Hawaii - day 7

Friday, Dec 17: We make spam and eggs for breakfast.

First stop of the day is Lyon Arboretum.

It's a simulated tropical rain forest (the climate is real; the species are introduced from all over the world). This one is a walking tree, native to central and south America.

And I have no idea what the rest of these plants are!

This one (below) is covered in ants! Perhaps it is pollinated by them?

The arboretum contains a network of trails, some of which are quite bushy and hard to navigate. There's also a ton of mosquitoes and it was quite hot. Most of us were pretty miserable, so we didn't stray much from the main trail. It ends at Aihalualama Falls, which is not terribly exciting:

On the way back we saw the White-rumped Shama I posted about earlier. We also heard (and saw, but it was too far away for a decent photo) a wild cockatoo. He was just sitting high up in a canopy tree, screeching his head off. Incredibly loud, and it sound carries quite well.

Back at the parking lot, we saw a pickup truck with some interesting flowers stacked in the bed:

One of the buildings (probably a tool shed) was starting to grow epiphytes of its own:

After Lyon Arboretum, we walked down to the Manoa Falls trailhead. It's supposed to be an easier hike than the arboretum, and it started off with a wide, flat trail.

Right after I took this picture of the mushrooms, a young child came by. His father pointed out the mushrooms, the kid took note of them, and then proceeded to completely forget about their existence as he took a step forward (stepping squarely on the mushrooms) to get a closer look at something else that captured his attention. What.

Anyways, trees! The rain forest exhibit in the California Academy of Sciences does not do justice to these giant canopy trees.

We were particularly impressed by the space-filling efficiency of these trees.

After a short while, the trail started getting narrower, steeper, and harder to walk on.

At one point, were were walking on parallel planks of wood elevated a few inches off the ground. But still we persevered and ultimately got to the falls.

And that was that. The trail was pretty quiet; not a lot of people. There were these two runners that passed us twice (they wore bells to warn others of their arrival; the constant jangling must be terribly annoying) and maybe 10 small groups like us.

We were pretty tired after that, and started driving up to Oahu's North Shore. We stopped at a McDonald's in Wahiawa (saw lots of military personnel; maybe there's a base nearby?) and SC and I got food at the L&L Drive Inn next door.

We had a BBQ mixed plate and a lau lau plate. $16, but enough for 3 people and pretty good! Both plates came with macaroni salad; I guess it's a thing.

Afterwards, we continued on Kamehameha Highway (99) and stopped briefly at Dole Plantation to see if we could find any pineapples on sticks:

We wandered through the small pineapple varietal garden until we could accept the sight of pineapples springing out of the ground on stalks. Otherwise, we were thoroughly uninterested by the prospect of the World's Largest Maze, rather uncomfortable about the celebration of plantation life, and amused by this mass of koi:

We continued heading north along Kamehameha Highway...

... and stopped at Laniakea, a beach known for its sea turtles.

The surf (and/or volcanic origins?) had created a very interesting texture to the rocks at the water's edge.

There were lots of snails! A lot of them in dried-up dimples:

I imagine they used a simple gradient descent method and ended up stuck in these local minima isolated from the larger pools of water. As a population, though, this ends up as a sort of shotgun approach (like random-restart hill climbing), which can be pretty efficient. It just ends up poorly for some individuals.

Anyways, the water was clear and pretty...

... and the sea turtles were there, as promised, with an adoring crowd.

Volunteers put up red rope around the turtles and yell at anybody who ends up on the wrong side. They've also identified most of the turtles and will tell you about those individuals if you ask.

The turtles themselves seemed pretty content just to sit in one place and bask in the sun. I suppose this red rope crowd control method wouldn't work if they weren't so sedentary on land. Mouseover for the names given by the volunteers.

I also found these rocks interesting: the algae makes them look like moss-covered rocks on a riverbank, but they're in the ocean!

After Laniakea, we continued along Kamehamea Highway into Pupukea. We at Pupukea Beach Park. It was almost sunset, which gave the rocks a warm glow:

We hung around the tide pools and saw lots of fish (including some very small ones that didn't photograph well). Again, used this site for identifications.

After that, we continued north on Kamehamea Highway just a little bit further and made our final stop at 'Ehukai Beach Park, site of the 2010 Billabong Pipe Masters competition. There wasn't anything competition-related at the time, but there were still some surfers out there. We're told the waves today weren't particularly big, but this is the time of year with the biggest waves.