Chinatown, Foster Botanical Garden, Sandy Beach, Dinner with Maria’s Cousin
Kai slept all the way until 6AM this morning, so we’re making slow but steady progress. Maybe by the time we leave he’ll finally fully adjust to the local time :-(. We headed out on an early bus to Chinatown. I don’t have any pictures because it was a rather dirty, unimpressive Chinatown. It actually wasn’t all that bad, but if you’ve been to a Chinatown in any of the major cities in the lower 48, this one is unremarkable. The one notable thing was that it seemed to have more than the usual number of Vietnamese and Filipino shops as well. We had a Filipino breakfast while we were there, which was greasy but good.
From there we walked to the Foster Botanical Garden, which is on the northern outskirts of Chinatown. It’s 13 acres, and over the past 140 years they’ve gathered a wide variety of trees and plants from around the world. I took up gardening when we lived in San Mateo, and I acquired a real interest in this sort of thing, which is why this was a “must see” for me on this trip. The pictures pretty much tell the story, except for the Baobab tree and its exceptional girth. It’s not a pretty tree, but I think it wins the prize for Widest Variety of Uses: “…prized for its many products: mucilage, gum, fiber for rope, paper and cloth. Bark and oil from the seeds have medicinal properties. In some parts of Africa the trees are worshipped by the natives who bury their dead in the oversized trunks. Old hollow trunks are sometimes used as houses, prisons, and water reservoirs” (that’s from the Garden’s pamphelt).
Our plan was to head to the Bishop Museum (Hawaii’s premier historical museum), but Maria wasn’t feeling well, so she and Kai returned to the condo for a rest, and I took a shuttle bus to the airport so I could rent a car for our remaining time in Hawaii. We had done well with the buses so far, but we had a few places left we wanted to see which were easier to visit by car. So we saved them up for our last 24 hours. I lucked out and ended up with a PT Cruiser even though I only signed up for an economy car (I guess it’s all they had left).
By the time I returned Maria was feeling better, so we headed to Sandy Beach for the afternoon (it’s on the Windward coast, just north of where we went with Jen yesterday). It’s a favortie spot for bodyboarders, and it made me wish I had brought my board with me. I used to bodyboard competitively when I was in high school, although it’s a hobby I gave up after leaving college in Santa Cruz for grad school in DC. It was an insane break - the waves weren’t particularly huge, but as you can see in the picture, they break right on the sand. Lacking a board, I did a little body surfing, and learned the hard way that the trick was to catch the wave almost completely parallel (like you would with a board, but not like you normally would body surfing). That way it’s possible to pull out through the back before getting smashed into the sand. Maria didn’t see what the big deal was until she decided to wade in just a few feet, and ended up getting knocked off her feet a couple times.
We raced back from the beach for dinner with Maria’s cousin Takateru, as we were running late. He’s Maria’s great uncle’s son, which I think makes him her 2nd cousin. He’s been living and working in Honolulu for about a year now, and doesn’t plan on leaving - ever (he’s 67, so he’s close to retirement). He took us to this really good Japanese restaurant about a mile outside of Waikiki, called Momomomo. After dinner we made a quick stop at his daughter’s house, where he’s living. She has a 5 year old son, so he and Kai played for a short time. It was getting late so we didn’t visit for long. This is the one day that really tapped me out - I went right to sleep after we got back to the condo (I think it was the bodysurfing!).
