Limahuli Gardens

One evening, as we were drinking wine at the sunset spot across the street from our house in Princeville, it started raining.  While the sun was shining.  Instant photo opp!

Limahuli Gardens is about a mile from the end of the road on the north shore, just past Haena.  Like McBryde Gardens on the south shore, it's a branch of the National Tropical Botanical Garden.  I visited in 2012, and returned this time.  These taro terraces were built by the ancient Hawaiians 700 years ago, recently refurbished.  The traditional hale is a 2013 version of the houses the ancients may have lived in.

The garden has several sections.  Each covers plants from a different era.  Native plants, many endemic to Hawaii or even to this section of Kauai, have a garden of their own.  The canoe garden is made up of plants transported to Hawaii by the Polynesians, before Captain Cook came ashore in 1778.  This group included the coconut palm, which is not native to Hawaii!  Many of the prettiest and best known Hawaiian flowers, like this one, were brought here in the 1800s by non-Hawaiian settlers.

The garden has many gorgeous varieties of hibiscus...almost all have grown in Hawaii for less than 200 years.

Bright colors abound.

An especially intricate flower.

Bird of paradise.

This tree has been enterprising enough to send its roots down the rock into the soil below.

Cool leaf!

There are many types of ferns in Hawaii, all with fine symmetry.

This is the only type of palm native to Hawaii.  It had almost disappeared from the wild, and is now being preserved and nurtured in the garden.

More cool leaves.

Primeval landscape above the gardens.  Yes, Jurassic Park was filmed here!

A good look at the modern hale, with Makana looming above to the right.  The ancient Hawaiians used to have fire ceremonies here.  A brave and nimble warrior would carry sticks to the top, light them, and drop them into the updrafts blowing on the mountain, which would carry the fire to the sea nearby (to the right of the pic).

Nene on the Princeville golf course at sunset.

Kauai Scenes from Both Shores

Some random Kauai pics.  This one is taken just east of Poipu, on the Maha'ulepu Beach trail.  The colors in Hawaii are vivid...red dirt, green grass, brown rock, blue sky, deep azure sea.

Heavy southerly swells pound the Poipu shoreline.  The kicker here is that I was standing 30-40 feet above the ocean when I took this pic!  Earlier in the day a rogue wave swamped Suz and I and deposited a piece of driftwood under her chair.  We retreated to the tiki bar at the Hyatt to recuperate.

Strong waves crashing ashore at Poipu.

This is Polihale Beach, at the far western end of  Kauai.  It's hot, dry,and windy here.  30 years ago I could tolerate those conditions.  Not so much now.  And the road to the beach is much worse than it was in the '90s!  Lots of pothholes...25 years ago it was unpaved, but fairly smooth.

The horizon's a bit off on this pic, but the crepuscular rays of the sunset were nice.  This is a viewpoint across the street from our rental house.

Makana Mountain...AKA Bali Hai...from the Princeville golf course.

Secret Beach on the north shore, near Kilauea.  A favorite of mine for 35 years.  Back then, people used to reside here for months at a time, rarely wearing any clothing.  It's a bit tamer now, but still vast and peaceful.  Blow this pic up and you can probably see a lighthouse on the tip of the mainland.  We'll be journeying there soon.

But first, Secret Beach (Hawaiian name Kauapea) has some hanging gardens.  Water percolates out of the cliffs, and ferns and algae thrive.

Now we're at Kilauea Lighthouse, looking in the other direction, toward the west.  The strip of sand at center left is Secret Beach.

Closeup shot of the lighthouse.

A wedge tailed shearwater feeds her young'un.  These birds nest in dense foliage right next to the road leading to the lighthouse.  Even odder, they sound like cats...they meow!  Kilauea Point has many fine birds...Laysan albatrosses, frigate birds, red footed boobies, these shearwaters, and more.  

Waimea Canyon

The first three days I was on Kauai, rain fell off and on.  With the temperature in the seventies, rain here is not a nuiasance, but a photo opp.  This pic was taken from the deck of my condo.

Sunset from a nearby deck, overlooking the pool and the ocean.  There are several honu (green sea turtles) that hang out in the sea right below the condo complex pool.

This is Kauai Kai, a coastal valley at Allerton Garden,  just downstream from McBryde.  See the previous post for pix from McBryde.

Fairly clear morning at Waimea Canyon.  By midafternoon this spot was socked in with fog and drizzle.

A canyon waterfall, with lantana in the foreground.

Same waterfall.,

And again.  The waterfall is perhaps 300 feet high.

Downstream view...ocean is in the far distance.  This spot is about 3500 feet above sea level.  Quite a massive canyon for a rather small island.

Cool palm leaf.

McBryde Garden on Kauai

I have returned to Kauai after an absence of 3 1/2 years.  Glad to be back!  Despite having been here over a dozen times since 1980...probably at least 15...I had never been to McBryde Garden, a division of the National Tropical Botanical Garden.  This proved to be a beautiful and very interesting place, mainly devoted to Hawaiian plants, with some Hawaiian culture and imported plants included.  The tropical vegetation takes on some gnarly forms.

Silhouette of maximum gnarliness.

Fine hibiscus flower.

Tree branch labyrinth.

Of course, flowers bloom in Hawaii year round, but as in more northern latitudes, May is a good time to see them.  Even fallen petals on the ground make beautiful mosaics.

This is a stick house, built two years ago by a local artist.  From the outside it looks a bit like a capitol dome...or a bowerbird condo!  Those Australians build vertical oval shaped nests.

There's an oculus in the stick house, just like the one in the Pantheon in Rome.

A ficus tree spreads buttress roots.

Forget what this flower is called, but it's cool.

A new exhibit at the garden is a series of sculptures constructed entirely of Lego blocks.  This monarch butterfly has 60,000 Lego blocks in it and took the artist 600 hours of work to build it in his studio in Brooklyn.  There are 14 Lego sculptures scattered through the gardens.

I think this is a heliconia.

This tree was in full, brilliant bloom!  For a sense of scale, the tree is about 75 feet tall.

Big ol' tropical leaf in the forest.

The ground beneath the blooming tree pictured above.