Kauai

Kauai is the smallest and oldest of the 4 large Hawaiian islands. It also claims to be home to the wettest spot on earth, some areas that get an average yearly rainfall of nearly 39 feet. Kauai's age, combined with the rain, results in an island that has been heavily eroded over time. In sharp contrast to Maui and the Big Island, the volcano that created Kauai has been carved into an ornate, cliff ringed plateau rising abruptly 5,200 feet over the surrounding landscape. Deep canyons run off the mountain, carving cliffs c into fantastic shapes littered with high waterfalls that evoke a lost, primitive world. It's no surprise that over 70 movies and shows have used the island as a backdrop.

The north end of the island looks like Cambodia, but instead of rice they are growing Taro.

Another result of all the rain is that Kauai has rivers. No other Hawaiian island has rivers. But to say it is so rainy is misleading. Like many of the islands, most of the rain falls on one side. As the trade winds smack right into the Na Pali coast, the air is forced straight up the mountainside, and through adiabatic cooling produces rain at the top. The southern portions of the island are much drier, often enough to expect sunshine every day.

In sharp contrast to the north, the south end of the island looks semi-arid.

Waimea Canyon on a cloudy, rainy day.

Waimea Canyon on a sunny day.

 

Waimea Canyon at dawn. Are you getting it yet?

My first night on Kauai I discovered that it is a cursed island. In 1992 Typhoon Iniki did a substantial amount of damage to the island. The entire ecosystem of the island was changed when a chicken farm was destroyed, releasing all the birds into the wild. There are no predators on the island, and as a result the whole place has become overrun.

We had flown in late and didn't check into our hotel until 11pm. At 3am I woke up to roosters crowing. It was so loud it sounded like it was right outside my window. It went on until I got up later that morning. The first thing I did was go outside to see how far off these roosters were. They were directly outside my window. Additionally, they were on the porch, on the walkway to the car, all over the parking lot, in fact, there were roosters and chickens all over every surface of the ground in all directions. They were actively reproducing. To kill a few was pointless. I thought I would go crazy.

It was enough to make me completely re-prioritize my vacation. We spent the morning finding a new hotel to stay in, being sure to not only look at the rooms but also to walk all over the grounds and count chickens. Before noon we found a nice resort that was almost chicken free. I found out at night that they had large feral cats that helped take care of the chickens in the area.

The lithified cliffs near Poipu are a fun walk offering tidal pools, hidden surfer caves, and a secluded beach at the end of the cliffs.

This tidal pool had a lot fish and sea cucumber to mess with.

On one occasion, Maree and I were eating some sandwiches at a community park, in a covered picnic area to stay out of the sun on a hot day. There were some tennis courts and ball fields around us before the park stopped at the edge of the jungle. We were the only people there, but in no time at all chickens and roosters began to emerge out of the thick trees and walk towards us, slowly, like zombies. Some of them would try to half fly over the fences, others took their time and walked around the long way. Withing minutes there were two dozen chickens and roosters at our feet, milling about and eyeballing our sandwiches. Maree began to get nervous, the roosters began to compete for position, and still more chickens streamed out of the jungle. It was such a crazy experience I deemed Kauai the victim of a Zombie Chicken Apocalypse. I dove at them and they scattered like frightened lunatics.

Locals encourage you to kill the chickens at your leisure. I set about the task wholeheartedly, but they seem to have adapted to constant attempts on their lives and have become quite skittish. Even running over them can be challenging. I did manage to smash into one with the corner of my car, on the last day we were there. It squawked, and in my mirror I saw it tumble of into space like Darth Vader's damaged tie fighter. 

A close up view of a Taro field. 

This bridge was really fun to drive over.

East Maui

By Maree Shogren

The road to Hana was only 60 miles long, but it took us four and a half hours to get to our destination. It was beautiful on that side of the island and not very populated since it was so hard to get to. Unfortunately, we had only planned a day trip and in retrospect should have planned to stay in Hana for at least a couple of days.



