Day 4

Happy Birthday Honey!

He finally was able to open his gift. I am sure he thought the trip was his gift (a mini ipod), so *I think* he was absolutely surprised by it. He's a music fanatic, blessed with good music ears, so I am sure he will put this to good use. Unfortunately, he'd have to wait till we get back home to download the songs for his playlist. I've set up for a nice dinner at a popular restaurant (Pacific Cafe) in Lihue and also ordered a small ice cream cake from Coldstone.

There was a change in plans for today's activity. I tried to get a kayak rented again so that we can kayak the Hanalei river itself but there were no available kayaks until Wednesday. We opted to move this for Thursday instead since we wanted to stay with the same company that did the bay tour and go for the discount they were offering us.

Allerton Garden

So now, we are off to the Allerton gardens just a stone's throw away from where we are staying. We are set for some Kauai fauna and fauna education.

The garden is privately owned but they are allowing guided tours through the property. Our guide was a retired Navy man who volunteers his time to do the tours. The garden has all kinds of exotic plants from flowers to trees. Quite a lot of these plants are grown in the Philippines. The part of the land that we saw was only a tiny part of the immense land that the Allerton's owned. Their house is located near another secluded beach that I thought would be a dream to live in.

We learned that the plants in the island introduced and native were grown mostly in the last couple hundred years. Before that Kauai was just really red dirt and barren. These days its so lush with all kinds of plants.

What I love most about this island? There are no snakes. They do have lots of chickens that are protected by the island. There really aren't any predators for most of the animals here either. Even the chickens have none except if they happen to be roadkill (which is rare). The residents are very protective of their natural resources and their environment here, how I wish we had the same attitude back home in the Philippines. I know our country has so much more to offer than this smaller island but we choose to abuse ours by being irresponsible or unaccountable of our present actions and the total disregard of the consequence of such actions in the future of our environment. It's a sad reality when one realizes that the future of my homeland seem very bleak--if we just have no respect for any of God's gift.

I don't know why I love trees, they just fascinate me. I guess it's because you can tell they have the history to tell. I bet a number of people have seen this tree--if you've seen the movie, Jurassic Park, it's the scene where the dinosaur eggs were discovered

It is also unbelievable that I neglect to realize that not everyone has seen a banana tree. We've toured through different parts of the garden with exotic plants but I was surprised that the one thing that the people from our tour group was mostly interested was this plant. Suddenly, they started taking pictures of the fruit bearing tree, I was just taken aback by it.

Had to retire early so that we'll be rested enough to tackle the long trek up the mountain tomorrow.

Copyright 2004 Wandertrekker