Faaroa Botanical Garden

We did not get to return by boat to this jewel of the country this season, but we did drive to it. We've beebn coming here for many years, since its opening, and we've seen the results of the incredible work that the community has done here. With vastly improve signage (Polynesian, French, English), we learned that this large bay was the agricultural center of the entire island. Walk with us.

The new sign for the botanical garden.

Everyone knows that this is a banana tree, but it's still a fascinating tree, propagating by root only.

Two enormous objects in this photo: Bill and a huge fan leaf.

This is a Polynesia Chestnut. The roots are reminescent of a Cypress: long and exceedingly thin.

Lovely Conni strides toward me as we descend toward the river. I took the photo to show the extreme thinness of the flower.

Lovely Conni peers through the foliage at me.

We have no idea what this plant is, but the very curly leaves were interesting. Few plants have identification signs, unfortunately.

We both think that these enormous leaves are lovely. Again, no idea what they are. And they are very large.

My large hand for scale, showing the size of these huge leaves. When mature, the leaves splits along the folds into tatters, like the palm leaf.

These are the same leaf split as mature plants.

This is the central field, kept relatively clear. It's easy to see that the rich and deep volcanic soil and plentiful water made this place an agricultural paradise.

This is the same field with a focus on the more open area. What a view!

This is another view of the beautiful field.

This is the kind of flower color that gave rise to the Polynesian love of bright colors.

What color! As I've said, I never enjoyed flowers prior to seeing the tropics.

No idea what the name is, but the colors and intricacy is stunning to me.

Not just a gorgeous shape, but that color...just crazy.

From the photo above, this is looking downward into the "cups" of the petals. It's a little world in there.

Beautiful, no name.

I shot this photo looking downward into the flower, to show how 3-D they are.

Neon orange and delicate...

Again, an otherworldly beauty and color.

Pink and yellow set against a rich green...you couldn't hallucinate this.

They grow downward, too.

This was a small grove of those beautiful flowers.

Now I understand what "verdant" means.

Light struggles to permeate this dense growth.

In most visits, we have Wings on an anchor at the head of Fa'aroa Bay, and make our way to this dock on a real jungle river. It's not a long distance, but there's shallow water, logs, and such that make it an hour-long trip.

This is a Pandanas tree, source of roofing, baskets, and mats for thousands of years.

A lovely papaya tree, ready to harvest.

A group departed the park via the river and an enterprising local sold them some opened coconuts.

One of the many streams that flow through the garden.

Nope, no idea what it is. Interesting, though.

Same...odd, unknown

A spider web! It had just rained and enough water waas on the web to outline it. See the spider?