Our Trip to Hawaii

Jess and I were super lucky this year because we got to go on a second trip - this time to Hawaii for a week! Spencer and Hannah graciously agreed to take care of the kids so that we could get away together and even though the kids were sad to miss out (and we'd love to bring them with us next time), we really appreciated the vacation.

Of course, Hawaii is beautiful, and my words will not do it justice, but we have lots of photos of all the stunning nature that we saw and experienced.

One of the hardest parts of a trip to Hawaii is picking which island to go to. We went to the island of Kauai and we were really happy with our choice. People don't come to this island to party, they come to enjoy the natural attractions, so it's a laidback, quiet place and we loved that. Also, we loved that it's small enough to drive anywhere you want to go in about an hour which was great for getting away from any rain: if it was raining in one part of the island, we could just drive to another part and it would be sunny there.

The beaches were incredible. We visited a different one each day, with only one repeat, and we passed by many, many beaches that we just didn't have time to visit. Jess loves snorkeling (he'd really love to go scuba diving one day) and while I'm a little more leery of swimming in a tropical ocean and risking encounters with all kinds of dangerous animals, I joined him most of the time and I really loved seeing all the colourful fish and interesting coral formations.

On our first day there, we decided to drive from our condo in Kapa'a to the Waimea canyon. You start out at sea level and by the time you get to the end of the road, in Koke'e state park, we were up at over 5000 feet high and the temperature had dropped by over 20 degrees. The canyon cuts through the lush greenery of the island (one of the mountains beside the canyon is the wettest place on earth because it gets so much rain and it was covered by clouds the whole time we were there). You can see the colourful layers of the earth in the walls of the canyon and because of all the waterfalls and rain, rainbows are pretty common.

 This is the resort we stayed at. We were on the ground floor facing directly onto the ocean.

This is the ocean in front of our condo:

This is the beginning of the drive up Waimea canyon. The forest floor just suddenly drops away beside the road into a deep lush valley and keeps getting deeper the higher you drive.

 We were pleased to see one of Hawaii's famous rainbows above one of the canyon's waterfalls.

At one point along the road, on the side away from the canyon, there was a Martian type of landscape where the rocks were deep red and smooth and curvy with small waterfalls running through them:

 

When we got to the end of the road, we were at the beginning of the Na Pali coast on the north west side of the island and we could look down at the cliffs of the coast and the ocean beyond:

 

 

 

The next day, we decided to explore the North shore. In November, this part of the island tends to be pretty rainy so we took advantage of a sunny forecast for this day and made the drive to Ke'e beach, the last beach you can drive to before the Na Pali coast begins. We had heard it may be the most beautiful of all of Kauai's beaches so we were eager to check it out.

On our way there, we passed lots and lots of beautiful beaches. We decided to stop of Anini Beach because it was supposed to be good for beachcombing and I wanted to look for pretty shells, pieces of coral and beach glass to bring home.

 Turns out it's such a good beachcombing beach that we met two professional beachcombers. They earn a meager living collecting Niihau shells, these tiny little shells that wash up on this beach and are used to make jewellery, especially shell leis, which can sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars. This is their shell collection that took them more than a month to collect and a picture of the jewellery the shells will be used for:

This is a valley we passed on our drive with taro fields and the mountain in the background shrouded in clouds is the one that is the wettest spot on earth (it has a long name that starts with W and has a bunch of vowels and apostrophes, I could never remember it).

When we arrived at Ke'e beach, we were not disappointed. I have never swam in ocean water that was this clear. I was in water up to my shoulders and I could still see my toes as clearly as if I wasn't in water at all. And the colours of the water were incredible, such an inviting array of turquoises and aquamarines. And then the backdrop of green jungle and soaring cliffs of the Na Pali coast...really so beautiful. And worth the terrible parking. There's one small paved parking lot that fills up right away and then a terrible dirt parking lot that literally has boulders jutting up out of the dirt and you have to try and drive over the boulders without high centering your car...quite an adventure.

 The only sad part about our visit is that we didn't know it would be such a great beach for snorkeling. But it has a wonderful reef and the water is crystal clear so there were dozens of people out snorkeling when we were there. But we hadn't brought any snorkeling gear with us so we had to just watch everyone else. I did walk beside the reef and wave a green leaf around in the water and it was fun watching all the colourful fish leave the reef and swim over to investigate my leaf. I got a following of a dozen or so fish fans to follow me around for a while.

 I think this beach had the most warning signs out of all the beaches we visited and apparently the waves can get really crazy here but it was pretty calm when we were here.

 

On our way home, we stopped in the town of Hanalei and we found the most awesome store ever: Hanalei Strings. They sell stringed instruments (ukuleles) and string to knit with (yarn!). Of course I had to check out all the beautiful colours of hand-dyed yarn...

 The next day, we got up early and drove to the southwest corner of the island to the town of Eleele to catch a ride on the Kahuna Catamaran for a 5 hour boat tour up the Na Pali coast.

We went with a small boat company and they're having a hard time competing with the big tour companies even though they do a great job. This meant there were only six passengers on our tour that day which was unfortunate for the tour operators but it was great for us because it was almost like our own private tour of the island.

It was a smaller catamaran which meant we could get quite close to the cliffs and the sea caves but the ride was still quite smooth and comfortable. Of course, the scenery was beautiful. One animal we saw a lot of but couldn't get a good picture of was flying fish. They were constantly jumping out of the water all around us in groups of ten or fifteen and skimming across the water like birds. They were so fun to watch.

