Yesterday I got up early, not that it really mattered because I was still somewhat running on Central Time, but also...the chickens. Kauai has chickens everywhere. I can only assume they were brought to the island for food purposes, but some got loose at some point. But anyways...the roosters like to start cock-a-doodle-dooing at around 4 am. I can only figure the locals get used to this in the same way you can get used to the sound of airplanes or trains.
But back to what I actually did. So I started out the morning by doing a kayaking trip up the Wailua River to a point where you pull out the kayaks and hike a mile through the mud to Secret Waterfall (I can't remember its Hawaiian name). I have never experienced so much mud in my life! Our guide Judah kept telling us to "Embrace the mud" and so embrace the mud we did. I saw people who definitely weren't expecting all the mud...but then again neither was I, but I was prepared with the right type of shoe. At the end of our trek through the mud was a beautiful waterfall. The water was cold, but after a bit you couldn't really feel anything anymore so it didn't matter. The kayaking trip was interesting. Pretty. But it turns out I'm not very good at kayaking in a kayak meant for 2 people. It took me and my partner a bit of time to figure out how to get on the same kayaking page.
After I got cleaned up (though I still found some mud on my legs this morning that somehow missed my shower scourge), I headed up toward the north end of the island. Kauai is such a beautiful island. Judah told us there are only 70,000 full time residents on the whole island. Lihue (Lee-who-a) is the largest town on the island. My hostel is located in Kapa'a (Kah-pah-ah). But I drove up north through Princeville to Hanalei. In Hanalei I walked around through the shops and scoped out the food. I had already eaten in Princeville, but did manage to find it in me to eat my first Hawaiian Shaved Ice (on this trip...I've had it before, but not on Hawaii). After touring the north side of the island, I made my way back to Kapa'a.
Today I had scuba diving on my mind. This morning I did a two tank dive off the south shore. It even turned out to also be part whale watching tour too! We saw 4 turtles on our first dive and some fish I wasn't familiar with (and some I was). During our surface interval and journey to our second dive site, we saw some whales breach. Not full on insurance commercial breach, but surface and blow out their blowhole sort of breach. Our boat captain said they make their way to Hawaii from Alaska every winter and stay here until March or April. He was surprised they were still around. Underwater you could hear them singing!!! Our second dive was even better than the first. Turtles everywhere!!! Big turtles, little turtles! Sleeping turtles, swimming turtles! So many turtles. I post some pictures when I take a look at my GoPro videos and pictures.
This afternoon I changed my plans. Originally I had planned to stay around the area I was diving, but I decided to head to the western shore and up to Waimea Canyon. Waimea Canyon has been called the "Grand Canyon of the Pacific" and it really is something else. Waimea Canyon is perhaps best known for filming done for Jurassic Park. I hiked the Canyon Trail today, but plan to go back for more tomorrow...as long as my legs are up for it after everything I did today.
I decided since I was out on the west coast of the island that I would just go ahead and drive the road until the end, so I did. I have no traversed the island from the northern town of Hanalei, all the way around to the turnoff for Polihale State Park. My rental car wouldn't be able to handle the pothole-filled gravel road all the way to Polihale SP so I turned around and went to Kekaha Beach to watch the sunset.
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