Got up early, 6am our time. It looks to have poured rain a few hours earlier. Angie actually woke up at 3am our time but luckily was able to get a little more sleep. We had breakfast at the hotel. They offered a buffet. The breakfast sausage and oatmeal was good but a lot of the hot food was cold. We started driving toward Waimea Canyon. We stopped at many scenic points along the way. Waimea Canyon is known as the “Grand Canyon of Hawaii” as named by Mark Twain. It also has the distinction of being the wettest spot on Earth and even gets significantly more rain than other parts of the island. One year they set a record of over 600 inches of rainfall.
On the way back we took an alternate route, it was less scenic but cut about 5 miles off the trip. We drove to Poipu to see the spouting horn. This was a pretty cool site to see. The water eroded a hole in the coral from below, water rushes in underneath through a water cave and the pressure forces a jet of water through the hole. There was a chain link fence in front of the water, so there was no chance of anyone falling in. You might have heard about the two other places where tourists had fallen into one of these areas.
After checking out the horn, we went looking for lunch. We found a little mall and had lunch at a place called Bubba Burgers in Poipu. The food was good, portions decent and the price was reasonable. Finding all three on Hawaii is always hard to do. After lunch, it was our mission to find our favorite shave ice place. After 20 years, could it still be in business? If I recall, the place was known as Jo-Jo’s an after some Internet searching we figured out that we had missed the shave ice shop after our visit to the Spouting Horn so we turned around and drove back 10 miles Waimea, to go to Jos for the best shave ice on Kauai. It was worth the detour. Order yours with ice cream on the bottom. A piece of advice for those looking to go to Jo-Jo’s; I recommend not going to the store on the main street. Instead, there is another shop about 100 feet around the corner on the side road. It’s a smaller shop, but for some reason the atmosphere is nicer and it’s where all the locals go.
After we finished our shave ice, we drove back to the hotel and went to the pool. It’s an awesome pool as you can partially see from the picture. The pool is only 4 feet deep at the deepest part, so no diving is allowed. At each point of the stars, there are spitting lion fountains. They spray water on you when you go under them. For some reason though, they turned them off at 5pm.
After making many trips to the concierge to try and book a sailing cruise, we booked our own reservation for a dinner cruise on the Na Pali Coast. The concierge called the tour companies and told us that nothing was available. She obviously didn’t call the cruise company because when I called 10 minutes later, they told me they had plenty of room. Apparently, they only call a booking agent. After taking care of our own reservation, we sat and ordered some tropical drinks overlooking the pool. Angie ordered a lava flow and a pina colada for Steve. After finishing our drinks, we went to dinner at Dukes. They have a great salad bar with a lot to choose from. Angie had BBQ chicken and ribs (huh? guess she doesn’t like my BBQ anymore.) and I had their fish of the day which was Ahi. After dinner we walked back along the beach.
The next morning we got up early and headed out to eat breakfast at Eggberts. We wanted to see if the old place was still the same. We found it inside of a mini-mall. Nothing like what it used to be. If I recall correctly, it used to be inside a house, but this one was more of a open air restaurant with a bar. The food was still good, we both had pancakes. I guess things change after 20 years and two hurricanes.
We headed over to the Fern Canyon cruise, but we missed the 9:30 tour by 5 minutes. So we decided to drive up to the north east side of the island. We didn’t really have time to stop and do any hiking, but we wanted to say we had driven all the way around the island. Somewhere I have photos from last time when we hiked through the lava tubes. The road has several one-lane bridges and was very crowded with cars when you reached the end of the road. We do not remember it being this crowded, but then again, we usually don’t vacation in the mid-summer months while kids are out of school. After reaching the end of the road, we drove back down and around the island and went back to Waimea for shave ice (again!). It rained several time on us on the way down. The funny thing is that most of the rain didn’t make it inside the car, even with the top down. Only when we had a heavy but short downpour did we barely get wet.
After getting our shave ice, we drove back to Port Allen for our cruise. We checked in and grabbed a burger while we waited to board the boat. The cruise was a 4 hours dinner cruise that sailed up the Na Pali coast, we booked the tour through Captain Andy. We boarded the southern star catamaran. There was only about 29 people on board. they normally have about 48. I figured it was because the concierges kept telling people it was full 😀
The cruise out of Port Allen was nice as the water was not too rough. I was able to find a great spot at the front of the boat where I didn’t get too wet or large splashes didn’t reach me. On the way up the coast we passed barking dog beach. This is where the US Navy has a missile testing site. We learned that they do not explode their missiles, but after their fuel is spent, they go and retrieve them. That’s a great way not to blow $5mil on a test. Along the way we saw several sea turtles. They would just float along looking like drift wood, and then suddenly dive under the boat. We passed many unique features of the coast. One that looks just like the profile of King Kong. There are many waterfalls along the coast as well as many remnants of waterfalls that had been diverted for the plantations.
All of the cliffs are made of volcanic rock, so scaling them is pretty much impossible as they break away under the weight. At the base of the cliffs, there are many sea caves. These caves are open to small boats and several tour companies take you inside them. As we reached the furthest north part of the trip we could see the Na Pali hiking trail. From the boat it doesn’t look like they are wide enough for anyone to walk on, but we could see about a half a dozen hikers on the trail. I wouldn’t mind doing that hike one of these days. I am sure I would have to go alone though, as I don’t see this as something Angie would be interested in doing. As we started to turn around the rains started. The crew raised the sails so that we could sail back under wind power.
We were greeted with a lovely rainbow. In fact later on, we saw a triple rainbow.
As we sailed back, I went up to the bow of the ship and immediately we were surrounded by a pod of dolphins. They swam at the front of our boat jumping and diving ahead of us. At one point, I counted at least 12 of them in a line in front of our boat. This was an amazing site to see and will be something to remember. The chef served dinner and our meal consisted of a Cesar Salad that was yummy, rib-eye steak and grilled shrimp, and an apple-banana pie for dessert. The food was amazingly good for a tour and we were not underfed. After dinner, we enjoyed the sailing on the way back. Two other boats were sailing with us as we continued down the coast. The wind started to die down, so we had to continue the cruise under engine power. Just before we reached the dock, the sun started to go down. Although it was a bit cloudy, it still made for a great sunset. We pulled back into the harbor and disembarked. We then drove back to the hotel.
