Next up was the tropical botanical garden in Onomea Bay. Now Hawaii has some pretty fantastic botanical gardens, but this one takes the cake so to speak. The garden started as a 17-acre plot of land that was purchased in the 1970s by a family that slowly transformed it into their own version of the garden of Eden, preserving the natural beauty as much as possible, and creating trails with a machete through the (already beautiful and lush) existing vegetation to reveal a tiered waterfall, and adding an insane collection of orchids and other tropical plants to the mix (everything grows in Hawaii!). The trails eventually lead to a rugged beach of black rocks which is beautiful in its own right. I could have spent countless hours there exploring and marveling at all the plants. So much beauty!
Afterwards, we stopped at Papa’aloa Country Store and Cafe for a late lunch based on the recommendation of our friends. I liked the little store that was selling a lot of local food items, but our lunch of kalua pork tacos was quite underwhelming, and my lilikoi lychee drink a poor choice unless you love sugar and artificial flavors. The ginger beer was a bit better.
On the way home we drove down to Laupahoehoe Point, a village located at the end of a ravine that was tragically obliterated during a tsunami in 1946. That place is beautiful but has a very eerie vibe to it. They decided to not reconstruct the village after the tsunami, unlike Hilo, which was rebuilt post tsunami.
One more stop at Rebecca’s to restock on produce, and we were back home. That night we weren’t very hungry and were happy to snack on leftover poke and fruit.
