On Sunday, Sofi, Becky and Brandan explored the Maha'ulepu Trail, an almost four mile trail along the ocean that began at Shipwreck Bech. This beautiful trail is preserved as a heritage site and is the only remaining undeveloped coastline along the south shore of Kauai.
We had beautiful views of the ocean and the cliffs.
The trail passed a site sacred to native Hawaiians and we think we saw a petroglyph.
The trail is well maintained and we admired the lush plants that had been cut back. It wouldn't take long for the plants to overrun the trail if they were left alone.
This is another photo of the beautiful plants. We walked out for a couple of miles and then came back to wake Helen and Gibson up for church.
We attended church in the Kalaheo Ward, about a 20 minute drive from our condo. Our friends and former neighbors, the Stebbins, moved to Kauai 4 years ago. When we let them know we were coming, they invited us to lunch after church. Coincidentally, our condo was about 5 minutes from their house. From the left are Caleb, Robert, Jake, Sam, Isaac, Gibson, Sofi, Helen, Becky and Brandan. Mahjinka designed their beautiful house, which took 3 years to build. Everything takes longer in Hawaii.
This is essentially the same photo with Mahjinka swapped in for Robert. We enjoyed catching up with them and hearing about their life in Kauai. Island life suits them very well! The Stebbins assured us the week we were visiting was the worst weather Kauai had all year, which meant the temperatures were in the 70s and it rained a lot, although mostly at night while we were sleeping. We enjoyed their "bad weather" very much.
We stopped and looked at the spouting horn, where the tide and waves push water up through a lava tube. Hawaiian legend says there is a lizard stuck in the lava tube and the spray is her breath.
In our bathroom in our condo was a photo of a starfish on a bed of sea glass. Brandan has collected sea glass from beaches around the world and was intrigued by the photo. He looked it up and learned there was a beach covered in sea glass just a short drive away. We had to check it out. The beach is located in an industrial area which accounts for all of the broken glass. As word of the unusual beach spread, people have taken buckets and buckets of sea glass away for their own purposes, but an extraordinary amount of glass remains.
It was very interesting to sift through handfuls of glass and look at all of the colors and shapes of glass.
There were also tide pools along the shore with crabs and sea urchins.
We saw 2 teenagers on a bluff above the beach lighting fireworks and throwing them into the ocean. This spot felt off the usual list of tourist spots to visit.
The road to the beach was mostly washed out so we parked about a quarter of a mile away and walked down. This photo gives a sense of our non Kauai-like surroundings.
This photo shows some of the delicious fruit we bought earlier at the fruit stand: ramboutan, mangosteen and guava.
After dinner we played Nertz, our favorite card game, and Gibson won his first round ever.
Monday morning we all got up early to go snorkeling at Poipu beach, about a 5 minute drive away.
The Stebbins' advised us to get there early for a better chance to see sea turtles on the beach. We were delighted to see this green Hawaiian turtle when we got to there.
We could see beautiful and interesting fish just walking in the shallow water and looking down, but putting our heads under water opened up a whole new world.
The water here was very shallow and it was easier to walk on our hands than to swim.
Becky hates getting her face wet or water in her ears, but snorkeling was irresistible.
A giant sea turtle, different than the one on the beach, swam close to us. We could see its head pop up when it had to breathe and an occasionally flipper, but underneath the water we could see that the turtle was enormous. This is a photo of Helen helping Sofi decide where to dive to get the best view of the turtle.
We got cleaned up after snorkeling and drove into Lihue, the town with the airport. The largest town on Kauai, Ka'paa, only has 11,000 people. There aren't any cities on Kauai, but Lihue has Costco, Walmart and Target, so it feels city-ish. The Stebbins' recommended we eat at the Kauai Sushi Station, a food truck across the street from Costco.
Sushi is one of Sofi's favorite meals, but the rest of us were sushi skeptics until we tried these delicious rolls. We ordered a tuna roll, a salad roll and a crunchy spicy salmon roll. Besides tasting good, the rolls were beautiful to look at and were accompanied by delicious sauces and garnishes. As soon as we finished these, we ordered a Philly roll and a cucumber/avocado roll.
Our dental hygienist, Debbie, loves Kauai and gave us lots of tips before our trip. She recommended buying souvenirs at Wal-Mart. We were not disappointed by Wal-Mart's fun souvenir section.
Monday afternoon we met up with a tour company for a back country adventure. They drove us into the interior of the island. We stopped for photos of Waialeale, a mountain that is one of the wettest places on earth with an average rainfall of 450 inches per year.
Our main event was mountain tubing. C&H Sugar grew sugarcane on Kauai from the 1850s until 2000. Sugar cane needs a lot of water to grow, so workers dug canals to help provide a steady source of water year round. When the sugar plantation closed, a man bought the land with the goal of restoring native habitat and preserving open space. Tour operators saw the unused canals as an opportunity to offer a unique experience and have a 100 year lease. Part of the tour fee goes toward habitat restoration, so this really was a service project, right?
