The adventures continue with a road trip to the Hilo area of the island, to visit the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Gardens. The weather in that area was calling for 29 degrees, with mostly sun and a little bit of cloud. Sounded perfect! Since it is on the rainy side of the island, they say to plan on getting wet and dress appropriately. We wore running shoes instead of sandals, as the land here is never flat.
The road wrapped around the coastline, where we kept going through big rock cuts with signs saying “Falling rock”, then a gulch, then back up the other side. The roads were really quite good, all things considered, although the last 5 miles were tiny roads through little communities and nowhere near big roads or towns!
Admission was $35 each (they just give discounts for locals.)
The property is secluded, 17 acres which was impenetrable jungle when the founder bought it in 1977. They cleared out the invasive species, weeds and thorns by hand every day until they opened in 1984. They created garden trails which curve and wind through the jungle, and he spent the next 17 years collecting and planting over 2500 tropical and subtropical plants from all over the world. Some of these plants are now extinct in the wild, and the gardens here remain as a seed bank for these species. Their vision is to use the existing garden to create a larger hub for sustainability education and climate change.
It was a beautiful walk down into the gardens in the Onomea Valley, with a great deal of plants I have never seen before, along with quite a few that are treated as indoor house plants at home. It felt quite a bit like descending into a land where we were miniature.
My favourite part was seeing all of the orchids blooming everywhere!
See the mongoose? They were running around everywhere. They were introduced in Hawaii in an effort to control the rat problem, since they will eat rats. Unfortunately nobody thought about the mongoose being awake all day and the rats being awake all night... so now they have a mongoose problem AND a rat problem!
Two trees I have never heard of before – a cannonball tree, and a sausage tree, were growing here. There were some of the fruits on the ground – both types massively heavy. No, these fruits aren’t exactly edible, but you can make some nice bowls from the cannonballs.
