Hawaii Tropical Bioreserve and Garden

E Komo Mai! Welcome!

Just up the road from Koili Point is the Hawaii Tropical Bioreserve and Garden. About a mile away, it makes for a good walk down the Scenic Road. Even if you don't go into the garden, the 4 mile scenic road is one of the most picturesque winding roads on the island.

The founder and his wife, Dan and Pauline Lutkenhouse, settled just up the road from us in Onomea in about 1977 after seeing the area on vacation.

For about 17 years, Dan and an assistant basically created the Hawaii Tropical Bioreserve & Garden by hand -- deciding not to use bulldozers and even wheelbarrowing in rocks/dirt as needed. How amazing was that!

Our family likes going there finding the variety of flora to be amazing. From its website; "HTBG is a living classroom that attracts photographers, gardeners, botanists, scientists, and nature lovers from around the world. The bioreserve contains over 2,000 species, representing more than 125 families and 750 genera.

The 20-acre valley is a natural greenhouse, protected from buffeting trade winds and blessed with fertile volcanic soil. Throughout this garden valley, nature trails meander through a true tropical rain forest, crossing bubbling streams, passing several beautiful waterfalls, and curving around the exciting ocean vistas along the rugged Pacific coast."

If you like nature, don't want to drive a long distance to a great wonder, HTBG is a great place to visit.

Finally, I want to leave you with a Hawaiian Place Name and its translation. Each Hawaiian place name has a meaning. Today's place name is ' Onomea '. The best translation I have to date is 'something palatable' although could it be a combination of ' ono ' meaning 'delicious' and ' mea ' meaning 'reddish'? I have to believe there is more to the name but research on it is slim.

Aloha!

Check availability for both houses at: https://www.airbnb.com/p/oceanfront-ac-pool

If there are topics you would like to know more about in future blogs, kindly let me know at koilipoint@gmail.com. Mahalo! Len