Delovely: May 2011

Once we had made a stop at the Spouting Horn marketplace for souvenirs, we spent the rest of our last full day on the island exploring more of the north shore. We drove all the way to the end of the road and parked at Ke'e beach. Then we hiked back down the highway a bit to check out a few of the wet caves we had passed. Actually, we were in search of the "Blue Room"- a cool cave BIL Cory had read about. We ( and by "we" I mean Cori ) kept dodging up little trails off the side of the road to find it. Then we saw a few kids come walking out of the jungle and we asked them where they had been. Sure enough! The had just come from the cave we were looking for. It was weird to us that the little hike isn't marked by anything. There is a bunch of deteriorating asphalt along the walk up to the mouth of the cave, so it used to be a more maintained visitor stop. We were glad to have found it.

The Blue Room gets it's name from the eery blue color that shines from the water at certain times of the day. Also, there are several lava tubes and arches that serve as water passage ways which lead to different caverns. There was a local family there who told us the best time to come for the blue light is between 10-11AM. It was closer to 2 in the afternoon when we got there, and it was overcast and drizzling. But the cave still had an other-worldly aqua glow.

Looking up and out of the cave from the pool inside

Taken along our roadside hike

We hiked back up to the car and changed into our swim stuffs to further examine Ke'e beach. There is a trailhead right at the parking lot. We traveled up this trail for about a mile (possibly less) to get a good vantage of this famous beach. The path was lined with thousands of stones. We were grateful - we'd been hiking in the mud all week!

When we came back down, we got our snorkel stuff and headed into the water. It was about 4PM at this point and the swimming/sunning crowd was dispersing. This was the fourth beach we had snorkeled. We loved how different each location was. Snorkeling at Ke'e was made really interesting by how deep the coral reef is here. You swim along sandy channels with walls of tall, sheer reef on either side. There was a rip tide here that made me a bit anxious. But it was here that Cori and I spotted an octopus. Oh, did I mention the SHARK that Cori swam over at Tunnels beach? *shutter* Or how we could hear the dolphins singing when we were snorkeling off the Napali Coast? I think the four of us agreed that swimming with the sea turtles was about as cool as it got. We saw them at all four locations.

On our way back around the north shore, we stopped in Hanalie to take some pictures of the taro fields.

And we dined on yumminess at Bubba's, burger shack of the famous.

Our last stop had us driving through neighborhoods in Princeville. We were following directions from an online article about how to get to a place called Queen's Bath. There is a little patch of grass on a residential loop that provides parking for the short trail. At low tide, there are several pools that are made in the lava rocks along this beach, thus giving it the name. It was high tide when we arrived, and most of the pools were under the waves. But the cloudy sky teamed up with the setting sun and the ocean to give us a breathtaking show. We stayed until dusk and then made a hasty, poorly-lit retreat to the car.

"Come away, come away..."

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Our last day there was a Sunday. We attended Church with the Kalaheo ward. A piece of paper with Hawaiian lyrics was passed out with our program. The intermediate hymn that Sunday was Secret Prayer, and we sang the verses in English and the chorus in Hawaiian. We thought it was so great. How good is your Hawaiian? Here is what we were given for the chorus:

Me Ka pu le ha a haa,
A ma-na o-i-o-paa
E lo-aa na po-mai-kai
Ko ka lani poe mai-kai

After church, we jammed back to the hotel to get ourselves changed and checked out. Then we headed up Waimea Canyon for one last try at getting any kind of a good view. As I look back over our pictures, I realize they really don't do justice to how cloudy and overcast the island was for about 95% of our stay. The cloud cover finally started breaking up on Sunday, so we thought we had a chance. We got a bit of a view from the first lookout we tried. But the mist quickly rolled in and the lookout higher up was a bust. Guess we have to go back sometime soon...

