Hawaii

First thing in the morning we finished off the pinapple, but we were still hungry, so we had breakfast in the hotel marketplace, then set out to see Waimea Canyon. First we stopped at Spouting Horn, a tourist attraction about 30 minutes West of our hotel. There’s an under water cave in the lava rocks that fills as the waves come in and spouts water out a hole in the top. It looks just like a gyser, the spray is awesome. Depending on the tide it shoots very high. It makes a loud hissing noise as it blows. Apparently, the ancient Hawaiians believed that Kaikapu, a lizard godess, was trapped by a clever fisherman in the lava tube and the hissing is the sound of her angry roar.
There was another little flea market inside the viewpoint park area where all the merchants were selling jewelry – mostly pearls. They are all imperfect, of course, but many are so close to jeweler quality you’d never know. The prices are amazing - $3 for a pair of small pearl earings that aren’t quite round, $10 for a pair that looked about perfect to me. Necklaces were $25 and bracelets $15…I didn’t buy anything, but I wish I’d picked up some earlings and maybe a bracelet. Matt keeps saying we can go back, but it seems silly to drive so far when there are other things we want to do.
Anyway, after Spouting Horn we continued West for another 30 minutes or so to the mouth of Waimea Canyon, then started up. The peak is 4000 feet! That’s the elevation of Salt Lake, but you start from sea level, of course. We only climbed to about 2500 and stopped at a Nature Circle area. There was a class of what must have been traveling students taking pictures and making notes in the area, speaking German to each other. We hiked the loop to the viewpoint area, which was NOT fenced off. It wasn’t quite a cliff, but the grade was extremely slight! I think if you fell you’d fall for a long time without a stop. A bit scary! I ventured out as far as I could to take pictures, but they still aren’t very impressive. It’s impossible to see the scale of the canyon, which is massive, or how beautiful it was. There was a light mist in the air as a result of the humidity, and it made the pictures look almost blurry.
After our little hike we headed back down the mountain. Then we went another 10 minutes West to Kekaha Beach Park, which is where Captain Cook first landed. You can see another island from Kekaha Beach, Niihau.
Niihau is part of Kauai County and is called “The Forbidden Island”. It’s located just 17 miles off the coast of Kauai and is the smallest of Hawaii’s inhabited islands (72 square miles.) The island is open to visitors on a limited basis (helicopter tours) but is almost completely isolated from outside influence. There are only about 250 residents and they live without electricity. Fascinating. http://www.aloha-hawaii.com/hawaii/niihau/

After playing on the beach for a while we started back towards our hotel. We stopped for lunch at the Shrimp Station and ate the best meal we had on the island. The food was amazing. The Shrimp Station was a small building with a large pavilion out front. We stepped up to a small window to order, then waited until they called our name to pick up our food at a second small window. Then we sat at a picnic table under the pavilion to eat. I ordered Coconut Shrimp and Matt ordered the Shrimp Tacos, but we switched about halfway through. The shrimp was so fresh and plump – better by a mile than any shrimp I’ve ever eaten. It was incredible.

On our way home we saw a sign for the Kauai Coffee Visitors Center and decided to stop in. It was fun. The visitors center is made up of two old houses that were once used to house workers back when Kauai Coffee was McBryde Sugar. The place was full of cool memorabilia and had tons of information about how coffee is grown and produced. Quite interesting. Matt tried 3 or 4 coffees and really liked them all. Here’s a link to the Kauai Coffee website http://www.kauaicoffee.com/default.aspx

When we left the coffee plant we headed back to the South Shore area to stop into a Borders books for another book for me, then at a grocery store for more of the ice cream we had become addicted to. Then we went back to the hotel.
It was getting late and we were hungry, so we changed into our swim suits and went down to the hot tub that’s next to the barbecue area and Matt grilled our steaks. We ate Steak, fresh pineapple and Maui Onion potato chips in front of the TV. After dinner we weren’t terrible tired, so we went back to the hot tub for a while. We watched the rest of Superbad before going to sleep.