Maui: The Valley Island

Well we survived one Island and are ready to take on the second!

We arrived in Maui on Tuesday afternoon; the plane ride was less than an hour so that was nice!

Our first night was in a HOSTEL! It was awesome! We stayed at Patey's Place and had a great time. The first thing I did was shower. It felt like a new experience. Not that we didn't shower at all when we were camping; we showered when we could. But not with warm water. And not in privacy. It's different when you're showering in your swim suit with people almost always around you. To put it lightly it was a nice.

Then we roamed the streets of the Lahaina area near our hostel; walking around the gift shops, art galleries (one of our fav. activities) and restaurants. I bought post cards of coarse and we got snacks like usual. Then we chilled in our hostel after 9pm and fell asleep eventually. The bed wasn't anything special but it felt good to be in a bed.

The next day we went to the Maui Ocean Centre. It was amazing! Full of ocean life that live in Hawaii. What a wonderful experience, expensive but awesome all the same! Of coarse the pictures didn't turn out that well because it was through glass all the time but some are okay. There were unlimited types of fish; squid, crabs, octopus, turtles, and our favourite: SHARKS!
They were amazing to see!






Yeah, it was pretty sweet!

Celebrities...

When we were in one of Kaui's many common grocery stores I happened to glance at someone who looked very familiar....

At first I told Brian I wanted to walk past HIM again to get a better look. So I did this and told Bri HE was definitely a Hollywood star but could not put my finger on who it was. I decided I needed to get another look to figure out for sure.

We got the few items we needed and headed for the checkout. Brian picked the shortest line and I headed straight for this MAN once again. I was a bit unsure of what I was doing because nobody else in the store seemed to think the same as me. No one else wanted to get a look or take his picture. But I continued to study his face (hopefully without him knowing...) and all of a sudden it came to me and I JUST KNEW!

Can you guess the mystery MAN I saw in Food Land....or was it Big Save?....

Ben Stiller...............Pierce Brosnan (James Bond 007)





Donald Trump......................Tom Cruise

Beaches, Beaches, and More Beaches

Today (Monday) is our last full day on Kauai!

The first few days went slow and now this portion of our adventure is already over! Crazy!
Overall we really enjoyed Kauai though. It was just so beautiful! It makes us even more excited about going to Maui and the Big Island.

The past few days we haven't been doing too much but it's been fun and relaxing........exactly what a holiday should be like! We've spent most of our time checking out different beaches to just lay on the beach and soak up the sun.


The beaches we've been to recently or at least seen include:

Kapa'a Beach
Lydgate Beach Park
Nukoli'i Beach
Hanalei Bay
Hanapai Beach
Haena Beach Park
Kee Beach
Kealia Beach

The ones we spend the most time on were Lydgate and Hanalei. They were the nicest to us; which include having grass as well as nice sand plus have a bathroom and shower on the beach!





We also went to see the Ki'lauea Lighthouse and saw the Crater Hill Bay.





The nicest waterfalls we've seen so far in Kauai were the Opaeka'a Falls. They were not that big but were nice to see.

Okay tell me if you think this is a pineapple or not?

Canyon Hike

On day 5 we went on a hike of the Waimea Canyon, so we could see it more close up

than a couple days earlier from the lookout points.





It was such a perfect day for the hike!
The sky was as clear as it will get - not many clouds and no more vog from The Big Island's volcano. We've been planning on doing this hike since we got here and have waited for this day to come. We did the Cliff Trail and the Canyon trail.


It only took us just under 2 hours but we didn't do the whole thing cuz we figured it would take at least 5. We didn't want to commit that much time to the hike so we stopped when we wanted and turned around. We got to see the Wai'alae Falls on our hike which was pretty cool. The canyon was so cool and really made us want to go to the Grand Canyon.......one day! Along the hike we were able to see the canyon quite a bit from different view points and different angles.





The scenery was just amazing. So green and all around us! We spotted another new and unique flower, which is always wonderful. Check out the green prods coming up almost an inch out of the flower! We also so a ginger flower/plant; it even smelled like ginger!