We floated for about an hour through the gorgeous rain forest.
The tour guides suggested we call the water "refreshing" instead of cold, and we adjusted to the temperature quickly. We didn't have any ability to steer and just bumped and spun our way down the hill in our large tubes.
The canals flowed through 5 tunnels, each about a quarter of a mile long. Workers built the canals in the 1870s with pick axes and shovels. They tried dynamite, but the volcanic rock shattered vertically instead of in the direction they wanted the tunnel to go, so they had to complete the tunnels entirely by hand. The longest tunnel had an S curve in the middle. Teams of diggers had started on opposite sides of the mountainand missed each other by about 150 feet.
The ride was a blast!
The water was murkier than usual because of the unusually high amounts of rain that washed more sediment down the mountain.
We were remarkably fortunate. The tour company had canceled all tours for the 3 days prior to our tour. They use a sluice gate at the top of the canals to keep the water level around 3 feet deep. Because of the rain, water was pouring over the sluice gate and the water in the canals was 8 feet deep, too high to safely navigate the tunnels.
So we appreciated the hard work of the laborers in the 1800s and the creativity of the tour owners in the 2000s and the good fortune of good weather for our delightful adventure!
After tubing we got back in the truck/bus for a bumpy ride back to Lihue.
We walked around Old Koloa Town. The first sugar mill on Kauai was built here in 1835.
Back in Poipu, we stopped for a snack at Puka Dog.
Puka Dog is known for their delicious Hawaiian style hot dogs. They have dozens of flavors of sauces. At the recommendation of our tour guide, Kivan, we tried sweet garlic sauce, mango sauce, pineapple sauce and passion fruit mustard. The hot dogs were really, really good.
Kivan also told us that sea turtles sleep on Poipu Beach. It turns out the one we saw in the morning was just a late riser, slow to return to the sea. He has seen as few as 8 and as many as 30 turtles on the beach. We had to check it out. Sure enough, we watched many turtles climb out of the water onto the sand as the sun set.
As it got darker, a couple of volunteers shone red lights on the turtles. The red light let us see the turtles, but didn't disturb their sleep. The volunteers said the turtles can also sleep underneath the water as they can go hours without air.
After the sun went down, we went shopping in Poipu. Gibson found this attractive hat, guaranteed to keep the sun off your face.
Especially if you wear it this way!
The shopping center was decorated with a fun mix of torches and Christmas lights.
We started Tuesday morning celebrating Brandan's 50th birthday!
Becky made French toast for breakfast using the sugar packets from the coffee station in our condo kitchen.
We checked out of our condo, then drove to Lihue for a few more stops. This is Wailua Falls. Besides being gorgeous, its claim to fame is being the waterfall in the opening scene of the TV show Fantasy Island. Often this is a double waterfall, but all of the extra rain spilled over the top to create a single waterfall.
We began our three part lunch with Malasada, Hawaiian style doughnuts, at the Kauai Bakery. They were closed when we got there, but kindly sold us doughnuts anyway.
Then we got Hawaiian style lunches. Sofi tried Spam musubi which is a chunk of rice topped with a slice of spam and wrapped in seaweed. Isaac and Caleb said this is their favorite Hawaiian food.
Gibson and Helen got pork and rice and Becky tried lau lau, which is pork steamed in a taro leaf. Brandan got a bowl of ramen.
Part three of lunch was shave ice. The clerk thought we were crazy when we tried to order 4 and convinced us to start with one. We're glad we listened. It was enormous!
After lunch we headed to the airport and a long trip back home. Throughout our trip, we noticed the unusually friendly signs and official notices posted, confirming our bias that Hawaiians are friendly and hospitable. Here are our favorites. This one is from the glass beach.
From the Puka Hot Dog shop.
Posted in Old Town Koloa.
At Skinny Mike's, the shave ice store.
This was for sale at a gift shop and is too funny to not include.
Back home, we had one more day to enjoy with Sofi before she flew back to Utah.
This was our wish list for activities to do during winter break and we did a good job of crossing them off.
Helen started a painting of Richard Parker, the tiger in the book, The Life of Pi. She stayed up late Thursday night to finish him. The painting turned out spectacular.
Gibson got his covid booster shot on Saturday afternoon. We're thankful for a bit of extra protection.
Helen celebrated her 17th birthday with friends on Saturday night. Front row: Talli, Kaden, Helen, Lexi, Mary, Emma, Kate, Addi, Elizabeth and Aunika.
Back row: Daniel, Annie, Shaun, Marcus, Brandan, Jason, Seth, Scott and Gibson
The kids played games, ate food and watched the movie, Twilight, which is currently viewed as ironic and hilarious instead of romantic.
One of Helen's friends left a note on an empty whiteboard on our fridge.
