2015/03 Hawaii trip - Rainforest cottage in Keaau |
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We had a 15 mile drive to Keaau on a busy four-lane highway and then a dark and bumpy search through the rain forest for the gate and driveway to our cottage. The owners, Connie and Andrew, were off Kona-side, so we were met by their helpers, Michelle and Terry, a retired couple from Seattle, who live next door. They gave us a comprehensive lesson in how everything worked, most of which we promptly forgot, having been up for over twenty hours.
The cottage was much nicer than I’d expected. It is only a few years old, with modern kitchen and bathroom and one bedroom. The living room appears to have large windows but they only have screens, no glass. There is no heating or air conditioning. Water comes from a large tank, fed by the roof’s gutter system.
The nights were noisy, partly because of the rain, but mostly because of the coqui frogs, tiny guys with powerful lungs. They are recent immigrants from Puerto Rico and there are campaigns to eradicate them, but we rather liked the sound of hundreds of them calling out “coqui?” We didn’t see the coquis but we did spot some cane toads, probably imported to control the cane beetle, the same as in Australia.
Wednesday February 25th
The frogs shut down at dawn and the birds take over, with more varied calls. We could now see that we were surrounded by flowering shrubs with dense forest behind. Walking through the forest wasn’t really feasible without a machete. There are few nasties in the forest though, some mosquitoes and poisonous centipedes, but no snakes or poisonous spiders.
Humidity is obviously a problem in a rain forest, so the cottage’s shower is outside, just off the deck. On rainy mornings we had a hot/cold mix, but the biggest surprise was the snails. These are giant African tree snails, originally imported as a delicacy. It was always a good idea to move them off the shower floor as you’d hate to crunch one of them by accident.
This montage shows just a few of the flowers that surrounded the cottage. The garden would have been a great place to spend an afternoon just relaxing, but that’s not our style when on a trip, and we were rarely there in daylight. Birds included a pair of cardinals, just like the ones we used to see in the snows of Minnesota.