Kilauea Lighthouse and the Linahuli Gardens

Thursday, the 7th was a plan to get to see the Kilauea Lighthouse and wildlife sanctuary and to go and walk the Limahuli Botanical Gardens. Both required reservations and some exact timing with those reservations. The Kilauea reservations were done on the half hour, and you were expected to take no more than forty five minutes on the site, and that was stated on the ticket and website. The gardens suggested that one plan for at least an hour and a half on the grounds, and Google maps said that getting there could take everywhere from an hour and a half to forty minutes, depending on the construction that was along the way. 

So our plans got a bit more extensive to make sure everything worked. Our Lighthouse reservation was for 10:30 and our Garden reservation was for 2:00 to give us plenty of time to have lunch and get where we needed to go. We also made a lot of possible plans for how to fill that time if the travel conditions were good, given what we'd seen on the scouting trip, there was both plenty we could do and plenty of possibilities for delays. 

The first surprise was the Keitt mangos. They were absolutely amazing. No strings at all, no fibers, and the skin was tough enough that just slicing the cheeks off, cutting them and turning it inside out was preparation enough. They were so sweet, honey sweet. and tender to eat. A spoon was plenty to get them off to eat. 

So good. And we had two more. 

The drive out to the Lighthouse was so uneventful we were there more than half an hour early. So we just sat in the outside parking lot for a while until it was nearly our time to go in, and then we joined the line down from the gate to the ranger's gate. The lady at the entry was very practiced at asking for your reservation, and it was obvious she was really used to sending people back who didn't have them, and taking no nonsense for it. 

It was worth all the trouble. The view from the lighthouse was spectacular in in all directions, and along the path at the point, there were birds in all directions, my favorite ones were the dagger winged Tropicbirds, with long red or white tails. They would catch the wind and just levitate from below the cliff to the clouds in a single clean sweep. 

The burrowing birds were all over the place, along with three kinds of cardinals. So many of the birds lived on the cliffs, and the park had lots of sections blocked off to people so that they wouldn't step unknowingly on some bird's burrow.

One nest had been made behind a wall bordering the main path out to the lighthouse, and people were crowding around to watch the mom dragging in fish to feed the very very eager chicks.  There were also nene all over the lawn by the lighthouse itself. I guess that like Canadian geese, Nene (the Hawaiian state bird) like lawn grass. 

Our time passed really quickly. At about the forty five minute mark, I went to the gift store and bought quite a few very nice postcards along with a few stickers that I will like having on my journal and water bottle. I definitely like decorating my water bottle with stickers from where we've been.

From there we headed towards trying to find some lunch. So we headed over to Hanalei and started to look around for food. I was sorely tempted to go back to the poke shop, but John found something cool to try. 

African Moqueca, fish cooked in a coconut curry sauce with vegetables, ground yucca flour, a mashed yucca, and a lovely little salad along with a side of their slow cooked beans made for a great shared lunch with my water. 

Then there was the Holey Grail, a local chain that makes taro donuts. John got a lilikoi one, gently glazed with a passionfruit glaze with the seeds still in it. I got a black sesame one with a lovely plank of banana brulee. It was a lovely lunch, especially with a little of their habanero-based hot sauce. Like my ghost chile pepper touched Japanese curry, it used a very hot pepper to make a fruity, lovely spicy sauce that didn't blow anyone's head off. My curry is tasty with the very forward and not lingering heat of a ghost pepper, but not in such huge amounts that it overwhelms everything else. I really liked it.

The donuts were super tasty and the "Quest Over" logo on the front of the box just made my day. I love the whole mythology riff they were doing and they did it and the donuts well. As each one is fried to order and then dressed in its frills as needed. The donut itself was tender, crisp, and not oily at all. The black sesame powder was applied with a little too much sugar for me, but that isn't hard. John's was tart and tasty. 

We still had a lot of time, so we went and walked Hanalei Bay and the dock that ended in a roofed platform. Half the beach was lovely for swimming, and half had huge waves, and a chunk in between was clearly and brightly labelled as NO SWIMMING/RIP CURRENTS.  It was interesting to have just a single section of that between two sections that had the most people we've seen on a beach on this island. Lots of folks hanging out with umbrellas, towels, and bunches of kids. The waves here were very calm because of the Bay. 

