Kauai: an entirely different world

Our vacation Kauai didn't start out quite as idyllic as I'd imagined it in my mind. In fact, after a couple of last minute flight changes thrown our way by our friend the standby system, we arrived in Kauai late on a Friday evening. It was already dark, and we still had to shop for supplies in the local Walmart and drive 2 hours up into the Canyon where we were planning to camp. So all we had time for by way of food was to gulp down a  barely edible sponge-like burger from the McDonalds right in the Walmart. 

There you have it. Our first meal in paradise was scarfed down in the McDonalds in the Walmart in Kauai. It makes me cringe to type it as much as we cringed to actually eat it. 

But when you start a vacation like that, the only place to go is up, right?

Wrong. 

We drove cautiously, with a snail-like hesitance, for 2 hours to our campgroupd, up the narrow, twisting canyon road enshrouded in fog which afforded us really no visibility at all.  Made it there, set up tent and pretty much collapsed into our sleeping bags immediately, exhausted by the preceding 12 hours of flying. 

And woke up the next morning in the midst of a rain storm. A deluge. A huge big unfiltered gush of water as far as the eye could see. Still. Hardy campers that we are, we didn't think much of it at first. But when, after a while, it didn't show any signs of letting up, and the thunder and lightning were rather increasing in frequency, we asked a kindly person at the neighbouring lodge what the weather forecast was like. Turned out there was a huge unseasonal weather system hovering ("stuck", as describe by the weather service), over the island of Kauai. They didn't expect it to change for a few days. 

Our hearts sank. We had had our minds set on hiking in the canyon, we had flown 12 hrs to get here, only to be stuck in an unseasonal weather system. Not even a passing storm. A weather system. Definitely no way to hike the treacherously steep canyon slopes. So there was little else to do but jump back into our car and head down off the mountains, towards the beaches. 

Through the dense cloud cover spread across the island, we could see glimpses of sun breaking through near the southern tip, so we headed down to Po'ipu on the southern coast. Here we explored the Makewehi lithified cliffs, built over hundreds of thousands of years from fossilized sand dunes. Here, a narrow trail tracked the coast for miles along the cliffs, offering stunning views of the coastline. We'd been walking for about an hour, when Delta suddenly grabbed my arm and stopped me in my tracks. 

"What's that?!!!" he gasped, pointing out to sea. 

Far out in the ocean, almost to the horizon, there was a disturbance in the water. Spraying, splashing, flailing. It was there for a second, a big old hubbub out in the ocean, and then suddenly it was gone. As if it'd never been there at all. A boat in trouble? A trick of the eyes? We continued to stare at that spot in the ocean with concentration, to see if anything more was to transpire. Nothing. And just as we were about to conclude we had imagined it after all, there it was again! A huge splash, followed by another, followed by a couple sprays of water. Whales!! And just as we realized it, there appeared a magnificent arch of the distinctive tail, just to reconfirm our realization. All around us, in the ocean, were hundreds of whales. It turned out it was breeding season in the Hawaiian waters, and the whales continued to be our faithful oceanside companions for the rest of our vacation. 

The next morning, when we woke up to a second day of storms and downpour up in the mountains, we decided to call it quits and packed up our tents and checked into a hotel. Our clothes were all wet, nothing was drying, everything was starting to smell, our lovely Hawaiian adventure was beginning to turn unejoyable.

As it turned out, a day in the hotel waiting out the storms was exactly what we needed. It was like chicken soup for the soul. A hot shower, a clean bed, a beachside bar, a lovely pizza dinner, a leisurely buffet breakfast, and Delta and I were good as new. Like two shiny new pennies, ready to take on the world once again. The sun started breaking through the clouds, all indications were that the storm had passed, and we shook out our tent and headed towards the beach campgrounds on the north. 

A view of Kilauea lighthouse. 

 Everywhere we turned, we were greeted by stunning views of the countryside around us.

The campsite was right on the beach. Just what we needed after a couple of cold nights up in the stormy weather in the mountains. 

With the weather having turned for the better, Delta and I decided to spend a day walking the famous Kalalau trail. The storm had thwarted our hopes of backpacking the entire trail, so instead we decided to go in as far as we could before time constraints forced us to turn back.

At every turn, every corner, it was easy to see why the trail is one of the most famous in Hawaii. And in the distance, in their own merry, splashy way, the whales kept us company as we trudged the cliffsides.

Kauai was one of the most beautiful places we had ever seen. The beaches, the reefs, the cliffs, the rainforests - all of it, out of an entirely different world.  The untamable nature, drawing us in, and yet always warning us of it's absolute power. The thunderous storms, filling the sky with flashes of brilliant lightning. The fiercely ominous waves, curling over us as they broke, pummeling us into the sand: the blue oceans welcoming, inviting, irresistable; and yet, signs everywhere warning that raging currents frequently take human lives each year. The giant tidepools, seemingly benign, and then suddenly gushing with ferocious bursts of ocean tide that threaten to pull you out to sea. And, of course, the whales. Always, the whales.