Back From Kauai

So here's a rundown of what we did:

On Tuesday was our snorkel trip -- we got up at 4:00 AM so we could make it down to Port Allen (on what's worse than the opposite side of the circular island) in time for a 6:00 departure.  The boat went over to Niihau where we did snorkeling, over this undersea wall in the ocean (where the depth sharply went from about 20' to 120').  The fish weren't overly interesting, but the water was amazingly clear.  On this same cruise came a view of the Na'Pali coast, which was astounding -- cliffs of anywhere from 1200' to 4100' right up on the ocean, covered in trees.  A camera couldn't do it justice, but we got some pictures of that when we cruised again on Saturday.

Tuesday night to Wednesday afternoon was the "Day from hell". That night, I found a 6" centipede in the bathroom.  The following picture is not of the actual centipede I found, but rather an illustration.   (I quickly got it out of the apartment.  And hawaiian centipedes are so tough that I probably didn't even injure it as I picked it up with a gigantic wad of paper towel.)  That, plus the general dirtiness/mustiness of the place inspired us to move down to the Grand Hyatt in Po'ipu (on the suthern side of the island).

On Wednesday, we were *supposed* do to a night-time version of the snorkeling tour, but route 56 (the only way to get from the northern half to the southern half of the island), was closed down for 2-3 hours, so we had to reschedule that for Saturday.  We managed to get a few sights on the North Shore, including the Kilauea Lighthouse (situated at what's basically the northernmost point on the Hawaiian islands, save a few meaningless islands no one lives on), and finally made it down to the Hyatt that evening, where we had a much better time.

Thursday was our Waterfall day.  We started that morning by getting over to the East side to see Opekaa falls, then moved up north to (try to) see hopee falls.  The latter we're never sure we actually saw, since the hiking trail had several branches, and the main trail reached a dead end before we saw anything.  We went down one branch, saw some of the river that we were on (not sure what the name of the river is) but not really a waterfall.  After that we went down to Li'Hue to take a Helicopter ride (the thing you *must* do if you go to Kauai), which was a blast.  Kauai has more waterfalls than I've ever seen everywhere, and a lot of the best sites you can only see by Helicopter.  We closed off Thursday with a trip to Wailua falls, which is taller (but smaller, waterflowwise) than any of Niagra falls.  All of this, well I've got pictures of it, but even that can't do justice to a lot of what I saw.

We spent Friday morning checking out this Hindu temple near Opekaa falls.  Sadly, because they mentioned it in Ultimate Kauai, it's become this really touristy place, and, we didn't get a chance to see most of the temple, since you can only see those with a guided tour (not available by the time we got a chance to go there).  That evening we tried, and basically failed, to scuba dive.  Oh well.  Maybe we'll get some lessons on that here (some of you may know that New Jersey indeed has a shore).

Saturday was Waimea canyon and the sunset tour.