Okay, time for the second half of our trip: Kauai
I loved Kauai from the moment we landed! One of the kids we talked to in a shop there said it well: Waikiki is basically the 'city' in Hawaii, and Kauai is the 'country'.
Though I love to visit and see the city (loved my trip to New York), I definitely feel more like I'm a country type girl. I loved the laid back feel of Kauai.
Here are a few things that were just basic things in the Kauai experience:
Beautifully GREEN mountains filled with waterfalls.
Here's a better view of this waterfall. We could see this mountain from where we were staying.
Tree lined streets.
I LOVE this.
It reminds me of some streets where I grew up.
Wild roosters and chickens: EVERYWHERE!
They just roam the streets, homes, shopping areas, etc.
We saw this guy after our hike one day just chilling in the parking lot of a beach.
I thought he was one of the more beautiful roosters with all those colors.
Seriously, if you were a rooster and this guy was around...don't you think he'd own the place?
Here's a chicken with her little chicks; again on the side of the road.
GORGEOUS beaches with hardly anyone on them.
After arriving at Kauai, buying some food, and dropping our stuff off at the condo...
we then hit the beach.
Here is Haena Beach
Seriously, it's about 3 PM here and the beach is practically empty!
So different from Waikiki on Oahu.
Here's another 'screensaver' shot.
From the shore we could see some sea turtles out swimming around and we decided to see if we could go snorkel and see them. We found this nice little opening in the coral where we could chill and watch them.
There were three of them.
In Hawaii they are protected and you have to keep a certain
distance from them or you can get fined thousands of dollars.
Well I was just so excited to be near them and I wanted to get a picture with me in it with them.
Anytime I got close though, I would panic because the waves would be pushing me towards them and I thought I'd run into them. Plus Rand kept pushing me towards them as well while trying to get a picture. It was probably pretty comical for anyone watching us.
This is the best picture we got with me and the turtles! haha!
I was so excited about swimming with the turtles that I had to call my niece and nephew the next morning (with the time difference it was too late that night) to tell them that I went swimming with 'Crush' (Finding Nemo). She got on the phone and I said, "Ellie, guess what we went swimming with yesterday." I thought I'd really be impressing her with the turtles.
Her response, "DOLPHINS!"
I had to laugh...of course she would say something that seemed cooler than the turtles.
She was still pretty impressed though.
After swimming with turtles we drove down to Kee Beach (the road dead ends at this beach) to watch the sunset. Unfortunately there were clouds in the sky everyday we were there,
but it was still gorgeous.
We headed back to the condo and decided to stop for some dinner in Hanalei at the little shopping/dining area. It was just about 8 PM. 8 PM seems to be the closing time for most places there (and those are the ones that stay open late).
Rand was appalled by the prices of the hamburgers at this place and wanted to go to Subway across the street, until they informed him that Subway closed at 4 PM. haha.
So we ate at Bubba's Burgers. I thought it was delicious and a fun little place to eat.
Outside the place were tons of geckos. I kept waiting for one to talk like the Geico gecko, but it didn't happen. They were eating up all the mosquitos, so that was nice of them.
The next day we decided to go on a hike we had heard about.
We started at Kee Beach and headed out on the Kalalau trail.
This trail heads in 11 miles along the Na Pali Coast. In order to do the whole hike you pretty much have to stay the night camping out (and get a permit to do so).
We'd love to do this hike someday, but it wasn't going to happen this time.
Instead, we hiked 2 miles along this trail to Hanakapiai Beach.
From there you hike inland 2 miles to Hanakapiai Falls.
It was SO BEAUTIFUL the entire hike; hence all the pictures.
Towards the start of the hike we came across this little guy.
At first I thought he was some wierd bug.
But then we came across more of them in their webs along the trail.
Is this not a scary looking spider?
I looked up the spider on the internet when we got back: the Jewelled Spider.
Since my picture is a little blurry, here are a few from google image
search to give you a better look.
CREEPY! There were some pretty steep climbs (that killed my knees on the way back down).
We got to hike along the trail to this view much of the first 2 miles: the Na Pali Coast.
So you come to Hanakapiai Beach after 2 miles.
This is the sign you come by as you get to the beach.
