Plants & Foreign Species

I know we depend on trees and plants to support us and keep us alive, but I don’t exactly get pumped up to see chrysanthemums and lychee nuts. However, at the botanical gardens, they had lots of cool plants and trees, some poisonous, and some very exotic (not like the dancers though). You can tell the ones that are out of place – the palm trees that are planted in rock beds, just to show I guess that you can find a tree between a rock and a hard place.

At one end of the gardens, they had a laboratory where they were experimenting with all sorts of cross-breeding and super-plants. I got a mental picture or Little Barbershop of Horrors with that giant Venus flytrap or that movie Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. This should be cool! But they didn’t let us go in. I guess it’s an insurance thing. They did show us the cocoa plants, vanilla beans and coffee plantation though. I was joking that if we saw a tobacco plant, our driver would jump the fence and start shoving it in his pockets. That guy smokes like a brushfire. There was no tobacco, but they took us into a little picnic area and started serving us stuff they grew there. Tea, coffee, hot cocoa, and cocoa coffee. I think that was one of the experimental plants – a cross-bred cocoa/coffee bean. It tasted really good though, so we bought a bag of it. Maybe if I plant one of the beans back in Vancouver, and I climb a magic bean stalk to a giant Starbucks in the Sky!

We left the botanical gardens and on the way out, I was getting lots of stares from the locals as they passed me. I felt like an exhibit again. I thought they should have put a sign on me that said “White Guy” and charge 5 bucks a look. Then I could pee in a cup and call it Cauca-coffe. I’d be rich! Or at least somebody would be rich. I doubt any of the trees make any money off ticket sales.