Hawaiian Plantation Village

We have some friends visiting from the mainland, so we're doing the touristy thing around the island. Today we tried someplace new I had not been before, the Hawaiian Plantation Village.

I was pleasantly surprised. It's not very fancy or exciting, but it was worth the visit. It was really interesting to learn about the different waves of immigrants that came to Hawaii to work on the sugar plantations and what life was like for them. Our tour guide, Brenda, was very knowledgeable and friendly. Her explanations of life for immigrant workers on the sugar plantations really brought it to life much more than just wandering through some old buildings ever could.

We got to see dozens of varieties of plants, fruits, and flowers that the immigrants planted in their small plots around their homes. I think this tour is very complimentary to the Macadamia Nut Farm Tour on the windward side. We saw mangos, tangelos, papayas, macadamia nuts, taro, star fruit, cannon ball, and a few others that can't remember their name.

ES takes a photo of his macadamia nut.

Again, I won't inundate you with pictures of all the flowers we saw. The most interesting new flower I saw today was this coral plant. It really does look like coral.

The Chinese kitchen. That's quite a big wok isn't it?

Our tour guide, Brenda, explains the bread oven to the boys.

LW and ES check out the twin-seater out-house. The boys were grossed out by the concept of chamber pots and that it was the kids' job to empty out the chamber pots in the morning.

Tasting a pickle plant. It had the texture of an apple. It was very juicy and sour, but actually quite good.

Antique cash register in the general store.

I think the boys' favorite part of the tour was feeding the fish. There were dozens upon dozens of fish in this pond all fighting over the bread crumbs the boys threw into the water.

I don't know why, but this image just really caught my attention - something about the orange leaves behind the white picket fence, framed by the white doorframe in the black wall.

Anyway, this certainly isn't one of the biggest tourist attractions on the island, but it's a nice botanical garden and a good history lesson. It helped me to appreciate how blessed we are to be born in America and in this day and age where we take our freedoms for granted every day.