Tuesday 11/13
Up with the sunrise again, it was another beautiful morning.
Today, Steve and I decided to drive along the north side of the island to take in the sites there. We started by trying to hike to the Pools of Mokolea, following the instructions in “the book”, only to discover they seem to have had their distances off on this one. The half-mile hike turned out to be much longer and we turned back. Why do I even bother mentioning this aborted hike? Because it brought me great consternation as I walked along the path.
Here’s what I don’t get. Many times you will find the locals are none too pleased when the tourists get wind of their secret slice of paradise. Often a hike that is described in “the book” will have some “do not enter for fear of dragons” type of sign when you get there. Understandably, the people who live here don’t want their beautiful private waterfall trashed by swarms of tourists. Why then is it that, as we walk to these lovely spots, we often see heaps of rubbish that were most certainly not left by tourists? On the path to these particular pools, we passed a burned-out old truck, a decaying sofa, and a moldering mattress piled atop a trash heap. Later in the day, we entered a cave only to discover 2 large bags of trash. How does it make sense for the locals to try and keep tourists out and then just trash it themselves? Besides which, your average tour bus full of old fogies is not going to go on a 3 mile hike through the jungle to find the waterfall. I imagine the number of tourists interested in making the effort would keep the numbers at a manageable level.
Anyway, on we drove to the Kilauea Lighthouse and wildlife conservation area.
We had been here last time, but it is a beautiful place and Steve wanted to go again. It made it all worthwhile when we got to see a Wedge-tailed Shearwater chick just outside of its burrow.
We also saw plenty of nenes and a couple of albatrosses, even though these guys were pretty far away.
After the lighthouse, we took a hike down to the “Secret Beach” also described in “the book”. This is where I started to notice that “the book” is not always perfectly descriptive of the state of the trail. Yes, it is a short 10 minute walk to the beach, but it is at a 45-degree angle. Oh well, even though I promised Steve no more hikes today, of we went down the slope and found a very nice beach to eat our lunch. We were going to go to the lava pools further down the beach, but we didn’t take into account the tides, and getting to them would have been tough when we were there – just before high tide. By the way, “lava pool” in this context means hardened lava rock by the edge of the ocean that will fill up with ocean water at high tide and make a nice place to soak at low tide.
From here we continued on to the above-mentioned caves: the Manini-holo Dry Cave (home to the bags of trash) and the Waikanaloa Wet Cave.
Finally at the end of the road, we stopped at Ke’e Beach and hiked out to the tip to catch a glimpse of the Na Pali coast. There is no way to put a road through at this point, so there is no way to completely encircle the island. There is a notorious hike from here, but it is certainly not anything that Steve and I were up for. We were happy just to clamor out on these rocks for a peek.
We also managed to find the heiau (ancient Hawaiian temple) that was up on these slopes.
Finally, I took a dip in the ocean to cool down and wash off the sweat from the day. It was lovely.
On the way back, we made one last stop at the Hanalei Valley Lookout before heading back to the condo for a good night’s sleep before our big day of ziplining!
