On a recent foray into Hawi to get photos for last week’s Sunday Stills challenge (here), I took these photos of the Kohala Welcome Center. This is the place to get information about North Kohala for visitors en route to Kapaau and Pololu, which marks the end of the highway.
On this particular evening, the welcome center was illuminated by its Christmas display and a full moon, which also highlighted the palm trees that tower over that location.
These quite large fish are commonly seen hanging in the water in small groups. When approached they will ease away without any apparent effort so that it’s difficult to get close enough for a good photo.
This one, however, displayed the same kind of curiosity chubs tend to have. It went by two or three times, clearly checking out the large, ungainly creature splashing around in the water, before deciding I wasn’t very interesting and moving away into deeper water.
I saw this Coast Guard ship outside Kawaihae harbor. Here, it was hauling out one of the buoys marking the entrance to the harbor for inspection and maintenance. Buoys like this are commonly seen in coastal areas, in the vicinity of ports. They help guide ships into harbor, marking safe, deep channels or shoals to be avoided.
From shore, these buoys look like little green and red floats, but anyone who has ever been in a small boat being swept toward a buoy by a surging current knows better. Up close, they’re a big chunk of metal that you run into at your peril. In the photo to the right, the figure next to the buoy being hauled aboard gives some idea of the scale.
I was taken by these real estate ads and their neon glow that gave the display a precise, but otherworldly look.
This phalaenopsis orchid comes from Southeast Asia. This one was at Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden. For more information about Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden, go to htbg.com.
This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Holiday Decor.’ See more offerings here.
This theme forced me outside after dark, something of a rarity these days. As usual, when I walked into Hawi, I thought, ‘I should do this more often.’
Here are a couple of the downtown buildings illuminated for the season. In truth, this was pretty much it for holiday trappings, but it’s still a good deal more than at my house!
Also posted, belatedly, in response to the last Friendly Friday challenge theme of 2019, ‘Christmas Preparations.’ See more responses here.
Not long after I moved to Hawaii I was lucky enough to swim with a large pod of dolphins. They hung around the bay where I was for most of the day and, when I was in the water, swam around me with some curiosity. Back then I didn’t have a waterproof camera so didn’t get any photos.
Since then, I’ve seen dolphins from shore, but never got to swim with them again until recently. Then I encountered them twice within a couple of weeks. The first time I caught the tail end of a pod heading south along the coast. The second time I saw them a bit earlier, also heading south at speed and with purpose.
The water was murky so I didn’t get good photos, but since this is the first in-the-water photo of any kind that I’ve got of dolphins, I thought I’d post it anyway. Even though the pod passed without interacting with me, it was still a great moment to see them whizzing by with such grace and power.
I saw this passion vine butterfly resting one windy late-afternoon. It didn’t seem in any rush to head off into the wind again so I got some decent photos. What I like about the photos is that I was close enough to get clear images of the butterfly’s labial palps, the white appendages sticking up on either side of the proboscis. These palps are covered with hairs that are believed to allow the butterfly to sense whether something is edible or not.
Graham's Island 