Amazing Hawaii


We are now sipping fruit smoothies under a Hawaiian sky after spending a couple of hours wandering through the tropical paradise that is the Hawaiian Tropical Garden.  Oh no! Not another orchid photograph. They are though, very beautiful. 

We are sharing a Papaya Paradise (papaya, banana, coconut and pineapple) and an Onomea Surprise (papaya, banana, orange and apple) both blended to perfection. 

This is the Hawaii we both imagined. On the way here we stopped at a quite breathtaking ocean view to be adopted almost immediately by a group of locals and ageing hippies happy to offer us their 'alternative' smoking material as we all watched the whales surfacing and splashing a mile or so off shore.  They're surprisingly difficult to photograph.

This whole area of the Pacific is where Humpback whales come to breed - to hump even! - and raise their young before returning north to Alaska for the winter. 

Then we followed a route suggested by our hosts at the B&B. This turned out to be a truly remarkable and very long dirt track through the heart of a rain forest on the east coast of the island. After a seemingly endless drive through potholes, we returned to civilisation. Almost as remarkable as the drive itself was the fact that as we drove through the rain forest, we passed new and obviously quite luxurious new homes.  Why would anybody choose to live here?  It's miles from anywhere or anything. Come to think of it.....why would anyone choose to live in Hawaii?  It seems very remote from the rest of the world and apart from the hippie communities - old hippies don't die, they come to Puna - it's all very 'middle America'.  Whatever Haawaiian culture existed before Americanification has long disappeared.   

  

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