It was a great adventure!

Roosters

Have I mentioned the roosters yet...........

In Kauai (possibly the other Islands too, we don't know yet for sure) the land is run by roosters and chickens. Literally. It's hard to believe that I know but everywhere you look there's a couple of roosters. Yes like the ones on the farm. When I thought of Hawaii I never imagined there being roosters here. Apparently there are no other animals to hunt/eat/kill the roosters so they just took over! They're everywhere!

Anyway I typically don't mind roosters BUT not only do they "cock-o-doodle-do" in the morning around 6am, they also make that horrible sound (and many other sounds) at all hours of the night and morning. They tend to quiet down around 10pm - 3am. Well we haven't stayed up past 11pm yet but haven't had a hard time going to sleep so i think they calm down. I thought that most roosters alarmed us when it was time to wake but..........but these ones just keep going from 3am until 10am. Some of them occasionally go all day long. I think they're confused. It wouldn't be so bad but when you're camping you can't get away from it in any way. Being in a resort or hotel I'm sure would be fine........but we're not.


Needless to say we haven't got to sleep in past 6:30am yet. Well Brian did once; he slept until 8:30am until I went and woke him up. Between the roosters and the spiders and the roaches I get up when I wake up. Sometimes I force myself to go back to sleep if it's before 5am but that's hard to do. Not wanting the bugs and spiders to attack me and just having hear "cock-o-doodle-do" all morning is painfully frustrating and creepy. Having a huge fear of spiders and not liking any instects crawling near me I'm having a hard time at night. As soon as I spot one I panic but Bri tells me I'm handling it really well... He's been super great about it and shakes out everything before we go to sleep and does a thourough spider check every night for me. I don't know what I would do without him! Well not that I want to get into it but I guess if you want to get technical we wouldn't be camping if it was my decision, so yeah.

The main spiders that are ridiculous here are called Cane spiders. They are really quite big, have a big body and long, thick legs. Hairy legs too. Here's a pic incase you didn't quite get the picture:


I want you to also realize that the post he's on is bigger than Brian's hand. With the legs he's bigger than Brian's palm for sure. We've seen 4 too many of these spiders on/IN our tent! They are discusting. I hope I never see another one. The Cane spiders are the main reason why Brian checks the tent for me. Even he doesn't like them.

There are also geckos; a lot of geckos. Everywhere. They are actaully pretty cool, a little creepy sharing the bathroom with but better than the alternative. Take a look at these ones:


By the way last night our tent was spider/bug free! (Possibly because we're in a different and better camp ground now.)

Southern KAUAI

The last few days are kinda a blurr.........everything happened so fast, yet we've only

been here for a couple of days. Six weeks seems like a lifetime!

So far we have spent pretty much all of our time in the Southern
region of Kauai around Waimea, Hanapepe, Poipu, and Lihue.

The highlights of the last 3 days have been:

Drove up to the Waimea Canyon, taking a long (hour) windy road up 4000ft elevation to the top of the Kalalau Lookout. Unfortunately it was a really cloudy and foggy day way up there so we were unable to see that much. We plan on going up there again and actually hiking by the canyon but are trying to wait until it looks like it's cleared up.


Checked out the secluded beach, Mahaulepu, walking along the grassy cliffs along the shore. It was probably the most scenic beach we've seen yet and the ocean was amazing. The waves were too high and hard to go into the water but it was so nice to see. Brian went further along the other side on the sandy beach while I read my book by the water (which by the way I finished yesterday mum!).






We went to a few different beaches to sun tan, snorkel, chill and eat: Poipu Beach Park, Shipwrecks Beach, and Prince Kuhio.






We also went shopping in Poipu and Hanapepe checking out all the Hawaiian jewelery, art, and other souvenirs they have.

That's really all we did, we've spent a lot of time just on the beach which is what our plan is for a lot of the trip. I hope to do a lot more snorkeling and attept to try surfing at some point in Hawaii. We'll see if that happens! Take care and God bless!