We finally reached the parking lot of the Seven Sacred Pools with only a few hours of daylight left and we didn't look forward to driving back on that road in the dark. We decided to hike up to Kupulua Falls first and then visit the pools on the way down. It was a hot, sunny day with a cool ocean breeze so the 1.5 mile hike up into the bamboo forest was delightful after that long, stressful drive. As we ascended into the forest, I was in awe of the bamboo. I'd never been in a bamboo forest before and I was surprised by how dense it was and how quickly it grew. Bamboo can grow up to 3 feet in one day given perfect conditions to do so. It seemed they were 100 feet high. What I found particularly interesting was the way the forest sounded. When gusts of wind blew through the forest the bamboo clanged against each other sounding like giant wooden chimes you'd hear on someone's front porch or a creepy or a creepy wooden dock full of huge old sailing frigates. I loved listening to it, but as the sun started to sink in the sky and the forest got more and more dense the further we went up...I started to get a little frightened. I think a bamboo forest after dark on a windy night would be a very creepy place to be.

There were many pools to investigate along the way and the trail started to take on a more groomed look with the addition of stairways and boardwalks. There were even livestock gates we had to go through and be sure to close behind us so that none of the cows would get loose. The falls were 400 feet straight up a cliff wall, but Hawaii was experiencing a drought when we were there so there wasn't much water coming from the falls. It was a serene place for a quick break before we decided to head back down the trail. Sunset was still coming, after all.

When I had gone to Maui before, the Seven Sacred Pools were much more full, and I had even jumped off a cliff into the main pool which was overflowing into the ocean. There were warnings to be sure not to get sucked out to sea because of a shark's den under that opening. On this day the water level was far lower and if you jumped from the cliff, you would undoubtedly bump your noggin, or worse. Since daylight was dwindling, we decide not to take a dip and to head back to the other side of island. For some reason the traffic was considerably lighter, probably the fear of impending darkness, so Adam was able to race back to the hotel an hour and a half faster than on the way in. That's a big difference for a 40 mile drive, especially considering we never stopped for photos on the longer drive!

There's a beach at the end of the road in Makena, appropriately called 'Big Beach , that we had heard about. It was pretty crowded when we went to check it out so we decided to venture where most people were not going to go. There was a smaller beach just past Big Beach where we parked and then walked down a trail along the coast for a half mile until we reached the lava flows. Apparently, the lava flows were only a couple hundred years old and we were walking on the same trails that King Kamehameha had walked on not so long ago. The area was rampant with wild goats. They got around really well considering the terrain was so inhospitable.

It was a pretty hot day, and the heat emanating from the black lava felt like I was being scorched. You could see heat waves in every direction. We were looking for a private beach aptly called 'The Oasis” which was supposed to be about another 2 miles on the flows. We were trying to follow the markers in a guide book that we had borrowed from a friend, but the markers were hard to find.

Finally, we were starting to walk by an area with palm trees all around it by the coast and we could hear the waves crashing. We made our way down to the beach and it truly was an oasis. Because of the high surf warnings during our stay, we weren't able to go in the water very much, but this oasis had a perfect breakwater – lava. The beach was fairly small with white sand, but you couldn't walk barefoot because of the pricker bushes that had littered the beach with unpleasantly large thorns. The bushes, a plague on the island, were introduced by insane missionaries. They were so misguided about reality that they though it would be a good idea to plant thorn trees all over the island for the sole reason of getting the native Hawaiians to start wearing clothes.

We were in our own little cove with the breakwater where the waves would come, bounce of off the cove walls and then again off of the breakwater, so you got two waves for the price of one! It was a lot of fun, but also a lot of energy to expel while not trying to killed by the waves. We spent a good amount of time there before heading back on the lava which seemed especially hot after our cool sojourn. I noticed that a lot of plastic Nike emblems from the back of tennis shoes littered the trail on the way back. The sharp lava made my shoes a little worse for wear too. We also had the pleasure of witnessing some nude sunbathers who thought they had some privacy...or maybe not.

Maree climbs a tree in a cool grotto on the way to a surf spot.


The view of the west crater from our hotel on the southwest side of the island.


The view of the western crater from another famous surf spot on the northeast side of the island. It looks pretty much the same.

Maui Island Excursions

During the week in Maui we bought a few guided excursions. One was for snorkeling. Unfortunately due to high surf we were stuck snorkeling in sub prime areas and the tour pretty much turned into a wildlife cruise. Whales were breaching the water all over the place, massive schools of dolphins were swimming along with the boat, and we even saw a couple of sea turtles, something new for me.


You don't have to travel to the Amazon or Borneo to see something like this, we've already got it in the United States of America.

