Kauai Part I

Friday, October 21, 2011

Since Big Island to Kauai is a 2 part flight (Big Island to Oahu and then Oahu to Kauai) we were up well before dawn in order to get to Kauai in time to have some time to do things on this day.  Our flight was at 7AM and we had just gotten through security at 6:15AM when I suddenly realized I'd left my phone in the Dollar rental car we had.  Racing back out, the only bus I could find to the offsite rental car area was a Budget driver, but he gladly signed up to do me the favor of running me out there.  Both Tina and I have been really impressed with just how friendly and helpful all the island people are we've met.  Anyway, made it back to the car, got my phone (while the Budget bus waited for me), got back through security at 6:45AM which was just in time to board the plan and be on our way.  Not an overly nice way to start the day, but at least it had a happy ending.

After getting the rental car, we made a quick run up to Wailua falls which is just 10 miles from the airport.  Note that the farther fall actually has 2 contributors with the 2nd one coming from inside the cliff.

A nice bird decided to pose for a picture.  Even the birds are nice on Hawaii!

After checking into our condo and having a quick lunch we were back at the airport for our helicopter ride around the island.  This had been recommended to us and was well worth the expense of doing it.  Here's our helicopter arriving to take us out and the back of pilot Jimmy's head as we got ready to leave.

Tina got the window seat and our first view of Waimea canyon as we circled around the island starting at the south.

The northern end of the island has steep cliffs leading to the ocean on the western side and the resort town of Princeville towards the center.  The last half of our stay on Kauai will be just west of Princeville and we'll be hiking some of those cliffs ... if Tina doesn't chicken out.

The middle part of the island is what remains of the main volcano crater that created most of Kauai.  It was stunning to see the number of waterfalls that were flowing on the day we flew up there due to recent rain storms.  Unfortunately, all camera shots of said waterfalls weren't worth posting!  :)

Off in the distance in this photo is the same Wailua falls we were at earlier in the day.  After an incredible trip, we made it back down on the ground safely even though the helicopter had developed curved blades.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

About every 4 or 5 years I foolishly let Tina convince me to try horseback riding again.  I enjoy it for about the first hour ... or until the horse decides to trot a bit.  Horses trotting is just ridiculous.  They need to either run ... or walk!  No in between.  I think secretly the horses are laughing like mad knowing exactly what they're doing to the person riding them ... particularly if it's a person of male persuasion.  Nonetheless, being a good husband of 25 years, I let her talk me into it ... AGAIN!!!

Tina's horse was quite talented.  Halfway through the 2 hour ride, the guide got out juice and cups for everybody to quench their thirst.  Ends up the guide has also trained Tina's horse, Chex, how to drink and enjoy juice.  It was actually quite funny because he always makes Chex wait until all his human riders have gotten their juice (in this case there was 6 of us).  Chex waited somewhat patiently ... but obviously knew what was coming ... and was actually foaming at the mouth by the time the guide got around to giving her a drink.

The ride along the beaches was really neat and we did get to "trot" the horses every once in a while, which is more than you get to do on most horse riding excursions in the USA anymore.  Writing this now, 2 days later, I'm awfully glad I've met that obligation for another 4 or 5 years to come.  :)

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Having seen Waimea Canyon from the air, now we set out to see in from the ground.  They refer to it as the Grand Canyon of the Pacific and the colors and beauty of it make it an accurate nick name.

Tina was styling once again, this time in her hiking boots and floppy hat.  (It's outfits like this that have kept me with this woman for 25+ years!  :) )  We set out to do Canyon trail which starts out doing a mile down a 4 wheel drive road before getting to the actual trail. 

Canyon trail also has Cliff View Point as a splinter leg.  Since it was an easy path, we went ahead and took it first before returning to do the main trail.

It was indeed a pretty view from the end of that portion of the trail.



Hiking on Canyon Trail was a ton of up and down hills with very little flat trail.  When we finally got to a huge outlook spot overlooking the canyon, Tina didn't seem to appreciate me clowning around about falling backwards.

It's probably looks like this from Tina which has kept me alive for the last 25+ years.

 

 Nonetheless, it was a beautiful and worthwhile hike.

