Catching up

Its been awhile! I'll catch up in sections. First of all, we had an amazing trip to Kauai. It was so beautiful! It was so green and there was so much open space. Maybe it was what Oahu was like many years ago. There are only 30,000 people who live on Kauai. We were there for 4 days and we mainly stayed in Poipu, which is on the southern part of the island. Although the island is pretty small so you can drive around pretty quickly.

Our first day we drove around up to the north shore. We spent a few hours at the beach in South Pacific where she "washed that man right out of her hair". It was exciting (for me at least). Also you could see the part of the mountains that was "Bali Hai" in the movie. They used special effects, but the outline was clear....

On our second day we went on a boat tour of the Na Pali coast. This is the part of Kauai where many movies are filmed.....Raiders of the lost ark, Jurassic Park, Six Days and Seven Nights, among others. We rode in a zodiac boat which is a glamorized raft that the navy seals use. There were 8 of us in our group (that knew each other) and 15 total including the captain and his one man crew. We had to hold onto a rope and sit on the sides of the boat to ride. I was terrified I was going to bounce right out. It was an hour and a half ride to the start of the coast. We saw spinner dolphins and got close to them. The views of the coast were breathtaking and we got to ride the boat into caves cut into the lava rock. It was the most amazing experience. We had lunch and snorkeled and they guided us to a hawaiian village where people lived traditionally until the 1930s. After that, the people left because they were too isolated. There was no one to trade with anymore since other groups had left the area.

During the ride back to the harbor, we were exhausted. I can't remember the last time I was that physically tired. My arms and legs and back hurt from trying to stay in the boat and holding onto that rope. But the scenery had made it worth it. The water was "pirates of the carribean blue" and the mountains were black lava with greenery and waterfalls.

That night we went out for a traditional Hawaiian meal....just kidding...we went out for pizza! Our entire group was so tired!

The next day, we were almost too tired to function. We drove to some scenic sites. We went to the blowhole and Waiamea Canyon. We went to a beach at the end of a long dirt road that was at the end of the longest beach in all of Hawaii. It is 17 miles of uninterrupted sand. The road bypassed some military land. The sand was so hot it was starting to melt my flip flops.

We also hit up the highlight of the trip for me.....glass beach..Glass beach is not really a beach, but a small area of sand near an old garbage dump. Doesn't sound so good anymore, does it?! Well, the point is the beach isn't for swimming, its for sea glass. The entire beach was glass! I will post a close up picture of it. Its considered poor taste to raid the beach of a lot of glass, so I limited us to just pieces that were of particular interest. We found cobolt blue, olive green, yellow and the ultimate of all beach glass....red. The pieces are small, but I cherish them. Brian was really good at helping me find glass. I later found out that the red pieces are from old planes.

Our last day in Kauai, we drove to two waterfalls. They were amazing! We decided we would definitely return to hike sometime. It was unfortunate because we had our hiking gear, but were too sore from the boat ride to do hiking. But flights to Kauai are not too expensive and are only 20 min. So we will return.

We were pretty tired when we got back and then I got behind on my blogging. I will post this and then catch up some more later. I am also working on dvds and photos to mail out.