What does one do in Koloa? Ziplining, of course! The famous Koloa Zipline company operates there, and they have eight separate lines with the final one stretching just shy of half a mile. We’d heard it was a ton of fun, so we signed up.
Our guides took some photos of us before our first run.
And off we go!
We had a great time. Near the end we took a group photo, with the Waita Reservoir in the background (and beyond that, the ocean).
Since parts of Jurassic World were filmed on the land owned by Koloa Zipline, apparently it’s a tradition to take a dinosaur photo too.
Holding a plastic toy dinosaur close to the camera isn’t quite the level of special effects in Jurassic World, but I guess you work with what you have…
Not to be confused with Waimea (I kept mixing up the names), Wailua is a river and valley in eastern Kaua’i. One morning we decided to rent some paddleboards and go upriver. The current is really slow, so it’s more or less like being on a lake.
At first, as we headed out from shore, we were all a little wobbly on the boards. They were surprisingly unstable, although I attribute some of that to the fact that they’re sort of cheap rentals.
After a while, all of us got our sea legs and were able to paddle with ease. Kyra shows off her technique:
Like everything in Kaua’i, green is abundant. The river winds between tree-covered hills in an idyllic setting.
At times it was nice to just relax on the board and let the current gently push us along.
Here’s a view of part of the river from above:
Although I would’ve preferred to kayak, the Wailua River is restricted and you pretty much have to go with a tour group. We much preferred doing our own thing on paddleboards. It was really cool, and a great way to spend a morning.
We spent a lot of time at beaches during our two weeks in Hawai’i. All of us loved playing in the waves and just relaxing in the sand.
Inevitably, people were buried in the sand. Kyra insisted it was surprisingly comfortable, and it certainly kept her from getting sunburned.
Here’s Zaque as he attempts to “break out” by sheer strength:
A random shot of a wave slithering along the smooth sand:
We saw all kinds of little sand crabs. These guys were maybe an inch across, and they blended into the sand almost perfectly. You couldn’t really see them until they moved, and when they did, they were fast!
We did some snorkeling, but it wasn’t very popular with this crowd. I think we might’ve enjoyed it more if we’d been in places where there were substantially larger reefs.
Here’s Kyra diving for a closer look:
We saw a few sea turtles, which are always fun.
Riding the waves is always a hit. I was standing next to Laralee as one came in:
She went down. And so did I.
Zaque takes one in the back:
This time I caught a good hit to Laralee:
We tried boogie-boarding at a few of the beaches, but couldn’t quite master it. Alex seemed to do the best.
Laralee caught a big wave and tumbled hard. Afterward she looked a bit washed-up.
(She swore off boogie-boarding after that incident.)
Alex and Zaque both had fun rolling with the waves. They’d lay on the shore, just above the waterline, and wait for a big wave to come in and sweep them away. Here’s Alex getting rolled:
And Zaque’s swimsuit model pose. I promised him this will be in our family Christmas card.
Alex found a coconut floating on the waves:
These guys are formidable. He and Laralee spent a good five minutes smashing it on a rock and tearing at it to get it open.
Finally they were rewarded with some fresh coconut milk!
One of the places we went on Kaua’i was called Queen’s Bath. It came highly recommended, not only in our guidebook but also by several friends. It was, bar none, the muddiest trail I’ve ever hiked (even muddier than Haleakala, which we’d done a few days earlier). Zaque didn’t have shoes so he did the whole thing barefoot, including walking across the sharp lava rocks at the shore. When we finally arrived at Queen’s Bath, he expressed our opinion pretty succinctly:
Maybe on a “good day” it’s a cool area, but that day it was more like a tepid, stagnant pond. No thanks.
In the end, if you finish the day with sandy feet, it was probably a good day.
Waimea Canyon is known as the “Grand Canyon of Hawai’i” and it’s easy to see why. It cuts a deep swath through southwest Kaua’i and is majestic. We drove up the canyon road, and I was telling Laralee to stop at nearly every pullout so I could climb up the embankment and look at the vista.
Kyra was unimpressed, and stayed in the car.
As we neared the top of the canyon, we literally drove up into a cloud. Much of the higher altitudes in Kaua’i seem to be enveloped in clouds pretty often, due to all the moisture in the air. At first it looked like nothing more than a light fog…
… but when we started hiking the Pu’u o Kila trail, the clouds thickened and soon we were unable to see the canyon at all.
Interestingly, the edge of the trail dropped off as a sheer cliff. Although we couldn’t see into the canyon itself, it was obvious we were standing at the top of a vertical wall at least several hundred feet high.
At times, the forest had kind of an eerie otherworldly quality about it:
But wait! Laralee saw a break in the clouds.
Sure enough, the air cleared a bit and we had a view along the canyon toward the Na Pali Coast:
It was fleeting– the clouds dissipated for only a few minutes, but what they revealed was spectacular.
Then they closed in again, and we were wreathed in fog once again. It was really interesting to hike in these conditions.
At times I thought maybe we’d get a good view, but even at the Pihea lookout at the “top” of the trail, it was almost entirely enveloped in clouds.
I’d hoped that during the hike we’d get a break, but alas, the cloud cover persisted. We hiked back down the trail and managed to catch one last glimpse toward the coast:
Although the clouds provided interesting scenery, I was disappointed not to see the entire view. Next time, we decided, we’d come in the morning rather than waiting until the afternoon when the clouds roll in.
Driving back down the road afforded a couple more amazing shots.
Like the Na Pali Coast, this is a place I definitely want to return to, and take some of the dozen or so more serious hikes. Amazing stuff.
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.
