In the background, Mauna Kea is around one million years old.
In the middle, Pu’ukohola Heiau dates back to 1790, when King Kamehameha built it to fulfill a prophecy that an ongoing war would end and he would rule all the Hawaiian islands.
And in the foreground is a container that is clearly young!
A Gold Dust Day Gecko drinks from a Bird of Paradise flower.
The idea of The Numbers Game is to enter a number into the search bar of your computer and then post a selection of the photos that turn up. This week’s number is 156. Captions are on the photos. You can see more responses here.
A Papaya tree.A Praying Mantis reflecting on a van.Dark and light in a macadamia nut orchard.A sailboat passing Kohanaiki Beach Park.A windsurfer off Kawaihae.Sunset and palm trees at Hapuna.
A Giant Porcupinefish waits patiently while a Hawaiian Cleaner Wrasse gets to work. Cleaner wrasses remove dead tissue, parasites and mucus from fish of all sizes that visit their cleaning stations. Watch out for those spines!
The main road on the island’s Hāmākua Coast traverses land corrugated by river gullies. For the wider gullies, the road winds down one side and up the other. But gullies that are narrower and steep sided are spanned by bridges. Several of these bridges started life supporting the railroad that ran along this coast. When that closed, they were repurposed as highway bridges. This was back in 1953, which means they’re old and suffering under the demands of modern traffic.
The bridge over Kolekole Gulch has been getting some renovations that were recently completed. Below the bridge is Kolekole Gulch Park, which has also been recently renovated, except for one small detail. One issue at the park has yet to be dealt with, and that’s lead contamination in the soil. The lead comes from the bridge, the result of 50 years of lead paint being applied, and then flaking off it.
It’s been more than 7 years since the problem was identified, but not much has been done, except for fencing off some of the worst areas and not allowing camping at the park. In the meantime, you can walk on the grass, but don’t eat the soil!