Hawaii - March 2011 (long)

elgauchogrub · May 6, 2011

Prior to a couple months ago the last time I was in Hawaii was either 1983 or 84 depending on whether or not the labeling on the slides I found in my parents garage is correct. I'll just say up front that there's no way it will be another 25 years before a return trip!

We flew into Kauai, when we left Seattle it was 33 and threating snow, upon arrival in Kauai it was 68 with a nice breeze. Winning!

Our flight had arrived around 10:00 PM so after navigating down to the south shore we crashed out pretty quickly and in the morning woke up to this:

I know, awful right? Since we were up we walked up the road to a place called Joes on the Green for some breakfast. It's not to surprisingly right on the edge of a golf course and they've got a great Loco Moco, and my wife had some mac nut pancakes with coconut syrup. While we were eating the local residents hung out waiting for an opportunity to share our breakfast:

After breakfast we wandered back towards Poipu to check out the scenery:

Then we headed off to do some shopping for breakfast and lunch type stuff for the next few days. Later we met a friend down at the beach for Mai Tai's and had to tolerate this view:

The next morning we were up bright and early for a day long kayaking, hiking, zip lining trip which was all happening at the Kipu Ranch which has been the home to many notable movies including Raiders of the Lost Ark and Jurassic Park. No dinosaurs were spotted, but we did stop at the rope swing from the opening of Raiders which was sadly broken denying me my chance to swing into the river and escape in a sea plane :wink

Here we are kayaking up the river:

And a couple shots from the hike up to the zip line course:

Then for the main event, we got trussed up in harnesses and what not and then hit the wire so to speak. We did a shorter 800 foot zip line and then moved onto the monster sized 1800' zip which is actually a parallel setup so we both went at the same timed. This presented me the first chance I'd had to try shooting some video on my spanking new D7000, and yes I did have it in a death grip

I'll give a quick shout out to Outfitters Kauai, who we booked both tours with. The guides were all great, things were well organized we just had a great time on both trips.

After the bike ride I went and did some snorkeling as the cloudy weather rolled in.

Glad to have it, but even more glad that I didn't need it!

There was pretty sparse sea life around Poipu, but I did run into this guy:

Sadly that was the end of our time in Kauai, but before you start feeling any sympathetic we still had four more days on the big island in Kona. My wife has family there who put us up in their extra condo (usually a rental) and we got right back into the life of leisure.

First off there was a big seal that decided to show up on the beach behind their building which is apparently an annual occurrence though they don't know if it's the same seal or not.

With all that excitement out of the way we headed up the coast to check out some of the other fancy hotels up past the airport. On the way back we caught a high-speed sunset:

The next morning we set off to go to the volcanoes but got side tracked with a nearly empty parking lot at the black sand beach and decided to take advantage of it.

There's an interesting pond and a couple burnt out buildings behind the beach

Leaving the beach we stopped at the Punalu'u bakery for a quick snack, where once again the local scavengers were waiting for a handout:

Our last full day in Kona we decided to take a snorkeling trip up to Kealakekua Bay where the Captain Cook monument is. Trivia: Did you know that the 20x20 plot of land the monument sits on is actually British Soil? True story, it was deeded to the British Government) Anyhow the bay there is beautiful both above and below the water:

Aloha Hawaii, lets see each other again soon okay?