When researching it, this beach is one of the most deadly not just on Kauai, but all of Hawaii.
There is supposedly a wicked under current.
The only assumption I can make about all the people below in this picture at the beach is that they can't read...because I thought the sign above was pretty clear!
This is where we began the trek inland.
We are fans of the show 'Lost'.
In case you don't know, it is filmed in Hawaii (Oahu).
As we hiked through this little section I couldn't help but think about the 'others'.
This is me hiding from the 'black smoke'!
And it was about the time I had Rand take this photo that he was over
the 'Lost' parallels and wanted to get moving to the waterfall. haha.
And we finally did make it to the waterfall.
Hanakapiai Waterfall
The book we had (which was pretty accurate on all it's facts) said it is 300 feet tall.
When I google it I get anywhere from 100 - 1600 ft.
Either way, it was a tall, beautiful waterfall!
And of course, we had to take a swim in the little swimming hole.
We asked a lady to get some pictures of us with my digital camera.
She got Rand jumping in, but not me.
And we also took some with the water camera as well (not as good of quality).
I loved that I had my chaco sandals (and my water hiking shoes).
I watched everyone else trying oh so carefully to make their way over the slippery rocks,
or over the rocks in the river along the hike. I had no problems with any of it!
Some of the best purchases I've made...if you love hiking, I'd invest!
I'm also really glad I packed our hydration packs. So nice to have these!
These trees are all over Kauai (I think all over Hawaii in general.)
The roots are so crazy interesting.
We saw them in the episode of Lost we watched the other day too. :o)
Here we are at the end of our hike, 8 miles later!
Here's a map of the hike:
we started at the star on the far left. We followed it in to the middle of the map and then took
the red line that heads inland (north). You can see the trail does continue to the right along the coast...for another 9 miles!
After our hike we decided to go check out Queen's Bath.
We were shocked to see that it was located within five minutes of where we were staying.
You just had to know the little entrance spot down to it that is
randomly located in this neighborhood.
Queen's Bath is basically natural pools carved into lava.
These little crabs (well, they varied in size) were all over the place.
They blend right into the rock and it kind of freaked me out because all of a
sudden the lava rock would move!
It's usually pretty safe to swim in here when the tide is down.
All sorts of fish are in the pools as well because they get washed in and trapped.
But apparantly when the tide it higher it can be really dangerous.
And if you stand on the rocks on the far side, too close to the ocean, the waves can knock you off and you can get pulled out to sea.
After Queen's Bath we decided to go to this beach we had been told about by my parents, as well as a local woman we sat by on the plane flight to Kauai.
It's called Hideaways Beach.
And we found out why: it's hiding and not many people know about it.
It's a small beach.
The picture above is Rand at one end. The picture below is me at the other end.
Do you see any other people in the picture?
NOPE
When we arrived there were about 4 people there just chilling, but not there to swim judging by their clothes. They left about 5 minutes after we arrived...
and we had the beach to ourselves for the next hour.
We just chilled and watched the outrigger teams paddle by (about 6 of them).
I also continued my search to find my niece a cool shell.
All I was finding was broken pieces.
As I stood in the water near the shore I saw this beauty being tossed around.
I quickly snatched it up and was SO proud that I had found not just a whole shell, but a pretty cool design one at that.
But upon closer inspection I realized that the shell was still occupied.
I could evacuate, or kill the little guy just for the shell...so I threw it back.
We also had some comptetitions skipping rocks.
I think Rand had the winning throw at the end of it all.
Oh, and Rand left a little note for me in the sand.
Seriously..we had a private beach all to ourselves to watch the sunset!
So how does a jem like this not get filled with people?
Well, because you have to know how to find it.
The pathway to get to it is randomly located between a small hotel parking lot and a tennis court.
Then you get to this poor excuse for stairs.
There are poorly welded together poles acting like railings because it's a nice little drop off both sides. And where their are missing poles (because they snapped off, no doubt) there is cheap rope. We were warned that if it was rainy weather it would be hard to get down and we can see why. It would basically be a muddy slide!
But for us it was good weather and well worth it!
For our last full day on the island we really wanted to check out the Na Pali Coast.
We had heard so many awesome things about it and how beautiful it is.