Monday, October 24, 2011

This was a rather lazy day.  We set it aside to drive from the southern end of Kauai up to the northern end where we'd be spending the rest of the week.  Since that's a grand total of perhaps 30 miles of driving, we weren't in a big rush.  We caught up on laundry before checking out of the condo and going to a local Poipu place called the Spouting Horn.  It's a blowhole ... and a pretty good one at that.  What even made it better was there was an air vent about 10 yards up from the actual blowhole.  As such, every time the water rushed in to create the blowhole volcano, you could hear a massive swooshing of air coming out the hole up above it.

The road leading into Poipu from the main highway was called Tree Tunnel Road.  As can be seen, it's aptlly named.

Also on the drive up we came by a beach that had a couple of Hawaiian monk seals snoozing the day away.  This species is on the endangered list because it likes to sleep on the beaches during the day and then do it's fishing at night.  To many people want to play with it on the beach during the day which leaves it less than ready to hunt that night.  It's a big effort in Hawaii to protect this quickly vanishing breed.

OK ... so they look dead ... but that's just the way they sleep during the day.

And so at last we reached our final major destination for this vacation at a B&B just outside the town of Hanalei, Hawaii.  Until we get to next weekend, you'll just have to be patient and wait for the final installment of this vacation blog.

Big Island Part II

Monday, October 17, 2011

After a lazy start to the day, we headed out to Kekaha Kai beach which was one I had found on tripadviser.  The reviews there had warned that the road was a somewhat rough to get out to the beach.  That was a bit of an understatement.  This "road" made the southern route from Hana look fabulous by comparison.

Made us glad we were in a rental car.  After about 1/2 mile and 10 minutes of bumpy riding on this road, you come up to a sign.

This leaves one with the scary thought that if the road ahead is "unimproved" they might actually consider the road this far as being "improved".  Fortunately, it didn't get much worse.  After getting to a parking lot, we had an additional 1/2 mile hike to get to the actual beach.

Tripadviser had said there was even a better beach about a mile beyond some abandoned red buildings.  Tina wasn't in the mood for more hiking, so I walked up to these buildings on my own.  I have no idea what these buildings were, nor could I figure out why the only residents remaining was a family of half a dozen goats (note the 2nd picture).

I finally came across a couple coming back from the farther on beach and they indicated it was about another mile up across this lava flow field.

I decided the goats were better off crossing that "trail" than I would be, so I gave up the pursuit of the better beach.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

We headed out late morning to drive down to Hawaii Volcano National Park.  This would have been a much better trip to do while we were over at Hilo since it's only a 30 minute drive from there.  Since the plans didn't work out for that, we had a 2 hour drive there, and added on another 45 minutes to take a drive down to the southern most point of the USA.

 

For anybody like me who thought that the southern most point was Key West's claim to fame, that's only for the 48 contiguous states.   Hawaii has the claim for all 50 states.  If you go for all US controlled territory, it shifts to Rose Atoll, American Samoa.

 The rope and wood structures in these pics are used because boats come down to fish for extended periods of time off the coast here.  They lower down and raise up ice chests to keep the boats supplied so they can fish for extended periods. 



 So to be honest, by this time we were almost getting to the point of Volcanic overload.  We started seeing significant lava flows over on Maui and it had just continued to build throughout our stay at that island and the beginning of our stay on the Big Island.  But now we were actually driving into Hawaii's Volcano National Park.  The visitor center perked our interest a bit more and then driving around Crater Rim Drive, we came to the steam vents created by rain water leaking down to the hot volcanic magma below.  These were pretty impressive.

 

 But then when you get to the actual rim of the active volcano and see the current crater spewing out massive amounts of VOG, it's breathtaking.  (Yes, instead of FOG or SMOG, it's actually called VOG for Volcanic out gassing which consists mainly of sulpher dioxide).  On the day we were there this was a significant enough amount of VOG to lead them to shut down half of the park which was downwind from the volcano.

Having spent a couple of hours seeing this volcano from all the different spots around Crater Rim Drive, we took a road that went down to the ocean front part of the park.  The road finally ends where a lava flow crosses the road.