My favourite part of the day was when we found a pod of several hundred porpoises. The captain slowed the boat down to match their speed and invited us to go to the front of the boat where we could get really close to the water and we watched the porpoises swim all around us for at least twenty minutes. It was amazing. The photos don't do it justice because of the glare of the light off the surface of the water but in person, the water was crystal clear and you could see the porpoises playing in the water all around you and it was such a joy to watch them. Especially when the babies would leap out of the water and spin around or do flips. I could have sat and watched them all day.

 We saw a couple of rays swimming out of this sea cave:

A half hour of snorkeling is included in this boat tour. Normally the captain takes you snorkeling at a beach beside a historic site on the Na Pali coast where there used to be a significant Hawaiian fishing village and apparently there's a great reef there. But the ocean conditions weren't good there that day so he took us to a different spot that wasn't as good. The water was a lot cloudier here and there weren't that many fish but it was our first time snorkeling in Hawaiian waters and we enjoyed it a lot.

 

After our boat tour, we decided to spend the afternoon at a secluded beach just off the highway called Infinities Beach. There were a few people surfing at one end but we had the rest of the beach completely to ourselves. It was almost like we'd been washed up on a deserted island.

 

Some beach treasures Jess found but decided not to keep:

  

 One of my more adventurous meals was fresh raw ahi. We bought it at Fish Express in Lihue, a little store recommended to us by the captain of our boat tour. The fish was really delicious, much fresher than anything you can get in Edmonton! This is me eating my chunk of ahi (tuna) in the car on the way to the beach.

 The next day, we decided to check out a beach on the south side: Poipu. This beach is very popular with families as there is a nice protected little cove for kids and it has a lifeguard. But it's also popular with snorkelers because it has a large reef. It does have a rip tide that you have to be careful and I was a little nervous about swimming here because I knew snorkelers had drowned here before. But we were careful to stay inside the reef and I wore a flotation belt just in case I did end up getting caught in the current.

This is the beach near the end of the day when the water was really calm. You can see the calm bay in front protected by the rocks on the left. Once you swim past those rocks, you get to the reef and there are all kind of fish to see.

 This is me walking back from one of my snorkeling excursions (I've got the yellow belt over the turquoise swimsuit on the beach). You can see how the water's pretty rough so it was pretty tricky getting in and out especially wearing flippers.

 

I enjoy snorkeling but Jess loves it so he was out in the water much longer than I was and he took all of these pictures. He loved following fish around and he was really patient in searching out more rare fish like this eel. I never saw any eels but he found a few. He kept diving down to get pictures of this eel and it kept baring its teeth at him, trying to scare him away. The things he does for a picture...

 

 The next day, there was sunny weather on the North shore again so we decided to go back to Ke'e beach and bring our snorkel gear this time. Sad story again though - this time the ocean swells were higher and the lifeguards decided it was too dangerous for snorkeling. We tried going out to the reef with just our masks to take a look around but after a few minutes, the lifeguard came over and told us we couldn't even do that. Darn lifeguards, trying to keep people safe.

These are a couple photos from our five minutes of sort-of snorkeling at Ke'e:

 Isn't the water beautiful?!?

 On our drive home from Ke'e, we stopped at Moloaa Beach to do a bit of beachcombing and we stayed and watched the moon rise over the ocean.

The next day was our last full day and we wanted to go snorkeling again. We decided to check out another south side beach near Poipu called Prince Kuhio. There's not much sand there and it's right beside the road but it was supposed to have a great reef for snorkeling and it really did. But first, we decided to visit Shipwreck Beach nearby to visit the cliffs and caves there. We didn't really see any caves that looked safe to investigate but the cliffs were spectacular and by the time we were done walking around them and taking pictures, we had worked up quite a sweat and we were ready for some Hawaiian shave ice and a dip in the ocean so we headed right over to Prince Kuhio beach.

Here are the cliffs at Shipwreck Beach:

 The reefs at Prince Kuhio were widespread and came in all shapes and sizes:

 We saw a couple of different sea turtles at this beach. This one seemed sick, it had some growths on its neck and it didn't move very much. I swam near it but it was hard to get close enough to see but not get pushed on top of it by the waves because it was just hanging out and made no effort to move away.

 

The best turtle photo ever.

 This is another, healthier sea turtle, taking a break to hang out on some rocks, and then swimming around underwater:

 If you look closely in the centre of this picture, you can see an eel that Jess has succeeded in worrying with his diving - you can see its white mouth open as it bares its teeth at him.

 These fish were kind of like a herd of cows grazing on the rocks on the bottom of the sea.

 

We saw lots of surfers and I especially enjoyed watching the kids out there surfing. This one looked to be about Connor's age. Surfing is definitely part of the culture there, kids just grow up in the ocean.

We stayed at this beach as long as we could, right until the sun set over the horizon.

On our last day, we had to check out of our condo in the morning so we couldn't do anymore swimming activities. So, we decided to rent bikes and go for a bike ride along a lovely four-mile trail that runs along the east coast of the island.

 

 We stopped at this pier that used to be a pineapple dump. There used to be a pineapple processing factory inland and it would fill up train cars full of pineapple skins and stems every week and then cart the train cars down to this pier and dump them straight into the ocean.

 

The rocks are so interesting here, they almost look like the lava that formed them just cooled yesterday.

 

Our last site before driving to the airport was Opaekaa falls, an easy drive from Kapaa. If we'd had more time, we could have gone on a kayak ride up river to some falls like these and gotten a lot closer but this view was perfectly lovely.

 

One thing that was a bit surprising to us about Hawaii was all the chickens. There are chickens and roosters everywhere. When we were in the parking lot at the lookout for the waterfall, we thought it would be funny to get a picture of a chicken crossing at the crosswalk (why did the chicken cross the road?) So I stood at one end of the crosswalk with some bread and offered it to a chicken. It worked but then before long, I had a whole herd of chickens crossing the road to get my bread. Those Hawaiian chickens were pretty funny.