2011-Feb. 13: Lawai, Poipu, Hanapepe

Finally, a little sun---at least for awhile. It was definately time to get in the water! With the weather still questionable, we headed south. First we went to probably our favorite snorkel area on the south side, Lawai.

One of our fishy friends---a rock mover.

We saw more bird wrasses this year then we normally do. This colorful one is a male.

A view back towards the beach from out by the outter reef. The water's much clearer out there then nearer to the beach. It's also very shallow out there.

After a couple hours in Lawai, we decided to go check out Poipu. We were welcomed by a local monk seal.

Snorkeling is great here, too. Here is one of the many unicorn fish around Kauai.

And a Christmas Wrasse.

A view of the calm Poipu waters while I was waiting for Ken to join me.

We headed off to Brick Oven Pizza in Hanapepe for an early dinner. This is another favorite place of ours. We even hit the Brick Oven Pizza buffet in Kapaa for dinner twice this trip.

We headed back to Poipu Beach after dinner hoping to catch a pretty sunset.

Unfortunately we were foiled again. The clouds rolled in and by sunset they had pretty well taken over.

As I recall, it even started raining on our way back home.

2011-Feb 11: South Kauai

Still feeling the jet lag, we weren't in the mood to go snorkeling today. Or was it because of the clouds, vog and rain?! Anyway---we first headed to K-mart and got a few items, including malasadas from the little stand by the K-mart entrance. That's the first time we were there when the stand was open. I was a bit surprised with the taste of malasadas. We had them once before from another stand and they reminded me very much of funnel cake. These ones were much more chewy. Still good, but different from what we had before. Maybe the others were made with funnel cake mix and these were real malasadas? (We had some, again, in 2013, from an ABC store in Maui and those were quite different in taste and texture, too!)


We headed south from Lihue in hopes of finding sun. Instead, we found more rain. Not heavy, but it was totally overcast. So we wandered around the little free garden by the McBryde/Allerton main office. All these years we thought this tree was an Ironwood. We found out this trip that they are Rainbow Eucalyptus.

Found another of the colorful yellow spiders here.

 Plumeria

Hybiscus

ginger

 orchids

 Have no idea what these are. They remind me of tucan beaks.

Even visited the gift shop there. It really has some interesting items in it!

While we were in the area, we checked out the brand new Wyndham Grand resort. I was hoping it would be in the Wyndham timeshare system so I could use points to stay there, but it's not. But after touring it, we may be booking a night or 2 here some time. It truely is Grand!

Then we headed over to Poipu Point to see if there were any whales jumping about. There weren't---a few were spouting, though. But we did see this colorful bird. Hadn't seen one of these before.

Just another view from the path going to Poipu Point.

Just thought I'd add this. I thought it was a creative use of the moss, or whatever it is, that grows on some of the trees there.

We went to Merriman's Downstairs Cafe for happy hour. Got a happy hour beer and we shared a kalua pork and pineapple pizza---not bad.

Since it was Friday and we had never been to the Hanapepe gallery night, we decided it was time to check it out. I was impressed. It would have also been a good place to get a quick dinner from one of the food venders, but we had already eatten. Parking was pretty tough, we had to drive around twice before we found anywhere to park.

There were performers here, too. One was a talented young gal (high school age?) singing in front of the library. There was also a very talented group playing stringed instruments at the far end of town.

2009-Feb. 26: sunset cruise, Hanapepe, Waimea Canyon overlook

Today was the day of our sunset cruise. We had to be at Port Allen around 1:45, so we left the east side around noon and headed south. Since we had a little time to kill, we stopped at the swinging bridge in Hanapepe, the canyon overlook, and even had a quick lunch at Grinds. Lunch was very good with very good service.
The swinging bridge:

Waimea Canyon overlook

This was Ken's and my 4th Napali cruise, all in the winter. The first time we went was a morning snorkel trip, the winds were strong and the surf was high, but they made it to the Napali. The views weren't good, though, since the wind was throwing mist on the cliffs, but at least we got to see the Napali. The snorkeling was in really deep water and it wasn't very good, either. The other 2 times we had great views of the Napali. One of those trips was also to Niihau with snorkeling there (not great) and the other was a sunset cruise with great views, but cold and rainy on the way back. This time, the winds were high, as they have been all week, and the surf was very rough. A few people, including Angie who has never gotten sea sick before, got sea sick.

We made it about as far as Polihale and had to turn around.

We spent about 5 hours in the stretch between Polihale and the boat harbor. The good thing about it was we did get to see lots of whales. None that were breaching very far out of the water, but at least many were breaking the surface.

and flipper slapping

and tail slapping

Plus the views of the coastline were still interesting---
Salt Pond from the cruise:

 Old Sugar Mill?

 red dirt--

Even the sunset was pretty good this time and we didn't encounter any rain. It was chilly, but not too bad since we came prepared with sweatshirts and jackets.

Even caught this slight rainbow.

Since dinner was on the cruise---luau style complete with kalua pork and teriyaki chicken---we headed straight back to our condos after the cruise and called it a day.