After a week in Maui, we island-hopped over to Kaua’i. On our last trip to the state, we’d visited O’ahu and while that was cool, we wanted to see something new. On our first full day there, we hopped aboard a helicopter tour.
It lasted a little less than an hour, but it was probably one of the most amazing hours of my life. The scenery was without equal. We saw more waterfalls than I could believe, and I found myself breathing “wow” almost every time we swooped around a cliff into another valley.
The cliffs were steep and completely covered in green, with rivers and streams flowing through them.
So many waterfalls!
As we continued toward the western edge of Kaua’i, the cliffs became steeper.
The wide-angle lens on my camera couldn’t even capture the scene from top to bottom.
We cruised through canyons whose sheer walls were, in some cases, almost half a mile tall.
And then we arrived at the Na Pali Coast.
Words (and photos) don’t do it justice. The cliffs are towering and the water is a breathtaking shade of turquoise.
Check out the tiny boat for scale:
Along the shoreline are beaches and caves, many with waterfalls.
Indescribable.
Some of the waterfalls literally spring from the side of the cliffs, with no source above them. The water at the top of the mountain– one of the wettest spots on the planet– trickles down into the rock and can take decades to eventually work through to the rock face where it gushes out as a waterfall.
After seeing it, I decided then and there I want to hike or kayak along the coast. It’s a journey of several days, but the chance to stop at caves and camp on the beach would be an amazing experience. Laralee agreed to do it with me, so now I have a new item for my bucket list.
There’s nowhere quite like Na Pali.