This is actually the opposite end of the lava flow road closure which we had seen from the Hilo on Saturday.  In all about 20 miles of roadway are currently under lava.

For dinner we drove over to the town on Volcano Village and ate at a wonderful place called the Kilauea Lodge and Restaurant.  The owner and head chef of this place was an Emmy award winning make-up artist in Hollywood.  He was hired at one point to do the make-up for a new show being filmed in Hawaii which came to have a lot of success ... called Magnum PI.  The show ended after a 7 year run, but by then he'd fallen in love with Hawaii.  So much so that he decided to stay, give up his career as a makeup artist, and take schooling in France on being a chef.  He was amazingly successful at that endeavor too.

The reason we got a late start on this day was that we had been advised to stick around to see the volcano after dark.  Even though it was getting late and we still had a 2 hour drive ahead of us, it was well worth staying for.  Seeing the glow of the magma some 250 feet down from the active crater rim, it gave you an instant appreciation of the tremendous potential power of this volcano ... powers encompassing both destruction and creation of new land.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Wednesday brought us to Puuhonua O Honaunau National Historic Park.  In ancient times this was the place where 23 Hawaiian chiefs ruled the island.  It has it's own version of "The Great Wall", in this case made from the black volcano rocks.

 Afterwards we did a short hike up and down the coast line here.

In the afternoon we drove to Mountain Thunder Plantation.  Mountain Thunder is one of the top producers of high quality 100% Kona coffee.  The location we visited has several acres of Kona coffee tree's as well as the mill, processing, and packaging plant.

 

Most of the coffee they grow at this facility is organically grown and they feed in from a lot of farmers who also do things organically.  I'm not sure how much that plays into things but I will say that the coffee we had up there is by far the best coffee I've ever had.  No significant aftertaste at all and what aftertaste was there was a smooth pleasant taste.  Tina always hates to walk out of the house after having her coffee without brushing her teeth due to coffee aftertaste.  She didn't have that feeling after this coffee.

The main place we loved on this visit was the roasting room.  Smelling high quality coffee beans roasting is just out of this world.  And then when they open the roaster vent and let the beans spill out, the smell is just WONDERFUL!!!

Thursday, October 20, 2011

While staying at one of the B&B's on Maui, one of the other guests told us one of the things on his bucket list was to ride the ditch at the northern end of the big island.  The "Ditch" is an irrigation ditch which was originally built back in 1905/6.  It's 22.5 miles long and was built to carry much needed water to a dry part of the northern island in order to expand the farm acreage for sugar cane.  It's built through a series of 8 ft wide tunnels dug out through mountains (the longest one being 2 miles long) and flumes (water bridges going over valleys).  It's an amazing accomplishment given when it was first built. 

In 2006 an earthquake on the island caused the ditch to dry up.  By this time a whole lot of other industries had become dependent on this water.  One of those was a tourist ride which allowed people to ride kayaks to go down a 2.5 mile stretch of the ditch.  The earthquake had caused some of the tunnels to collapse and destroyed a few of the flumes.  It took a huge community effort to dig out the ditch and repair all the flumes and then it took even longer for them to clean up a portion of the ditch to make it suitable for tourists again.  Fortunately for us, they succeeded in this effort and reopened the ditch for kayak rides back in January 2011.

When we arrived at the facility to start our ride, we were greeted by a very friendly cat.  He even has his own business card as the official greeter.

After a short ride on a 4 wheeler van, we arrived at the first flume which has a pedestrian bridge built over it.  Crossing that we were then loaded into our kayak.

There was a guide in the front of the kayak ahead of Tina and then me in the back.  Even though I had a paddle, the guide did most the work and I just occasionally bushed us off the walls.  The guide pointed out several places in the tunnels where the Japanese (the main builders of the original ditch) left writings.

After a long, pleasant ride down, we were given a light snack while the workers loaded the kayaks back up on the vans for our return trip.  We purchased a new waterproof digital camera for this affair so I didn't have to risk my phone camera.  Unfortunately it's VERY sensitive to an movements at all so only a limited number of the pictures taken actually came through.

The next day we left the Big Island and flew to our final island of Kauai.  More on that island later.