Sunday, October 24, 2010

Hawaii - Day Ten


This is on Likelike Hwy. We were headed for the other side of the island again.

I love this garden sculpture. Carved stone!

So much green everywhere!

This plant is a shefflera. I had one of these for a house plant for several years. I got tired of the plant and it was getting big. I didn't know it was going to get these cool beans on it!!

Banana tree.

We pulled into this nursery. It was not a traditional nursery. The manager showed us his project. He was working on a system for raising Talapia. He has to desalinate the water, then the water is used to hold fish at different stages in growth. When the water needs to be filtered it is fed into a system that takes the "dirty" water and it is used for Hydroponic plantings. The nursery will have tomatoes and other plants, plus will sell the mature talapia. The water will be filtered and recycled! We really enjoyed the tour.

These mountains look primative.

This is called China man's Hat.

We went to Wainimai Bay which is famous for surfing.

There is a sharp incline of the sand.

I saw this picture in the paper. It shows a princess with tatoos. I have seen a lot of young guys with similar tatoo patterns, on one side of their chest and back and arm.

These young surfers didn't know that I photoed them.

We drove back to our hotel through the Pineapple Ranch. Miles of fields!

Hawaii - Day Nine


This is our Pre-Hawaiian celebration picture. The story of the dress is that I wore this dress 23 years ago when we first came to Hawaii. I found it way in the back of my closet. I was so excited that I still had it. To me, the style is a classic. Ed bought three Hawaii shirts! He looked really good in them!


We went to China Town for the day. The few blocks were very busy as it was the weekend. We heard a lot of tongues that we were unfamiliar with. The shops had flowers in one area, clothing, restaurants, and a large area of produce and meats.

See if you can find Ed?

This is one view of the outdoor market.

Some of the clothing. They had silk suits for babies. They were adorable! We went back to our room, and after the sun set, we went to the Hawaiian Celebration for Ed's meeting.

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Hawaii - Days Seven and Eight


Ed had meetings in the AM. We didn't tour this day.
Thursday I took a free bus into Waikiki by myself and found a cute dress, after trying on very many dresses. I discovered that having pancakes for breakfast Every Day is not a good diet to live on.

After Ed's meeting were done we went for the opening of the meeting for NPMA. We were treated to a performance of a young lady who plays the Ukulele in a very unusual way. Her style is playful and she melts different melodies together. Her music was played with a lot of energy. I thought it was interesting that her Uke had 8 strings and made me think of a mandolin, but the two instruments are tuned differently.

Then we went to our room for our afternoon glass of wine. All our dinners will be discussed on my cooking blog.

Hawaii - Day Six

We went to the Hawaii's Plantation Village. I didn't take any photos. However, we were guided on a tour of the plantation. There were buildings there that represented the housing styles of the different ethnic groups that came to work there.

1. The Chinese were first to arrive in 1852. They had a Chinese Society building for their worship, and had tiny one room houses.
2. In 1868 the Japanese came, lived in a duplex style house, cooked over a fire and added a communal building for making Tofu-Ya. The Japanese adopted Christianity.
3. The Portuguese came in 1878, were already Christian and had a house for cooking with a stove, and house one for sleeping.
4. The Puerto Ricans in 1900, small house.
5. Okinawans came in 1919
6. Koreans in 1919 about this time there was a popular meeting place, the Barber shop. There people would learn what was newsworthy from each other. There was also a communal bath house. It was a large concrete tub that was divided in the middle by a wooden wall, and was housed in a room that was also divided into two spaces, one side for men, and the other for women.

Add later was a dormitory for male filipino workers. There was also a Sumo ring, and a plantation store. The families would earn $9 to $14 per month. They would spend all their earnings at the local store. An infirmary was made about 1915, to care for dental as well as medical problems. Must have been a hard life.

Our guide was very enjoyable and spoke about the variety of cultures that have come to make up the Hawaiian society today.

This was a pretty long tour. We called it a day after the tour.

Hawaii - Fifth day


We went to Foster's Gardens.
There is a small lizard in this picture.

There were many exotic flowers and plants.

Angel's Trumpet

This colorful bark is the smooth bark of Bagras Eucalyptus tree.

This very strange tree is a cannon ball tree. Sprouts flowers and fruit right from the trunk. The balls are filled with a foul smelling blue pulp that attracts peccaries, pigs, and chickens.

Bread fruit tree that was part of the story of "Mutany on the Bounty" about Captain Cooke. Breadfruit was an important part of the Polynesian Islands diet, and was introduced to Hawaii, not a native species. A carbohydrate, the starchy fruit tastes like fresh baked bread when cooked.

This plant looks like it has huge grapefruit growing in clusters. It has the look and taste of a grapefruit.

This is an Indian Mulberry tree aka Noni, which there is a popular concoction made of this fruit that is said to cure all maladies!

There was a green house full of orchids and related plants that don't have traditional roots, like ferns, staghorn ferns, and bromiliads.

More plants in the green house. I wanted to see the yellow flowers.

After we looked at the plants we got in the car and drove to Pali Highway, that goes over the summit of the mountains that divide the island north and south.
There are always clouds on the mountain. The street names were challenging for us. We had to reference streets like Kalalakua andKanekapolei, Nohonani and Namahana.

This is at Pali Lookout

We went down to the east shore. We drove until we came to Sea Life Park. They had aquariums that you can view from above water, and down under through windows.

This is a sting ray that swam around the perimeter every 10 minutes or so. There was also a small shark that would swim by with the fin out of the water.

This is a pic of Ed photographing the shark! We stayed for the dolphin show. It was enjoyable. Then we hopped in the car and went to watch the water while we ate a snack lunch.

There were lots of tidepools. We tried to find some wild life in the shallow pools, but they were very shy animals.

This is a not so wild surfer near by. They had to surf toward the rocks. I thought they were brave.

Ed did manage to get a quick shot of this crab before it scurried away.

In some areas, the water was pretty rough.

This is near the area called the Blow Hole.


These people were looking down into the area called Blow Hole and there were many people who walked down there to get a closer look. We decided to call it a day.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Hawaii - Sunday, day four


We had one place to go today. That was the Harbor to catch a boat ride. The boat had a glass bottom, and we were excited to go over the rocky areas to see all the animal life around the reefs. It was a cloudy day, and when we got out to a good turtle feeding area, the Cap'n lifted the wooden cover over the glass bottom. Sadly, the water was turbid, and so we really couldn't see anything out in the water.

We were lucky to see a small group of dolphins. They were a small breed, and they were pretty close to the shore. They didn't stay long around us.

The boat ride was fun, in that it is just kind of fun to be in a boat, with the water rolling the boat.

The Cap'n lost credibility with me when he said that Sea Turtles are Mammals! That was because they breath air and could stay under water a long time. Honestly, I started looking for Gilligan!

From our hotel room we can see (barely) an entertainment program. Near the end of the show, the men come out to dance with the fire. I tried to get some pics of the fire.

These would be fun to see close up. I have a feeling we will see that kind of entertainment.

Hawaii - day three


My blisters were killing me, so I opted to do more sitting around close to our hotel.

We still had some walking to do though. We had seen a borders book store and wanted to go see what kind of plant and fish books they had. Ed got this shot near our hotel. On our way back from Borders, we scheduled a glass bottom boat ride for Sunday afternoon.

This is one that we took on our way from here to there. We spent the rest of the day on the patio sipping mai tai's and looking at our books.