Na 'Aina Kai

Wednesday we went to Na ‘Aina Kai Botanical Gardens. Joyce Dody, the former wife of Charles Schulz (creator of Peanuts cartoons) and her husband have created an incredible garden of tropical flowers and trees.

We went on the 5 hour walking tour and amazingly Kevin enjoyed it. We walked through the hardwood plantation (they’ve planted 60,000 teak trees, plus mahogany, rosewood, etc.) to help support the gardens in the future.

The second photo is a picture of a pair of "nene." Down by the beach we saw 11 nene – they were almost extinct (down to just 30 birds) in the 1970s. (They are a cousin of the Canada goose.) Today they estimate that there are about 1500 birds.

The third photo is a banana tree -- notice the tiny clump of bananas and the long "flower" with the purple tip. It's a pretty cool flower. You can tell when the grower has allowed the bananas to ripen on the tree by how round the bananas are -- the more octagonal the earlier they were picked.

I loved the beautiful jade blossoms (above)-- the blue jade was bizarre. I loved seeing the carnivore flowers (bug-eating flowers with trap doors that lure bugs in and then the flower eats them) and the view of the beach from the gazebo was fabulous.

A great and exhausting tour.

We walked down to the Hyatt and enjoyed the evening from the Terrace restaurant. As we walked home it started to rain—and then really rain. It’s fun how it’s warm rain so it really doesn’t matter.

Elephant Ear Umbrella

Final stop before leaving O'ahu was a trip to an overlook 1600 feet above Honolulu. As we drove up the mountain it started to rain--downpour, golf-ball size rain drops--but the temperature doesn't drop so it's still in the 80s. The higher we get the harder it's raining and the lusher the forest. I'm amazed at the philadendrons that are easily wrapped around trees trunks 20-30 feet up. At home, we put a little post in the planter and watch it wrap around but here, the philadendrons could easily swallow up a telephone pole.

The funniest site was a man who was waiting for someone by his driveway. He was obviously caught in the downpour unexpectantly and so he picked a huge elephant ear leaf--easily 3'x4'--and was using it for an umbrella. He was soaking wet and as we drove by he felt a little silly using the leaf as an umbrella so he sheepishly stood in the rain holding it as we drove by. We thought we missed our turn, so we drove back past him and there he was with his umbrella, down by his side. Well we hadn't missed our turn, so we drove back by him a third time and once again down came the leaf. I so wanted to take a picture of him using the leaf for an umbrella but didn't have the gutts. Even in the rain the tropical forest above Honolulu was fabulous...and then the sun came out!