Tuesday, June 16, 2026 // Day 9
Our first tour for this morning was set for 9AM and located just up the street! We were going to take a tour of Maui Dragonfruit Farm and have a fruit tasting. Our tour guide, Erin, was fabulous - I didn’t know that I knew so little about fruit and the processes used to grow it!
Maui Dragon Fruit Farm was originally started for a woman with diabetes. Dragonfruit is the best fruit for people with diabetes because it is good for your blood sugar and your cholesterol (I’m not a doctor…don’t follow me for medical advice!) The dragonfruit won’t be ready to harvest for another month, but we did get to look at some of the dragonfruit plants. I learned that a dragonfruit plant is actually a cactus. The flower on the cactus that eventually becomes a dragonfruit blooms for only 12 hours one time, and it happens at night. That is because the animals that pollinate the dragonfruit are bats. Because there are no bats on this part of the island, the workers have to self-pollinate the dragonfruit plants by coming outside at night with a headlamp and make up brush. The flower will eventually fall off and the base will swell up, becoming a fully formed dragonfruit in 5-6 weeks.
From the farm we could see the island of Lana’i. Lana’i is where the Dole Pineapple Plantation was originally before it moved to O’ahu. The reason it had to move is because pineapples are nutritrient suckers and they had leached up all the nutrients in the soil of Lana’i. Larry Ellison, a tech billionaire, now owns 98% of Lana’i for $300 million ten-ish(?) years ago.
We could also see the island of Kaho’olawe. This Hawaiian island is particularly intriguing because generally, people aren’t allowed on it. The reason for this is because during WWII, the US practiced bombing on the island, and there are still live bombs “lost” on the land. Only government officials and volunteers to clear bombs can go there. This island was also once a prison, but because it is only a 7 mile swim from the island of Kaho’olawe and Maui, they had to knit that because prisoners were taking advantage of this.
We saw plants growing other fruits as well. For example, we saw a sour sop plant. I had never heart of this fruit before, but apparently a sour sop, when fully ripe, is so soft that if you try to hold it your thumb will slide right through it and it will fall apart. Because of this, they’re impossible to ship. The fruit is most popular in Asian countries. I didn’t try it, but I was told that it tastes like a green jolly rancher with the texture of a wet cotton ball. PASS!
There was a fruit called Buddha’s hand. The origin of the name is hazy - it may be because it looks like praying hands as it grows, or may just be because Buddha really liked this fruit. This fruit is used to zest like a lime or lemon. It is hard to grow from seed, so when Maui Dragonfruit Farm decided to grow them, they grafted a Buddha’s hand tree onto an orange tree.
I learned that if you see a guava tree “in the wild” in Hawaii, you are encouraged to pick and eat the guava. Guava trees are considered an invasive species in Hawaii, and eating the fruit helps to prevent the seeding of new guava trees.
Male papaya trees don’t produce actual fruit. HOWEVER, if you stab a stake through the base, it will turn itself female in an act of self-preservation and begin to produce fruit. Something else cool about the papaya tree is that you can see its history by looking at its trunk. Each “heart” is where a leaf once was, and the dot above it is where a fruit was!
I learned that the Monkeypod is the Hawaiian state tree, and that the plumeria flower (which are EVERYWHERE in Hawaii) throw their scent at night because that is when they are pollinated - by moths! We smelled curry leaves (which aren’t actually in curry) and I learned that banana trees only grow once, but they clone themselves so when you see a banana tree you will see a little baby banana tree right next to it!
Our guide, Erin, mentioned that the waves are especially big at the moment. I had assumed they were always like that on Maui! Apparently the waves are significantly higher than usual - enough so that beachfront restaurants have been dealing with flooding as high tide comes in. I looked up why and I guess it comes from storms in the southern hemisphere. Crazy! Science is a fascinating thing.
Once the tour was over, we sat at a picnic table (with a fabulous view) and Erin brought us dragonfruit lemonade and a fruit plate - with mango, watermelon, papaya, pineapple, lychee, longan. Lychee was new to me, and though I’d heard of it, I’d never eaten it (mostly because I had no idea how to!) You have to bite the outer layer to crack it open, then peel that layer off and each the fruit inside it. It had the texture of a grape, but had a pit inside it. It was very juicy!
From there we went back to the house to spend an hour or so by the pool before heading out for lunch. We had planned to go to the taco truck down the street, but by the time we got there, found the truck, and got in line, there were too many orders ahead of us for us to feel comfortable having time to eat and still making it across the island for our 1:45PM tour of the Maui Gold Pineapple farm.
After deciding to just hit the Sonic near the farm on our way there, we made it just in time for the 1:30PM check in. They gave us a card with our bus number on it and we headed outside to join our group.
Our shuttle drivers name was Tatianna and I thought she did a great job! She began by telling us about the parts of the pineapple plants - the crown, the eyelets/fruit, the slip, and the stalk - also known as the padunkle! I learned that each eyelet on a pineapple is a berry, and that a pineapple is actually just a bunch of berries fused to the core. Pineapples are native to Brazil, not Hawaii, which I also did not know. There are only two pineapple farms left in the United States - Maui Gold and Dole - so I can now say I’ve been to every pineapple farm in the country! Neither Dole nor Maui ship outside of Hawaii - all of their pineapples are used in state. In fact, there is a law in Hawaii that if you want to buy a pineapple, it has to be grown here. This also means that all the pineapples we get in the grocery back home are shipped in from other countries. It takes 23 days to ship from Hawaii to California - which is why they don’t ship them - they’d be rotten before they even made it to the mainland. This means they can grow them sweeter in Hawaii since they go directly from farm to store/consumer. Pineapples are best the second they are picked - they only 'rot' from there. Leaving them to sit does NOT help to ripen them, only rot them. It generally takes 2-3 years to grow a pineapple, but there are things they do to speed up the process so they can get a pineapple in only 18 months.
To choose a pineapple, it has nothing to do with color, smell, or even being able to pick a leaf out of the crown. In fact, pineapple producers spray pineapples to get them to turn yellow so people are more likely to buy them. When you’re choosing a pineapple, you want one with big, flat eyelets that fill out the space. This means the berry has been able to fully form.
Another fun fact is that Hawaiian pizza is actually a Canadian creation.
After our tour we popped into Walmart to grab a few things and then headed back to Lahaina.
For dinner, Aaron and I went to Coco Deck - a restaurant I had seen recommended on YouTube. We were seated outside right away. I ordered the fish tacos (grilled mahi, and Aaron ordered the Mango Tango Wings (mango tajin sauce, lime, and southwest ranch). My tacos were okay - I only ate two and Aaron ate the third. He said it tasted very fishy, which I hadn’t noticed. The chips that came with it were delicious though! Aaron did like his wings, and he REALLY liked the dipping sauce that came on the side!
After dinner we headed back to the house, hanging out outside admiring another clear sky full of stars until it was time for bed.
See additional Hawaii posts here!
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