Wimea Gardens, O'ahu

This years travels have brought me to Hawaii.  My good friend, Irene, and I teamed up for the first part of my journey, deciding on Hawaii because of it's offerings for her--hiking and seafood, and for me--nature and scuba diving.  This is not Irene's first visit to the islands, so we opted on O'ahu, since she had seen Kauai and The Big Island on previous trips.

We have now been here for about 4 days.  We have hiked, snorkeled, sunbathed, visited local gardens, swam, and eaten our fill of tropical fruit,... well, almost.  We have 6 more days to do that, if it's even possible!

Today's post is about some of the things I saw when we explored Waimea Valley.  The culmination of this site is a waterfall and natural pool for swimming.  It's nice, but a bit of a tourist trap; even on a quiet day it was packed.  It was nice to take a quick dip and cool off., but my favorite part of the visit was the gardens.

For 3/4 of a mile, there are looping pathways lined with different tropical species of plants.  I spent a couple hours exploring here, finding lots of interesting plants and flowers.  Sadly, I'm not a very good student of arboretums, since I didn't read the names of each plant.  Ha!  Oops!  I was too busy looking for beautiful things!

I was particularly drawn to the few varieties of water lilies.  Here are some of my favorite shots:

Just as I was about to leave, I happened to spot movement on these tree blossoms.  It caught my attention, and I looked more closely.  Can you see what I saw?

At the very top there is a small, young gecko, only about 2" long.  I staked him out for the next 45 minutes or more...  who knows how long it was.  (When I get in the zone, time just stands still.  It's like that when I'm photographing and when I'm drawing.  I start, and before you know it, hours have passed).

So I stalked this little guy for some time, hoping to catch him at JUST the right moment.  But geckos, as I'm sure you can imagine, move really fast!  Just as I would frame the picture just right and get all the right settings, and focus, hop! he'd be in another spot.  Being so small, and so well camouflaged made it even harder!  I could barely find him each time he jumped out of my frame.  I ended up getting quite a few pictures of him that I like.  I hope you enjoy!

More to come soon! If you happen to know what any of the pictured things are, please feel free to post!  Thanks for reading!