We took a helicopter tour to Molokai. I wanted to see the cliffs on that island, which are supposed to be the highest sea cliffs in the world. My experience with the small helicopter in Panama had me stoked for the "doors-off" tour offered by a company called AlexAir. This turned out to be a bad idea. The helicopter they put us on was a different, much larger model than the one pictured on the website for the doors off tour. The larger sized aircraft created huge amounts of turbulence in the cockpit that buffeted us all over the place. It was extremely difficult to hold yourself steady, i even had to hold my glasses onto my head so i could see properly.







Additionally, the tour was very rushed. The pilot seemed to be in a hurry, never slowing down, certainly never stopping, and turning around pretty quickly after we got to the cliffs. In general i felt like the whole operation was pretty shoddy and misleading every step of the way. I would advise against using AlexAir.

Molokai itself was a pretty neat island. It's to the west of Maui, long, narrow and far less populated. The cliffs on the west side of island are indeed enormous, and there's really no way to see them other than by the air or by boat. One surprise was that we got to see the second highest waterfall in Hawaii pouring down those cliffs.






The cliffs of Molokai are 3,000 feet high.


I didn't catch the name but this is the second highest waterfall in Hawaii.

Although the buffeting was pretty annoying and even uncomfortable, i was still having a good time with the scenery. I didn't notice though, that Maree was scared to death about what was going on. Apparently she was horrified every time the helicopter would tilt sharply on it's axis during a sharp turn.


I wanted to see where this canyon led and the creek in the bottom of it.

One of our last days on the island i just couldn't take it anymore and decided i needed to go investigate what the "real" Maui was like. There was a pretty cool trail system on the top of Haleakala. You can hike from the very top of the volcano, at 13,000 feet, down through the crater system, through the high steppe, and down all the way to the ocean. They have a few cabins you can stay in too. I didn't have the time or equipment to do that, but looking down into the summit crater made it look like an attractive idea. Instead i decided one afternoon to try and hike cross country down this canyon on the southwest side of the island.



We'd driven by it numerous times. There was an undeveloped neighborhood that got close to the bottom of the mountains. From a water tank on top of a hill you could look up this canyon, and it looked like on the other side of the canyon was an old stone wall. I assumed there must be a trail over there. First i tried walking down the canyon, crossing the bottom and then going up the other side. Turns out the grass down there was up to my shoulders and hiding all kinds of loose treacherous rocks and logs. So i went back up, drove down the hill to the main road and tried to find the highest point i could get to on the other side of the canyon. Continuing on foot i followed an old overgrown jeep trail until it petered out, then angled my way over to where i thought the wall and theoretical trail would be.


The views were getting very nice on top of the ridge. The canyon lies at the bottom of the opposite hillside and in the foreground you can see those annoying chaparral like thorny bushes.

I don't know about the jungle, but these grassy fields were much more difficult than meets the eye. The ground was still completely covered in loose rounded lava rocks of random size. The grass was prickly and bushy enough to obscure all those stones. But the worst thing out there were these scraggly bushes covered in long thorns. They had a way of reaching out and grabbing you from 3 feet away and made a great support beams for tons of occupied spider webs stretching out between them. I'm told these plants are not native, but another example of a plant introduced for some other purpose that ended up ruining paradise.


From here you could keep going right up the mountain. Not visible in this small picture is a waterfall pouring off the side of that mountain in the clouds.

I couldn't believe it, but i never found the stone wall. I think i misinterpreted part of the old exposed lava flow. Once i got over there i realized i was making terrible time. The canyon was long and my best chance for seeing something was to go straight up the side of a nearby ridge that would get me up out of the deeper grasses and away from all the annoying bushes. It took a bit of effort but was well worth it once on top. I realized right away i should have just gone up the ridge from the very beginning. The view was great and the ridge continued for a very long way, potentially offering a route halfway up the mountain to much higher ridge. Once up there things were pretty nice but the sun was setting, so i had to hurry back. After a three hour excursion without seeing anybody else at all i was in a very good mood when i got back to the car at the end of twilight. Finally some relax time! But man, my ankles were super itchy from all the burrs and seeds stuck in my socks. Fortunately there were nice beaches and ocean waves that could remedy that particular condition very quickly....