Our dream would be to kayak it! But this is REALLY expensive (with a guide) and it takes all day. So again, we'll add it to our 'next time' list.
We originally thought we were taking a raft excursion. But when we arrived at the place (about an hour away) we found out it was the catamaran boat we were taking.
At first we didn't know if we'd enjoy it as much as a raft trip...but in the end we LOVED it!
We were able to just chill on the boat, visit with other people, had a hot dinner served to us.
We could chill out on the front of the boat where the 'trampolines' were.
Of course there was no jumping, but it was fun to chill there with the water under you.
Before actually getting around the corner to the Na Pali coast, there is this US base located there. If you've heard in the last week that the US is sending more equiptment to 'Hawaii' that will detect missiles and such because of N. Korea, this is where they are talking about.
I was kind of excited that I knew where they were meaning.
And then we began our the beginning of our Na Pali Coast tour.
Right at the beginning we came across these little guys!
There were tons of them and they were all around the boat.
I was pretty excited about it and had to get some video.
Unfortunately I missed getting the ones that were jumping out of the water and spinning. :o(
Rand knows it's also a dream of mine to swim with the dolphins.
I was very tempted to 'accidentally' fall overboard at this point in the trip.
Shortly after the dolphins we stopped for some snorkelling.
I LOVED IT!
First: we used their snorkel gear and it was a million times better than what we had.
Second: because it was deeper, the water was so clear!
We didn't see quite the variety of fish we saw in Oahu, and no sea turtles...but it was fun.
These fish were all over by the boat. We had to swim through them to get off or on the boat.
Then it was back on the boat to continue the tour.
The scenery was BREATHTAKING!
This picture was to catch the waterfall behind us.
This coast has waterfalls all over the place.
Seeing these caves just made us want to kayak the coast even more.
It would be so fun to go kayak between all these caves!
and look how BLUE that water is!
If you've ever seen 'Six Days, Seven Nights', this is the beach that Harrison Ford and Anne Heche run up and through as they are running from the pirates.
They say you can't just land on this beach, it's not legal.
But apparantly if you have enough money they will let you film a movie there!
This picture below isn't a picture I pulled off the internet or from a 'Natural Wonders' book...
WE WERE THERE!
So this beach below is one you can camp on.
This is the beach at the end of the 11 mile hike I mentioned earlier.
You have to get a camping permit ahead of time,
and the hike is supposed to be sickly hard (a 9 out of 10) and you do it with a full pack on!
But again...it's now on our to-do list!
GORGEOUS!
Right as we turned around to head back it began to rain behind us and created a rainbow!
You can see it just over our heads.
This is a better picture...you can see it across the whole center.
This was our captain: Captain Rick.
He was pretty funny.
He told us that he wanted to retire from work and he started doing these
tours because his wife said he needed to do something to 'keep him off the streets'.
Those mean streets of Kauai.
He also let us drive the boat.
Which then began a wave of people on the boat requesting the same.
This man below (can't remember his name) wouldn't leave once he was given control.
It was pretty funny!
Captain Rick announced that we had been hijacked and he couldn't regain control.
Our attempt to catch the sunset between the clouds.
I have no idea what is up with my eyes...maybe I was trying to fight the wind
and keep them open. That's sounds good...we'll go with that.
We loved this catamaran tour. The crew was awesome, the food was delish, the weather perfect, the snorkelling fun, the dolphins a plus and the scenery unbeatable!
This was one of our favorite things on our whole trip!
We had one half day left on the island before catching our flight back to Oahu, and then to Utah.
We decided to head to Hanalei Bay and try some boogie boarding.
It wasn't bad...but we realized that ideally this place is for beginning surfers.
I really, really, really wanted to try surfing and we didn't fit it in.
Again, next time!
On our way back from the beach we stopped at this lookout that we passed everyday (about 5 minutes from our condo) to get a pic. So beautiful!
Then we hopped back in the car, drove back to the airport after a
quick car refill at Costco (they are everywhere!)
We then flew back to Oahu, then to San Fran, then to Utah.
We miss Hawaii already!
I'm crossing my fingers that they get a dental school opened in Hawaii (more specifically Kauai) in the next two years before Rand starts.
That would be heaven! :o)
Aloha!
