Hawaii part 5: more Kaua'i

We headed up the road to the North Shore for a beach and snorkel day. Stopped at the Wake Up Cafe for breakfast on the way; here's Alice before coffee:

and here she is after coffee:

We ended up at Haena Beach park, which was supposed to have a great snorkeling site called The Tunnels. We did plenty of snorkeling, and it was ok, but nothing spectacular. Some people said they saw a sea turtle, but I didn't (though since I swam with about six of them last year on the Big Island, I didn't feel too left out!) The reef terrain was pretty cool, with very large coral structures with deep crevasses to explore. Sorry, no underwater pics yet.

After getting lunch in Hanalei, we decided to drive down to the very end of the road and hike the Kalaulau trail along the Na Pali Coast. Ok, well, we weren't going all the way to the end of the trail; it's eleven miles and is supposed to take two days round trip. But there were two interim destinations along the way: the Hanakapi'ai beach and the Hanakapi'ai Valley falls. It was a fairly strenuous hike (especially in Tevas), very rocky with lots of elevation changes. Here are some of the views en route to the beach:





Almost there!

And the beach itself:


We continued the hike through the mango forest to the falls, but about a mile in we decided that we were at risk of running out of daylight if we kept going. So we grudgingly turned around for the three mile hike back to the car.

About an hour before sunset, we saw some kids hiking the rocky hills in bare feet, toting surfboards, presumably on their way to Hanakapi'ai beach. That's HARD CORE.

Here's a pre-sunset pic I took that I thought came out pretty well:

When we got back to the car, we decided to use the remaining daylight on one last snorkel trip. Our expectations were blown away snorkeling at Ke'e beach! Despite the twilight conditions, the water was much clearer, and there were more fish and other interesting reef life than we saw earlier, including spaghetti worms (which I had never seen or heard of prior to my aquarium visit on day 1) and more sea cucumbers than I ever wanted to see.

Had a pretty non-memorable dinner at Duke's at the hotel. Then I was mildly disappointed that we didn't have more champagne and strawberries when we returned to our hotel, but it was a good day nonetheless!