The McBryde Garden

     On Monday morning we headed back to Poipu Beach, our destination there a tour of the McBryde Garden, a 252- acre botanical garden and part of the National Tropical Botanical Garden, whose mission is to discover, study, and save tropical plants in the Hawaiian Islands and Florida.

    We stopped on the way for breakfast in Poipu Beach at a place called Joe’s On the Green located at the Kiahuna Country Club. 

The country club golf course.

    Joe's

    Tom and I each had our usual eggs-toast-potatoes breakfast and I ordered us a side of pancakes to split.  Last time I ate at Joe’s when I visited Kauai with Romaine we used to eat breakfast here and I fell in love with the assortment of pancake syrups they offer:  maple, coconut and lilikoi.  We tried all the different kinds on our pancakes.

The view from our table.

     After breakfast we headed for the McBryde Garden nearby where we arrived for the 10:30 self-guided tour. 

    Our bus driver and semi-tour guide was a sweet, funny young gal named Star.

    After we boarded the bus, Star drove us high up a steep, narrow, winding road,

The view below while ascending the road.

     ….to the McBryde Garden where we were free to visit the various plant collections.

    A breadfruit tree planted in honor of our First Lady:

Me in a "Jurassic Park" tree.

    One of our tour-mates was a friendly young high school science teacher from New Jersey.  I noticed that he was carrying on his back what looked like a small guitar case.  I asked him if he played the ukulele.  He said he did and offered to sing and play for us.  I told him I’d love that.  So he sang and played for us.  When he started  “Leaving On A Jet Plane”  Tom and I joined in the singing for a ukelele sing-along.

    The McBryde Garden was a thought-provoking place, especially a display chronicling the evolution of life.  Life on this planet began 450 million years ago.  Human beings arrived 200,000 years ago.  That means that in the 24-hour clock of existence, we’ve been a mere 4.5 seconds.

  After walking among the plants for an entrancing  four hours we headed back down the mountain and returned to Poipu Beach.

    All hot and sweaty, we found a beautiful little beach called  Kukui'ula Harbor (which our guidebook called "the most forgotten beach on the South Shore") and  which was protected by jetties on either side which made the waves gentle enough for a non-swimmer like me. 

View from the beach

After our refreshing dip in the ocean we headed west towards Barking Sands,
stopping at Waimea for dinner at place called  Kalapaki Joe’s.

  View of the ocean from our table.

    Tom had grilled Hibachi Mahi Mahi and I had ground steak smothered in grilled onions, mushrooms, and gravy with sides of rice and potato salad. It was all really good.

    After dinner we stopped at a little place in town called  Super Duper 2     owned by a lovely lady named Lisa Johnson who was glad to chat and answer our questions about the island. 

    I wanted to know about the movie industry on Kauai, since many Hollywood movies are filmed here, and I also wanted to know who was going to buy the 12 million-dollar homes that our tour guide Star pointed out to us were being built up the side of the mountain on the way to the McBryde.  Lisa told us that those homes would be bought up, as were all the other multi-million dollar homes that already exist on Kauai, by super-rich mainlanders who buy up the property then come here for vacation or to retire.
    Amazing.