Feb. 19, 2012:  East side and Poipu

Another windy day with rain early and some more near sunset.  But the rest of the day had lots of blue skies, puffy white clouds, and lots of sunshine.  Another beautiful day in paradise. 

After we kicked around the condo for the morning and enjoying the ocean views, did some laundry and ate breakfast in our room, Ken was worn out and in need of a nap.  So while he slept, I took a walk along our coast from our condo.  I had never gone south from KBV, so decided to walk that way this time.  (All the pictures are facing north because of the direction of the sun)

There is a little park just south of KBV, but I don't think visitors ever go there.  Seems to only be used by surfers and not many of them.  With the reef all along the coast there, I'm surprised they choose to surf there. 

The beach finally ended at a bunch of rocks.

After wandering the rocks and managing not to hurt myself, I decided I better go before my luck changes.  It was an interesting walk with lots of photo ops.

Finally I made it back to the resort and our oceanview condo.

A little more piddling around the condo, then we were off to Poipu.   It was probably the most crowded I've ever seen it.

I was surprised how poor the snorkeling was there today, too.  Usually I like to snorkel in front of the lifeguard area because the water is shallow and there use to be a lot of fish there.  But today there were very few and the water wasn't much clearer then Lydgate.  We didn't even find the other side of the tombula to be very good today.  But we did see a few interesting critters, such as this poor little fellow with it's back missing something.

And this interesting marked eel. 

But the water felt great.  We heard on the tv earlier today that the waters around Kauai this year are 74 degrees.  Feels chilly stepping into the water, but a quick dunk and all's well.

After a couple hours at Poipu, we sat on the beach a bit watching the commotion.  Along with the usual chickens, there was even a monk seal there.  The lady standing in this picture is with the monk seal patrol.  Ken talked to her for quite awhile.  Learned that the dark fur on the seals is new fur and that they're tagged for either research or for the island they were born on.  The one at Poipu today was a research one not born on Kauai and estimated to be 6 or 7 years old.  She also said it had signs of having been bitten by a tiger shark at one time.  She was a very interesting and personable volunteer.

By 5, the clouds rolled in and it looked like sunset would be out again.  So we packed it up and decided to head to Kalaheo Brick Oven pizza.  LOVE their salami pizza!  So we had our $30 single ingrediant pizza fix for today.  Good thing we ate hot dogs yesterday!

While eating, it looked like the clouds were blowing over, so we hurried up and ate, then took off to Salt Pond to see if there would be a good sunset.  We actually got caught in rain on our way there, so pulled over at the canyon overlook.  We were treated to a spectacular double rainbow going right into the canyon.  At this point, I didn't even care if we saw a sunset!

But we still made it to Salt Pond for sunset and were treated to a pretty good one---considering there were no clouds there.

Even saw the green flash--barely visible here.

One last sunset picture before heading back to the east side.

Now to head off to Safeway for a few more breakfast groceries to end another great day on kauai.