Hawaii: Part 2

Okay, here is part 2. Welcome to Kauai- The Garden Isle. We had an amazing time, what a difference from Honolulu! You come off the jetway and are almost outside among the plants and wildlife. We rented the car and headed to our hotel on the only highway on the island.

Let's just get the chickens out of the way, shall we? We joked that the chicken was Kauai's state bird. Every time we saw one by the road Alma would say "Chicken!", every time. Here is a chicken with her little babies walking around the parking lot of our resort.

Here is a self portrait of us in the car- we take a lot of these. We were getting ready for the big hike.

This is Tree Tunnel- appropriately named as you can see. Kauai is so amazingly green. There are wild mango and banana trees just lining the roads. Everywhere is green and rain foresty.


See I told you-- green! Here is Alma on the trail we had read so much about- it leads to the beautiful NaPali coast, well as close as you can get by foot.

More from the hike.
Here is my National Geographic cover photo. I love this photo and it is still nothing compared to the actual view. This is the NaPali coast. Amazing.


A wild avocado tree. Had these been ripe I would have eaten them right there!

Found someone nice to take our picture. You might see this one again in a Christmas card.

Taro plantation.

Here I am being "out-doorsy". We kayaked up the Hanalei River, into the ocean and over to Hideaway Beach to snorkel. We had never done any of these things before, but we loved it. Snorkeling was great, especially with life vests on, because you just floated around and looked at the amazing world under the surface of the water. I never realized that the waves I was playing around in were so full of life. We saw amazing fish and had a blast. I would recommend this to anyone.

Here is a sea turtle we saw playing around in the ocean waves.

Waimea Canyon on the west side of Kauai. It was a nice drive and the view was astounding. We could even see neighboring island Niihau.


Another amazing part of the journey to west Kauai was JoJo's shave ice. The best I had on this trip, and trust me I tried a lot of shave ice.

And here is the deliciousness of JoJo's with coconut cream on top. This is a very happy Amber.

We used a great Kauai guide book and found a lot of things that we wouldn't have known about
otherwise. We found a hike to this small fall, it was very secluded we only saw 6 other people the whole time.

Wailua Falls.

Self portrait in front of Wailua Falls. We tried to have someone take our picture, but they did a way worse job, you couldn't even see the water. We laughed, erased it and took our own.

This was the beach at our resort. It was never crowded. Good waves and sand. The little restaurant had great food and it was so relaxing to sit and eat lunch or breakfast with the ocean as your entertainment. I had a funny run in with this particular part of the ocean, something I will request to be replayed for me in heaven. I got knocked down by a wave and spent 10 minutes recovering my sunglasses from the waves that came every 7 seconds. Little kids were trying to help me rescue them. I would spot them and dive- only to have another wave nail me from behind and send the glasses out of reach. By the end of the adventure I had salt water in my eyes, a pound of sand in my swimsuit bottoms, and intact sunglasses in my hands-- totally worth it.

We loved Kauai and would definitely go back in a heartbeat.