of my favorites, beehive ginger

and Rose of Siam, which is from Indonesia.

So many of these tropical flowers are really well named. This one was called "Cat's Whiskers" and comes from the Philippines.

And this, "White Bat Plant" from New Guinea and Malaysia.

The founder planted an enormous variety of heliconia, such as this Heliconia Longissima "Red Wings," from Colombia,

which is incredibly long.
Here are some others, quite different:




This one, "Hanging Lobster Claw" is from Peru.

Not only were there hundreds of different blossoms in this garden



but the greenery was also astounding - palms, philodendrons, bamboo, monkey pod tree, plus tons of what we know as house plants, vines of enormous proportions scaling tree trunks.


I found myself mesmerized by all the textures, like on this palm trunk...

and on this one...

and on these leaves....
and on this amazing flowering banana from Assam...

and in this grove of golden bamboo.

One of our rewards was this series of waterfalls...


and ultimately, the ocean.


Next, Part II, with the Tiki god.

Audrey

WE MEET NAMASTE, THE BENGAL TIGER

At 2:10 PM Saturday I read in the tourist brochure that the Hilo zoo had petting zoo hours from 1:30-2:30 pm and that they feed the Bengal tiger at 3:30 pm. I realized that we wouldn't make it for the petting zoo but we had plenty of time for the feeding. This zoo is just a little south of town and is free. Besides being a zoological garden it is also a botanical garden. This is the first thing we saw after entering the zoo.

I was totally fascinated by the colors in this sealing wax palm.

I was even more amazed to learn that rhododendrons can grow and thrive in Hawaii, especially in humid Hilo.

This is an Egyptian Royal Ibis. They are now extinct in Egypt.

Jim spotted this wild poinsettia tree on our stroll toward the tiger pen.

Here is what we came to see.


Namaste has a really nice large enclosure with a big moat-like pond filled with water lillies. It was a really hot day and he had no problem getting right into the water, unlike other kitties that I know.


What a truly magnificent creature! We watched him for quite some time prior to the feeding. The zoo keeper told us that they had been negotiating for a mate for him, but the negotiations dragged on so long that he is too old to mate now. Namaste used to have a gibbon in his enclosure to keep him company. Unfortunately, he ate the gibbon so now he is alone.


When it was feeding time, the zoo worker went to his night cage area and dumped at least three chicken carcasses into it, then rattled her keys. He came up from his lower area, knowing there was food. A bunch of us were close enough to see REALLY large canines crunching through the chicken bones. Like any cat, he licked up the dropped bits off the floor. There are some chickens hanging out in Namaste's enclosure. We asked the keeper why he didn't eat them. She said he had tried before but didn't appear to like the feathers.

On our way to the monkey enclosure we saw this magnificent plant.
We saw exotic donkeys who are descended from donkeys brought over from Africa to transport coffee in the 1800s. I have never seen donkeys with such elaborate markings. Other than that, though, they acted exactly like other donkeys as they concentrated on eating their hay.


The grounds of this zoo are really lovely. Here's an example of some of the other beautiful plants.


Bromeliads are common in the Hilo area but I still can't get used to seeing so many, and climbing up trees like this.

Hand in hand with the bromeliads are orchids. They are everywhere.

The Hilo zoo is small but well worth the trip. There are wonderful parrots, monkeys, secretary birds, pheasants, monarch butterflies, and of course, Namaste, the magnificent Bengal tiger.

Next, a(nother) perfect day.

Audrey

HILO FARMER'S MARKET, OH MY!

Saturday is one of two big Farmer's Market days in Hilo. We awoke at dawn and started our day with lattes (yes, we brought our stove top espresso maker with us) and local papaya and banana. We can't get bananas that taste like this on the mainland. Yum! You'll notice that my fruit has a sprinkling of granola on it. We bought the house brand from one of the local natural food stores and it is delicious! It contains cashews, pumpkin seeds and goji berries. Goji berries are also called wolfberries and have been grown in the Yellow River valley of China for over 600 years.


We headed downtown to the farmer's market around 8 AM. The first thing that caught my eye were these exotic looking dragon fruits. I haven't yet tried them so can't tell you what they taste like.


We bought some of these stubby plantains from this lady so we could have them for breakfast. But, we didn't wait and had some with our Ono (white fish) dinner. They were like eating candy.

As you can imagine, tropical flowers are very plentiful and not too expensive here. These anthurium are quite ubiquitous here.

And, Hawaii is the Orchid Isle.



These wonderful fruits are similar to a tomato but a little sour. We had something similar in Ecuador, called uvias. The man who grows them said they are much hardier in this climate than tomatoes and can be used in salads in the same way.

Jim and I had a grand old chat with the young man who creates these salsas.

Anyone who knows Jim at all knows that there can hardly be a salsa hot enough. The creator of Lava Salsa experiments with all sorts of flavors and one of his salsas has no fewer than 7 different chilis in it. Needless to say, we bought 5 different salsas. Look how pretty they are.

The pink one has beets in it (along with garlic, cream cheese, etc. YUM!) The upper left is the chipotle one and it has a really good bite to it. The yellow one in the middle is a fruit salsa with passion fruit, papaya, habanero peppers, etc. We had to go right to the fish market and buy some fresh fish to eat with the fruit salsa.

The other part of the farmer's market is the craft market. There are a few booths with imported stuff but most is made by the artist who is behind the booth. We had lots of good conversations with the artists. This is Eide and I had to buy this lovely print from her to go with my Hawaiiana collection.

We had a really good time at the farmer's market and managed to spend about 4 hours there. We had to make several trips back to the car to deposit our purchases. The next market is Wednesday. We'll be back!

Next, a Bengal Tiger.

Audrey