Haleakala is the mountain in the center of Maui, a long-extinct volcano that towers over the island and has a profound effect on the climate. The area to the north and east is incredibly wet (one of the wettest places on earth) while south and west is much drier. It makes for a fascinating drive to essentially circle the mountain, taking the Road to Hana along the north shore, and then highway 360 on the south shore.
The mountain is part of a national park, and the southeast entrance is at Ohe’o Gulch. Despite the name, it has a majestic shoreline.
Alex hiked out a bit to get a closer look:
Kyra snapped a shot of me and Laralee:
And I couldn’t resist one of her looking out over the ocean.
A short hike unveils even more incredible shoreline.
Looking inland, you can see the so-called Seven Sacred Pools. There aren’t seven, and you can’t swim in them, so it’s a bit of a misnomer.
We headed up the trail, which was the muddiest trail I’ve ever hiked. This area of Maui gets an unbelievable amount of rainfall, and after a while we stopped even trying to keep our shoes and feet clean. We stopped for a quick photo at a massive banyan tree:
Eventually we arrived at the bamboo forest, which as always was awesome. There’s something about all those tall trees crammed together, waving gently in the breeze and making a strange knocking sound.
At the end of the trail is Waimoku Falls, cascading nearly five hundred feet down a sheer cliff face.
As we approached Hana, we stopped at Waianapanapa State Park (yeah, say that three times quickly!) to enjoy the black sand beach. The sand is made of volcanic rock that’s been relentlessly ground down by the waves, and it’s really cool to walk on it.
We walked through a lava tube to come out to a beach filled with rocks and black crabs. Oh, and waves.
The view from the beach is, not surprisingly, stunning.
Like most of Maui, everything is green… including the rock walls, which have been overgrown.
After some time at Waianapanapa, we went to our rental place in Hana. It was advertised as a “bungalow” and it definitely was.
There was no air conditioning, no cell service, no internet… just a little house nearly buried in tropical plants.
I found a pretty flower for my pretty wife.
The lanai was screened in, and included the dining table and a bed. Kyra wisely chose this place to sleep, and was probably in the coolest room in the house because of all the airflow through the open screens.
It was a charming place, although at $450 per night it was without question the most expensive place we’ve slept in our lives! There are very few places to stay in Hana, and no other big towns for fifty miles, so accommodations command a premium. Totally worth it.
Later we went down to a red sand beach, which was nestled in a protected cove area:
Looking more closely at the sand, it was probably half red (note the color of the rocks above) and half black lava rock. Pretty cool.
After a couple of days in Hana and the area, we headed south. On our way out of town we stopped by a nice area called the Venus Pools. Although it looks kind of pretty, the water was filled with a lot of flotsam that would’ve made swimming kind of questionable.
Hana is definitely a cool place, and I think its relative inaccessibility adds to the charm somehow.
Nahiku is a little out-of-the-way village that’s absolutely stunning. There are only a few houses, as well as a bus stop and a church, at the bottom of a long winding road down from the Hana Highway. After parking, there’s a walk along a paved road (closed to traffic) that brings you to a beach lookout. We stopped for a couple of photos.
After a brief walk along the rocky shoreline, we headed to our favorite place in the entire world: a little swimming hole buried in the forest.
When we were last here in 2017, the waterfall was a gentle trickle, but with the rain Maui had been getting, it was considerably bigger this time. There was even a second, much smaller, waterfall off to the side.
The entire area is so incredibly lush and green that it’s hard to describe, and even harder to capture in a photo.
We didn’t have swimsuits with us in 2017, so it was a shame we couldn’t actually swim in the pool. But this time we’d planned better, and it meant we could use the rope swing which is probably thirty feet above the water. Zaque and Alex look good:
I just jumped straight off the cliff, since the rope swing wasn’t really necessary. The water was cool and crisp, fresh from the jungle stream. We swam under the waterfall and probably spent two hours just enjoying this magical place.
Even the walk back to the car was amazing. The green of the forest, and the colors of the plants, are almost overwhelming.
Ahh, Nahiku, you still hold a special place in my heart.
Along the Road to Hana there’s a little area called Ke’anae where the waves absolutely pound the north shore. There’s also a “world famous” banana bread stand there, so we stopped for a bite before walking to the rocks.
It had been raining, so everything was kind of dulled, but in a way it made the waves more impressive as they came crashing into the rocks.
Alex and Kyra waded out a bit and enjoyed the surf.
For some reason, the waves make especially spectacular splashes at one point, often surging twenty or thirty feet into the air.
For some reason, I love watching the waves.
Kyra waded out to another area, but couldn’t go too far because the incoming water was looking a little dangerous. Here’s a smallish wave hitting the outer rocks:
Along the “beach”, the black lava rocks are continually rolled by the waves, making them smooth. The sound they make as they cascade over each other is really fun.
The Nakalele Blowhole is a well-known spot on Maui’s north shore. We learned from our last experience on the craziest road of all time to take the western route, which was much easier. The waves were crashing as always, and the blowhole didn’t disappoint. Several times it shot well over a hundred feet into the air.
It’s actually kind of tricky to take a picture of it, because my camera has a hard time focusing on the ethereal water. But as with all digital photography, taking enough pictures eventually yields a keeper.
We hiked over to the far side so we could be closer (notice Laralee and the kids for scale):
I could watch the waves crash against the rocks all day.
Laralee stood a little too close to the shore and was surprised by a particularly big wave.
She and Kyra posed atop a tall rock overlooking the ocean.
After spending a while at the blowhole, we moved on to some nearby areas on the north shore. Zaque, Alex, and I hiked out to a promontory.
One thing I love about Maui is the color of the water. Yes, it’s really this blue when the sunlight hits it just right. (I didn’t adjust the colors or saturation in this photo at all.)
