October 30, 2007
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Friday, October 26
Last day on Kauai. Sigh. I went for a long hike along the coast. It was the same one I’d done on Tuesday and it was a lot of fun. The cliffs are really pretty:
There were people camping at the cliff I’d turned around at on Tuesday so I didn’t stay very long:
Bukake hair again!
Some of the many beautiful features carved into the sandstone and lava by the surf:
This is a sacred structure that signs told us to stay on the paths because of:
Thursday, October 25
Today we started off at the beach and then went to the Allerton Gardens which is part of the National Tropical Botanical Gardens. You can read more about it here. It was a royal property in the 19th century and then bought by a son of a Chicago banking family in the 30′s and the lush areas on either side of a freshwater stream were transformed into a beautiful series of formal “rooms”. Here are Sharon and I above the garden (which ends at the beach just like everything good in Kauai)
This is the wide freshwater stream that separates the formal garden from the informal, “Jungle” rooms:
Jeff and I on the bridge over that stream at the beach. Not a tank top again!
Sharon on the same bridge:
The cliffs above the garden:
Jeff with sculpture. The cottage in the background is the oldest on the property and used to be at the top of the cliffs and was lowered:
In front of the main house are sculptures representing the four seasons so that the Allertons could remember that they had them:
The surprisingly modest main house:
Palm trees on the jungle side of the stream:
A mermaid in the first of the formal rooms we saw:
This crazy tree with buttress like roots. Parts of Jurassic Park were filmed in this garden and apparently the trees played a prominent role:
A water feature in another of the formal rooms:
This is a “surprise” water feature that you can’t see until you’re on top of it:
Another formal room, another water feature:
This was the view as we were leaving the gardens:
This is a view down into the gardens we were just in:
And the view down to the coast. All the pink flowers are bougainvillea
The beach again from the top of the cliffs:
We headed back to the beach for another swim and then home for dinner. I was beat.