We took the long way out of the canyon and stopped by the Kauai Coffee Company fields. I had never seen a coffee bean tree/shrub before. The beans looked and smelled nothing like coffee. But we found some dried beans on the ground that bore greater resemblance to the finished, roasted product. Not that we care much about coffee. At all. It was right there, so we explored.

On the way back into Poipu, we stopped at the Koloa Mills shopping center for some shave ice. Cori is pictured here with his tiger's blood/pineapple combo. All Charlie Sheen references aside, the tiger's blood was my favorite flavor.

We had left our bags at the front desk of our hotel after checkout that morning and we had about 45 minutes to kill before our dinner reservation, so we headed back to the Wiohai to chill. It was nice to see the hotel grounds with blue skies and direct sunlight. We pulled up some lounge chairs by the shore, put up our feet, and watched the surfers do their thing until it was time to go. At one point we found ourselves asking why we hadn't done that more during the week. It was intensely relaxing.

Then we headed to Duke's (found at the Kauai Marriott) for some pre-flight eats. On the menu: herb and macadamia nut encrusted Opa, Duke's baked Swordfish, huli chicken, and Duke's famous hula pie (macadamia nut ice cream on a chocolate cookie crumb crust with chocolate sauce and whipped cream). We shared it all, family style. It was a fun restaurant to eat at- located in a little lagoon and right on the beach. And the food was top notch.

During dinner, we mused about living on Kauai. Would it be so bad to buy a cheap little house, flip burgers or drive tour boats for a living, and enjoy simple island life for the rest of our lives? Or just for a few years, even? I think I could do it. I think I could LOVE it. I think Cori might have made the commitment then and there if our babies had been with us. But once the hula pie was gone (a feat which took all of 3.5 minutes) we surrendered to our normal lives and rushed the waiter on our check. Then it was straight to the airport for our red-eyes back to the mainland.

My favorite part of the whole trip was being there with Cori on our anniversary. I am so grateful that this wonderful man of mine likes to travel as much as I do and that we got to see and experience all these amazing things hand in hand. It was a perfect gift!

My sister, Sara, got her undergraduate degree from BYU Hawaii. Her best friend from that experience happens to be a native of Kauai. It was through this connection that we were able to get booked on a catamaran tour of the Napali Coast for a very pocket-friendly sum. We were so appreciative-this tour was one of our favorite outings. We set sail bright and early with Captain Andy's on the Spirit of Kauai out of Port Allen. The ride out was unusually smooth, so we were told. We even had some blue sky and sunshine.

As we came around the west side of the island, we got to sail for a bit with a pod of spinner dolphins. They came right up along the catamaran. We also saw a bunch of sea turtles. The captain was sure to get some Bob Marley going through the speakers - he claims that the wildlife loves it... (We are not so sure)

The Napali Coastline is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen in person. Emerald mountains. White sandy beaches. Jewel-toned waters. Palm trees. Waterfalls. It is no wonder so many movies have been filmed here. It is the stuff of dreams!

It was a six hour tour (we avoided all three hour tours, for the obvious reasons). They served us breakfast as we headed out. After we had sailed the coastline, Captain Kirk turned us back and we docked at some mooring in a little cove for lunch and snorkeling.

We saw caves and lava tubes (above left) and just enjoyed being on the catamaran so much. They even ran up the sails for a little while. The ride back was really choppy. The four of us lined up, tummy down, on one of the trampolines, clutched to the front of the boat for part of the return trip. I laughed (and maybe screamed a little) like a 5-year-old child for a solid half hour. Every time the nose of the catamaran would crest a wave our bodies would lift off the trampoline. We were thrashed by the ocean more than once. Totally worth it.

That night we went to a luau at Smith's Tropical Paradise found at the Wailua Marina. First we took the driven tour of their gardens. The peacocks were in rare form- springtime and all. Then there was a little ceremony to unearth the kalua pork. And then it was chow time. I was a piggie as is evidenced by this next photo. I may have completely cleaned both plates.