Wednesday, 7 March, on our own in Hilo

Instead of a guided tour, it was a trip to Hilo that Mark had laid out beforehand. Hilo is on the rainy side of the Big Island, quite different from our home base of Waikoloa on the dry side. There in the environs of Hilo you find true tropical lushness, more like what a mainlander would expect.

Our aim was to spend a bit of time at the Hilo Farmers’ Market, but before we could do that, we must eat. We had, after all, gotten off to a fairly late start, so after parking off the main drag of Kamehameha Avenue, we wandered along the street to find a likely-looking restaurant, and you see Mark sitting at our table in the left-hand picture to the right (big image, small). The food was perfectly acceptable, and after finishing our meal, we walked a little farther to the Farmers’ Market.

‘Akaka Falls

One of my hopes was to find some soursop, to demonstrate to Mark how delicious they can be. I saw some in a carton, but they were nowhere near ripe; and those were the only ones I saw at all. We did walk by the various kinds of musubi that you see at the top of this page, but I was not tempted (larger image). The greatest part of the Market was devoted not to food but to crafts, and although there were some stalls with nice things in them, again it was the case that I wasn‘t tempted. But you can see what the Market looks like in the right-hand thumbnail to the right (big image, small).

My next photography was at ‘Akaka Falls State Park, even though we actually stopped first in Hilo at the Pacific Tsunami Museum right in town. The falls were spectacular, and the vegetation along the trail was fascinating.

In the top left-hand image in the block to the left, you see the distant view of the falls from the beginning of the trail (big image, small), and to the right of that, Mark is starting off ahead of me already (big image, small), probably because I had been fiddling with my camera or peering too long at the greenery. Bottom row, a couple of pictures of the trail taken with my super-wide-angle lens (left, big image, small; right, big image, small).

Continuing along the trail, I got so engrossed in the plant life that Mark claims he lost track of me for over a half-hour, while he moved forward at a more reasonable pace.

But there were so many things to see and to take pictures of! In the block to the right, left column: top, yet another fern (big image, small), and below that the strange quilted leaf (big image, small) that looks exactly like a plant we saw in Costa Rica. For some reason, I don’t seem to have taken a picture of it there, but Mark’s page identifies it as Clidemia hirta, which is native to Central America, and invasive in Hawai‘i. Anyway, bottom of that column is one more fern (big image, small). In the right hand column, two shots of bamboo (upper: big image, small; lower: big image, small). I’m very fond of the upper picture, and it’s the one I used for the background for all these pages.

Farther along the path, there were so many things to see, like the vine with the bronzy leaves in the upper row, left, of the block to the left (big image, small), or, in the right thumbnail in that row, the invasive but still attractive “shoebutton”, Ardisia elliptica, (big image, small). In the lower row to the left, two pictures of deep forest (left: big image, small; middle: big image, small) and one of Mark stopping briefly by a grove of Banyan trees (big image, small).

We eventually drove back to Waikoloa Beach where we had an unremarkable dinner, and then went back to or room to get a good sleep in preparation for our next excursion.