Kauai – Saturday

Whew we’re tired…we’re going to need a vacation to recover from our vacation!!! But we are having a blast!

Today started by going to look for this lady selling Malasadas (Polynesian Taro donuts). The book said she would be set up in front of the Nappa auto parts store in Lihue…so we went to search her out!!! She wasn’t there. I hope she’s ok!

So we headed up to Wailua Falls. This was a “double” fall with a huge pool at the bottom. This was another one of those “tourist spots” so it was very crowded and you couldn’t actually go down to the falls (well I think you can but we decided against a big hike this morning and I think you have to break a few laws to get there!). The falls were beautiful…I think they must have been in some movie because there were a couple of “Movie Tour” buses at the falls. Oh yeah...these are the falls that were in "Fantasy Island".

After snapping some shots at the falls, we headed up the north shore to Ke’e Beach. You get to this beach by going up the North Shore until there is no more road. No kidding…this is the beach at the end of the road. The beach is has a reef starting 20 or so yards off the beach that protects it from the waves so it is nice for swimming. But the cool part of this beach is the snorkeling. This was some of the best snorkeling we’ve don’t the whole time. After swimming out 20-25 yards, you get to the reef and soon you are in ankle deep water…well the water is probably actually 30-40 feet deep here but you can stand up on the reef and the water is ankle deep. Navigating through and over this reef is a chore but the reward on the other side is well worth it. The fish are beautiful…incredible colors…the water is so clear…and we swam with turtles. They weren’t little turtles like you see smeared in the middle of the road in Texas….these were huge…3 ½ to 4 ft. across. You could just float and watch them eat. At one point I was standing on part of the reef with one foot on one wall one on the another and a channel below me…trying to dump the water out of my mask. Then a huge turtle swam right between my legs!!! SO AWESOME. At one point I was swimming along the surface and there was a turtle swimming less than arms length underneath me. I could have reached out and touched it but I didn’t want to spook it.

Ok, then…as if the turtles weren’t enough, there were sharks!! Yep…reef sharks…only a few feet long but nevertheless…they were sharks!! To see them you had to swim down hard 6 or 7 feet and look under this little cave in the reef and they were laying down in the sand. It was so cool!!

We forgot to take pictures of the beach from the beach!! However we got some cool (hopefully cool, we’ll see when we get them developed) underwater pictures. I’ll post them when we get them developed.

We also took some pictures of the mountains from this beach and some caves around the beach...here are a couple of them.

View from the beach up the mountain.

We spent a lot of time in the water here and were pretty exhausted and decided to go in. While walking over the reef, I slipped, my flipper came off, and my leg went down in this whole up to right above my knee…and I landed on my butt!! Dude it hurt!! I now have wounds to prove I was out there. A huge chunk from my foot and several bleeding scrapes down my lower leg. Now that I think of it, it probably wasn’t so good to be out there bleeding with the sharks so close!!!

From Ke’e beach we headed back to Hanalei for some lunch. Lunch today was at Bubba’s Burgers….and excellent little burger joint! Their motto is “We cheat tourist, drunks, and attorneys”!! Then we headed back to “Queen’s Bath” (from Monday). This was one of my favorite parts on the island so we were going to go back one more time (plus Christy lost her first snorkel set there and I was hoping to find it). Then we ran into a new phenomenon on the island…weekend crowds. When we went to Queen’s Bath on Monday there was hardly anyone there…this time, the parking lot (only holds about 10 cars) and all around was packed so we decided to go to a beach we had not visited yet.

We headed down south to “Larson’s Beach”. This is another one of those out of the way beaches that you would never go to if someone didn’t tell you how to get there. The last mile or so is on a (very rough) dirt road and then we hiked down a trail for 10-15 minutes to get to the beach. The book said this was a good snorkeling beach but when we got there, it was pretty rough seas so we didn’t snorkel (plus we were worn out from the morning!). So we just relaxed on this beach. At one point, we were the only two people on this beach. Then this guy came walking down the beach (he had been a few hundred yards up the beach when we got there) to right be hind where we were. Evidently he was a homeless man. He had a few bags there with him and had dug out a small hole that he was resting in. He had several cats with him that he was giving water to. Pretty strange…I wondered what his story was. What kind of luck do you come on that leaves you homeless (if that is what he was) in Kauai.

Then the hike back up to the car….whew! It was a lot farther up that it was down!

This was our least favorite beach of the trip but still beautiful and nice just to kick back and relax.

Here are some pics:

From Larson’s we headed further South (toward home)…did some shopping then had dinner at Kauai Pasta. We ate here a couple of nights ago and LOVED it. The guy that owns it is a Christian…he has DVD’s of sermons from his church, Kauai Missionary Church, for you to take at the front desk. He also gave out “Scripture Mints” as after dinner mints. He seemed like a real cool guy and you could tell from when you walked in that he was…different! You know by different….I mean a Christ follower.

From supper we came home and started packing up for the trip home tomorrow.

Tomorrow morning, we are going to worship with some brothers and sisters here in Kauai. I remember singing at this church both times I’ve been here before and remember their preacher. It’ll be fun worshiping with them but I know we will miss our faith family at home.

After worship, we’re going to do some final shopping…maybe hit another tour…even thinking about another round of golf…and then off to the airport.

More later…