Kauai Part 2

The water across the street from our condo is very dynamic. We’ve seen many dolphins swimming by (about 10 this morning) and turtles feeding offshore almost daily. Both are too far away for decent photos, but we will remember them! Today the ocean is angry and we see a line of surfers on their boards at the wave break providing endless entertainment! The beautiful sunsets provide a nice end to the day while we eat dinner on our second floor lanai. Locals and tourists alike show up in droves at the rock sea wall to spend a few minutes watching the sun disappear. It has become a fun ritual.

Some of the hikes we have planned are accessed via dirt roads so we rented a Jeep. And Jeeps shouldn’t be clean according to Dave. Dave tried to hit as many mud puddles as he could find but the darn mud flaps kept the red dirt in it’s place. Going to have to find some deeper puddles. We have heard several people remark that we must be having fun!

We are pretty sure the rental companies know that a Jeep should be a 4×4 but they only spec the street tires and don’t rent Rubicons. Likely a very deliberate choice by Hertz!

We wanted to hike the Kohua Ridge trail in Waimea Canyon. The road was in pretty good shape until we got deep into the canyon.

All the websites we read warned not to attempt stream crossings. Dave might have tried if we had better tires but we decided to leave it for another time. We didn’t want to be those tourists who did something dumb and got stuck in the middle of nowhere.

After being stumped by the river fording we backtracked and hiked the Waimea Canyon trail. It crosses a beautiful ridge to the top of Waipo’o Falls (sorry, Mom, just one more cliff). It was pretty steep down (and then back up!) but quite manageable. Being at the top of the 800 foot waterfall was pretty cool, although we had to stop at a viewpoint on the other side of the canyon to actually see it in all its splendour.

We also hiked the Ho’opi’i falls in Kapa’a. You need to know where you are going as the entrance is in a residential area but once you are on the trail it’s decently marked. We were back in the mud for this one, but not nearly as bad as the Alakai Swamp.

We took a slight detour on the way back to Poipu to find Lydgate Farm to do a chocolate tasting. We got to sample their dark chocolate covered cocoa nibs (yum) and walked away with some of their bean to bar chocolates. The ‘kid’ who was doing the tasting has worked in Guayaquil, Ecuador, so we had a long conversation about chocolate farming and our adventures in Ecuador.

Spouting Horn is a blowhole just down the road from us. Since we had planned for a quieter day, we decided to walk over and see it again. You are no longer allowed to walk on the rocks near the hole. Sometimes progress isn’t so good. But folks must have been doing dumb things so fences were erected. Still fun to watch the water spurt out of the channel in the lava and hear the ‘exhalation’ of the air/water.

Dave being a coffee snob needed to drop by the Kauai Coffee Company and do a tasting. It was fun to go back and see what had or hadn’t changed.

We found a great snorkeling spot just down the road from us at Koloa Landing. We got to swim with hundreds of fish, 4 turtles, several beautiful humuhumunukunukuapua’a and the biggest trumpet fish we have ever seen! We will definitely wander down for more later in the week.