I find it hard sometimes to take enough pictures of a place, because
it makes me sad that
I will never be able to correctly capture how incredibly, amazingly
beautiful a place is. That's
how I feel about Place of Refuge. Seriously, the only way to
see how gorgeous it is, is to go
there. But, of course, I took pictures anyway. This is
looking north at the area where supposedly
the kings of the native Hawaiians would hang out and live, and if a
peasant went there they were
in a wicked lot of trouble.
Left: two giant, life-size versions of the idol that Bobby, Peter and
Greg
Brady found on the beach in The Bradys' Hawaiian adventures.
Right: Standing next to the idols, looking across the bay. There
were lots of sea
turtles and fish in the water, as shown in pictures below.
Mmmmmmmmm. Palm trees. These were cool not only because
they grew in and around
a lava flow, but also because they bore real! live! coconuts!
More coconut palms. I went climbing around on the lava a lot.
Made me wish I'd worn
sneakers instead of flip-flops. It always rained in the afternoon
on the Kona coast, but it
never actually rained on me. I guess I'm just special like that.
So I was just standing there on the lava flow that sticks out like an
arm into the bay near Captain
Cook (the town next to Place of Refuge) and I look down into the water
and Oh My Goodness! a
TURTLE is right there next to me! I know they tell you to stay
at least 10-15 feet from the turtles
in the park because they don't want to scare them away, but this little
guy just came right up to me.
Isn't he cute? I named him Harry. Anyway, so we just sat
there looking at each other for a while,
and he let me take his picture.
I'm leaving this picture annoyingly big on this web page because I love
this picture. I was wandering around and
found this wicked awesome tree. I don't know what kind of tree
it is (if you know, please e-mail
me!) but I
just through it was sooooo pretty. And considering that I have
a pretty crappy little digital camera, this picture
came out really well. So yay.
UPDATE! Some nice person from Hawaii e-mailed me to tell
me this:
"If I am not mistaken, the tree that you have taken a picture of is
a Lauhala
Tree. People used the leaves for all sorts of things. They used to
weave
it together to form shelter from the rain amongst many other things.
As well as
baskets and bags which you may see people carrying around these days."
Thanks for the info!
This is another shot I took hoping that it might sort of give you an
idea of how amazing this place is.
It's Harry the sea turtle! I swear, he was totally following me
around this park.
So many turtles! I think the one about mid-picture is Harry, my
friend in the other
two turtle pictures, above. There were seriously just turtles
everywhere. And lots of
other fun fish that I'm sure, were I a marine scientist instead of
a physicist, I would
be able to identify.
Just one last picture of a turtle, I swear. Oh, and when I went
snorkeling (sans camera,
sadly) the turtles swim right up to you and alongside you. It
was really, really, really cool.