Just south of Hilo lies the Panaʻewa Rainforest Zoo & Gardens. It's the only zoo in the United States located in a rainforest, it's free to enter, and in over a dozen years of living in Hilo I…have never visited. Recently there have been discussions about needing to start requiring an entrance fee, and now that I pass by it several times a week for my new job I decided to fix that oversight and visit for my birthday.
Despite the fact that it was pouring down rain today. Actually, even in spite of the rain I still had a fun time. I went with my friend Josh who had visited multiple times before but hadn't been in over a decade, and he was able to point out some of the changes and improvements. I managed to take some surprisingly good photos despite the rain, so have a few of them:
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| A bumblebee poison dart frog in its enclosure. |
It's not a very large zoo – it took us perhaps a bit under two hours to see everything – but I found that rather nice; I've visited much larger zoos that took all day to see everything, and it does get a little exhausting after a while. This was a refreshingly ‘bite-sized’ zoo.
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| A red iguana chilling in the rain. Despite appearances, it was awake and watching me. |
And it's not like it lacked for interesting animals, either. I'm only showing the better photos I managed to get, but it's got a neat selection of reptiles and amphibians, including several species of poison dart frogs and various chelonians. There are four native Hawaiian birds, the pueo (owl), ʻio (hawk), ʻalalā (crow) and nēnē (goose), multiple primates and a number of brightly-colored tropical birds, some peafowl who roam the park, tigers, emus, and even some binturongs and an alligator.
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| A pueo, the native Hawaiian owl. |
All in all it was a fun excursion, and with how close and easy to visit it is I'm a bit embarrassed I never visited sooner. I'm actually quite impressed with how well some of the photos I got with my Pixel 9 Pro came out despite the rain (and me juggling an umbrella in one hand), and I'm interested in coming back on a clearer day to spend some more time and see what else I can get.
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| A couple of emus in the rain. I knew better than to get my phone (and fingers) up close to them… |
And altogether that made for a fun and memorable 36th birthday. My birthday hasn't been on a weekend since 2020, and since I'm usually saving vacation time for trips it was nice to have a relaxing day off to myself this year. (Especially after spending a rather chillier and less pleasant rainy day in the field earlier this week.) A hui hou!
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