When it was time we headed to Limahuli Gardens. When we got there, we were told, in no uncertain terms, to clean our shoes at the shoe sterilization station as there were a couple of endangered species that were being killed all over the islands by a fungus that clings to shoes. 

Then were were greeted by these lovelies, who were hanging out on a banana heart. We've never seen geckos so bright, but given the greenery of this place, they were in perfect camo for most of what they'd be traveling on. But the brightness was startling against the colors of the heart. 

So the Limahuli Gardens are built on the grounds of the first Polynesian settlement on the island, and it preserves and has rebuilt the terraced taro fields. It includes the precept of only taking a third of any water source for any field, and then redirecting the water down to the next field. One of the mountain streams runs right by it all. Mt Makana looms over the whole valley. It's a mountain that's better known to Westerners as "Bali Hai", most popularly referred to in the musical South Pacific. 

The gardens are also honeycombed by walls of native rock. The walls at the back of the valley are the sacred stones that are linked to the locals' ancestors, and should not be messed with, and the walls vary in age from those rebuilt recently to those that are over 1200 years old. It's amazing. 

The plants were a mix of modern and ancient plants native to the island. Many were food plants that were brought by the Polynesians, which are considered "native" now, even though they were brought by humans to the island: including ginger, hibiscus, coconut palms, taro, and others. They've been here long enough that they've evolved to fit the local climate. There's also one section that used to be filled with invasive species, but they've wisely dug all of those out, and are refilling it with native plants again. It's kind of cool to see all the plants and get to learn what they were used for. It was kind of cool to learn that bird of paradise was definitely an import that was just brought for decoration by modern landscapers. It's not native, but there are native orange hibiscus! I loved that. 

There were twenty thousand treasures throughout, and I'm grateful that John matches my curiosity and ability to just wonder at everything. We just wandered the whole grounds, took the self-guided tour and enjoyed every bit of it. Everything from the historical lessons, the sound of the water in the streams, the formation of the terraces, and all the uses for all the plants that lived there. There were a few patches of plants that can only be found here, including a patch of ten plants that are the very last of their kind. Cuttings have been taken from all the ten plants to allow them to propagate and still have enough diversity to keep going. 

Finding some way to keep things going. The cashier to start was white, but as we left, a local cashier was there, and it was good to hear her tell a young couple the best way to find a real locally made tiki before they left to go back home to Arizona. 

We went back to Ha'ena Beach, because I'd taken a rock the other day and wanted to return it. So we did that, and then watched the surfers there. There's a life guard station there that solely tells swimmers they're not allowed there, and they watch all the surfers there to make sure they don't die. The surf there was at least 12 feet tall, and it was nerve wracking to watch after being so used to San Diego surf, which is nothing. These huge waves so close to the sand felt...menacing. I kept wandering away from the water as I watched the waves in an unconscious reaction to how big they were and being absolutely sure they would sweep me away. They didn't. Obviously, but it felt so odd to me as I watched myself react to what I was really expecting to happen, but which never did. 

I drove us home. The Malibu had a Chevy seat, and the passenger seat was killing my neck and low back. The driver's seat has a lumbar support that made a good difference. And once we were home, we headed to Chicken In A Barrel, a shack of a BBQ place. They had a combo, which had a little bit of everything, but they were low on the beef, so the owner asked if it would be okay to sub in a little more chicken. 

It was a good thing he did, too. The only thing really worth eating on that plate was the chicken, which was succulent. It was tender, juicy, smoky, and lovely in every way. Even the skin, which is usually a waste on BBQ chickens, was actually well rendered and tasty. The Hawaiian style BBQ sauce was quite nice with it. The beef, pork, chili beans, and coleslaw were all kind of meh, but that chicken was amazing. 

Once full we headed back home and to sleep. It was another 20,000 step day and I was pretty sore from it all, so I had a kind of rough night, and resolved to fix it as soon as I could.