Maui

Only a month after getting back from Panama i was forced to leave 3 weeks of sub zero temperatures and head to Hawaii. Panama had been planned on kinda short notice, but we'd bought our tickets to Hawaii the previous summer, which is when you need to do it if you want to find a hotel room or rental car. Hawaii was the only state i hadn't been to aside from Maine. Now that i have been there, i can say that Hawaii is the best place you can go during winter in Alaska. On a direct flight you can go from -30F to tropical paradise in only 4.5 hours, just an hour longer than a typical flight to Seattle.





Maui is very small, only 50 miles long and 25 miles across at it's widest point, but it takes FOREVER to get anywhere due to low speed limits and excruciatingly slow tourist traffic. For instance, the road to Hana is only 40 miles long, but it took us four hours to drive it, solely because people seem to enjoy driving an average speed of 6mph and there are almost no places to pass. Sure, it's an old narrow road built on cliffs with 600 sharp turns, but if the fastest driver i came across was a large, fully loaded dump truck, i can only make the conclusion that the other drivers were idiots.


Surfing makes you assume a lot of weird poses.


There were several girls out who were quite good, and actually much faster than the guys at turning and twisting. This girl was one of the best and most daring.


But she was greedy and eventually got stuck between a rock and a hard place.


Not gonna make it..... Or is he?


This guy had some good times too.




Nowhere left to run.

The other major turn off for the place was the robbing of your pocket book and the seemingly unified "branding" of the Hawaiian experience. There were a select few songs by various artists that were played in nearly every single shop, hotel, restaurant, and even airport that we found ourselves in. You were force fed these songs everywhere you went. Most of the the food is expensive, which i expected, but we also ran into annoying hidden fees like being charged a daily fee to park at the hotel, where there were no other choices. It made you suspicious anytime you signed up for anything else. The whole experience was quite a shock that left a sour taste in my mouth after the isolated, relaxing atmosphere i enjoyed in Panama only a month earlier.

Aside from the major complaints though, Maui, (or i imagine any of the Hawaiian Islands) is a place you really should go if you want a nice tropical vacation and want to still be in the United States. It blows away everything else the country has to offer, and is an ideal winter get away for my situation. I already want to go back this coming winter.


A very cool blowhole.

The terrible cold weather we left in Anchorage was actually so powerful that it affected our vacation in Hawaii. Strong winds from under the door of our house to the north were causing a cold snap in Hawaii too, making the locals feel very cold. It still felt great to us but the cool high winds did prevent us from doing much swimming on the beaches. On the other hand, they made for some great surfing conditions on a couple of the days. From what i hear we never hit the surfing locations on exactly the right days but one day we drove around the west side of the island for sightseeing and found ourselves taking a long break at Honolua Bay.




Some high rollers going by.

Honolua Bay is a famous surfing spot, and indeed, there were many surfers out there both times i visited. It's a great place to sit and watch because of this little cape that sticks out into the wave action. As such you get a great view of the surfers with some of them even riding past you and beyond. Additionally, were on the island during mating season for humpback whales, and it was cool to see a guy or girl surfing a wave with a huge whale breaching out of the water behind them. I have a hard time just laying on the beach doing nothing but the surfing gave me the entertainment i needed to just relax and let the time go by.




A lot of neat, weird rock formations to wander through. The rock on the right demonstrates a kind of wind erosion i've often seen in the desert.

Farther up the west coast was another fun spot: a blowhole down on some crazy looking lava terraces and a newborn whale leaping out of the water with it's mother just a few dozen yards away from the cliffs. This blow hole was shooting up 60 feet in the air very regularly. The high winds on this northern tip of Maui were creating some huge waves that were crashing into the cliffs. Down at the level of the blowhole you could stand right at the edge of the lava and watch the crests of these beasts roll by just a couple of feet underneath you. They came in sets of course, with each wave being a bit bigger than the last. The last in the set was usually big enough to crest the terrace as it went by, sending spray all over everyone as it continued on before making a huge explosion of water when it hit the mainland. I took a long time trying to get a perfect shot, which i never came close too (in fact i was screwing up my photos all week) while Maree collected green and amber crystals in some of the rocks.




This grass is way deeper than it looks.

I think a lot of people on the road turn around after the blowhole because there was virtually no traffic after that point. Maybe because the road becomes narrow enough that it is sometimes one way only winding along the cliffs. This was by far the most pleasant driving experience i had while on the island. It eventually goes by some small peaceful communities of locals with no businesses and a few by a few ranches on incredibly nice property luring passersby with wine or small art galleries.


Kahakuloa Village