Kauai, Day 3

Cacao pods. They grow directly from the tree trunks; the tree "lets" no more than 25 or so to grow to fruition at a time.

Cacao bean, and nibs; these nibs are chocolate covered, which seems redundant.
Each pod is full of beans, and each bean is actually made up of many nibs.

These are papyrus plants!

Stripping the skin off of a papyrus stem...

...to get to the pulpy center, from which papyrus "paper" is made. It feels like slightly waxy packing peanuts.

Yellow Ginger blossoms. They're edible.

Red Ginger. I think.











EDIT: It was late, I was tired, and I didn't even think to include that this was Steelgrass Farm until I saw Dirtcrashrs's comment.  Ooops.

Welcome to Steelgrass, a multidisciplinary educational center for agriculture, music and the arts. On the agriculture side, we're a demonstration farm with extensive plantings of bamboo, cacao (the chocolate tree) and vanilla, working to develop Kauai's future as a center for sustainable, diversified agriculture by providing hands-on training, workshops, and educational tours for residents and visitors.


On the music side, we are home to the island's only state-of-the-art music recording studio, and we’ve created a concert and workshop series, Kauai's The Power of Music.

Plus they have their own timeshare thingy going.