ramblings of a Seattle travel, food and photography hound
During every trip to Honolulu, my wife and I have breakfast at Eggs ’n Things, an excuse to eat their Portuguese sausage with eggs and two scoops of rice. My wife ordered it (this time, she substituted home fried potatoes for the rice, which turned out to be a bad idea), while the Island Style... Continue Reading →
My wife and I wound up eating three times at Ken’s House of Pancakes, near Arnott’s Lodge where we were staying during our time in Hilo. It came up as a local favorite in a couple of sources. Our Mauna Kea tour guide also said it was his favorite place to get saimin. The fact... Continue Reading →
Hawaii grows many tropical fruits that we on the mainland don't commonly see: guava, mangosteen, jack fruit, starfruit, rambutan, lychee, longan. There are, of course, pineapples, coconuts and banana. We saw several varieties of mango at the Hilo Farmers Market. The one we purchased is called a rapozo, huge and heavy with juice. Slicing into it... Continue Reading →
Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden, located 8.5 miles north of Hilo, has tropical plants from all over the world, but few of their flowering specimens match the beauty and spectacle of the aptly named torch ginger (Etlingera eliator) for which one of the garden's paths is named, and one of many ginger plantings in the garden.
This guy might as well have a Cockney accent and sell insurance. Geckos are everywhere on the Big Island. Usually they're too skittish as photographic subjects, but this one let me creep ever closer until it too finally sped away.
Despite the prominently displayed prohibitory sign at the end of Coconut Island, attached to Queen Lili'uokalani Gardens by a foot bridge, the young-at-heart ignore it and jump into the water from the tower anyway. Seriously, no one is going to prevent people from doing what they've been doing for a long time.
On the occasion of her birthday, Hilo hosts the annual Lili'uokalani Celebration at the Queen Lili'uokalani Gardens. Aside from the hula dances and free concert performances, everyone looks forward to the orchid rain, the release of 15,000 flowers from a hovering helicopter.
One of nature's breathtaking anomalies happens almost every night at the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii's majestic volcanic peak. Because of an inversion layer that pushes the often prodigious cloud cover several thousand feet below the summit, I witnessed just before sunset Mauna Kea's giant triangular shadow being cast over the lid of the clouds to the... Continue Reading →
The ascent to the top of Mauna Kea shouldn’t be taken lightly. At an elevation of 13,796ft (4,205m), it is inadvisable to do it without first stopping at Onizuka Visitor Information Station to acclimate, about 30-45 minutes. The problem, of course, is that there is a paved road to the summit, providing too carefree and... Continue Reading →
The word is that Tex’s Drive-In has the best malasadas on the Big Island. We were only a short distance away from where we started on our guided tour down to the Waipio Valley. There’s more here than Portuguese donuts: breakfasts (including Hawaiian-style), burgers, musubi, salads, loco moco, and Hawaiian plates. Our Bavarian cream and... Continue Reading →
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