Flora, fauna, food and whatever else fits...

Lady Sommers in the garden

Kalihiwai may not be heaven but you can sure see it from there.

Sweet smoked marlin, sweet apple bananas, sweet potato pie, wasabi cream. Delicious and need I say, very sweet... Awesome hot pickled cucumbers too! The old Chinese market down the street in Koloa pioneered the coconut turnover in the 1920's and luckily it caught on. Yum!

We only had one meal at the Hyatt but the beautiful swans sailing by the restaurant are definitely a lovely visual treat.

On prior trips to Kauai we always made it a point to visit the elderly woman who lived in the old green house on the corner in Koloa.

She made and sold three different kinds of taro chips, best you have ever tasted. Sadly, she has now passed away and her taro chips remain a mere memory.

The Grand Hyatt has a stunning assortment of macaws and cockatoos in the center courtyard.

Nene

This handsome palm is from Nuka Hiva in the Marquesas. It is called a Vahanna palm (pelogodoxa henreyana) and may already be extinct in its native forest. Now it lives at the NTBG.

A beautiful native flower.

Koloa was the site of the first Hawaiian sugar mill back in 1835. To hear some of the oral history from the people of the area, link here.

Leslie and Ted

We found a lookout off of a jeep road with a beautiful view of Nihau in the distance, which by the way, you can't see in this shot. You will just have to trust me. I rarely use HDR but this is from a new tool in the kit from Nik and I think it has a rather cool, fairy tale, R. Atkinson Fox quality to it.

I believe that Ted said that this flower was a native hibiscus ancestor, not easy to find blooming. Obviously the ants love it too.

I used to fancy myself something of a rare palm expert. I lent Shawn my Palm books years ago and truth is, there were many varieties I couldn't identify from memory. I saw the finest bismarckia nobilis specimen I have ever see, mauka side of Kilaeua and some lovely travelers palms. My father had a great travelers palm outside his townhouses in La Mesa but it was unfortunately stolen and you rarely see them on the mainland. Ravenala madagascariensis is technically not a palm but instead a member of the strelitzia (bird of paradise) family.

There are two principal regions in Kauai, the more tropical and wet north side, which includes Hanalei, Kilaeua and Princeville and the dryer south and west side, with little towns like Poipu, Koloa, Hanapepe and Waimea.

When I was young I tended to stay in the north but have found that I am now much more comfortable planting myself in the south. My island friends call anything north of Lihue Haolewood.

The truth is that there are no bad parts in a place like Kauai, it is all a matter of personal preference.

One of the nicest things that we did on our last trip to Kauai was to tour the ancient buddhist cemetery in Lawai, with its old stupa shrines embedded in a steep cliffside.

We were told that it is now closed to the public but found out that it will have occasional visiting hours. Click this link for the Lawai International Center. You want to visit it if you can.