Interessanter Ort
Hawaii Tropical Botanical Gardens are out favorite botanical gardens on the Big Island. In the gardens you can see over 2000 different species of plants and trees and a visit here is a must-do for everyone with green fingers!
Directions: To get to the gardens turn makai (towards the ocean) between mile marker 7 and 8 on Hwy 19 coming fron Hilo, onto the scenic drive in the direction of Onomea Bay. Continue for 1.75 miles to reach the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Gardens.
The hike: there is no real hiking needed here, more a slow meandering around the gardens for a few hours. The self-guided tour is just over one mile long (round trip) and takes about 1.5 to 2 hours. If you would want to go on a longer hike you can take the 2.5 miles (round trip) donkey trail down to Onomea Bay and Turtle Cove whose trailhead is just outside the gardens.
As an added extra, to get to these gardens you have to take one of the most scenic drives of the Big Island!
Admission to the gardens: Take note, admission to the gardens is not free. The fee for one day is $20 for adults and $5 for children ages 6 to 16. Children under 6 are free (2019 rates). The gardens are opened daily between 9 am and 5 pm, but the latest admission is at 4 pm.
You receive a trail guide when you purchase your ticket to the gardens. Try not to miss the bird aviary and the seascapes at the lower end of the gardens. Take some time to sit down and take in the sights, smells, and sounds at different places to get immersed in this peaceful place.
This is by far our favorite botanical garden on the island
The Onomea falls are located inside our favorite botanical garden on the Big Island: the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Gardens.
Interessanter Ort
Akaka Falls State Park
Interessanter Ort
Turn off to Akaka Falls State Park here, or in the next Village
we decided to do the short warm-up ride to Akaka Falls State Park we'd planned for the following morning; the notoriously rainy local weather had broken, pouring sun onto steamy Hilo green. The ride caused me, the spectacularly less fit, to believe that cycling would now kill me.
It began innocently in Hilo with a flat few miles on Highway 19, then a right along Scenic Drive at about mile 5. What a great introduction to the island this drive is, as if you've pedaled back in time 30 years, onto an old country-coastal byway. You pass simple, Old Hawaii houses, deserted craft galleries and the occasional big estate. The road is quiet and lovely, pinched here and there by old stone one-lane bridges, with lots of gentle ups and downs and blind turns. The first stretch is mostly in woods, and the pavement is perfumed and slick here and there with fallen guava. We stopped on a bridge to watch kids jump 30 feet into a roiling cauldron of water. Soon the road moved into open land, an almost English-countryside view but for the palm trees. Hills gently sloped down to the brazen blue water.
You rejoin Highway 19 for a couple of busy miles until the left turn to a road that heads up to Akaka Falls. This is where the trouble began. On my jet-lagged and dehydrated body, the half hour of climbing turned out to be a bit more than a warm-up. There is something about steamy air that can induce a sensation of not being able to breathe, even as you're sucking it in.
Akaka Falls consists of a needle-thin cascade dropping several hundred feet against a distant green-black cliff; it's worth the brief walk in, on the paved path, for the view, but you need one person to watch the bikes in the parking lot.
The ride back begins with a spectacular plummet toward that crazily blue sea, then hooks back to the Old Onomea Road with a stop advised at the What's Shakin' smoothie stand, which served the best smoothie we encountered on the Big Island. A detour is also advised at the Alea Cemetery, on Highway 19 near town, which is ruled by a solemn banyan and divided into ethnic and religious sections: Mormons here, Japanese there, Chinese there, a portrait in death of a town much more casually integrated in life
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