You must stop for hot-from-the-oven banana bread around the halfway mark (coincidence – I have an Aunt Sandi who’s a major fan of all things Hawaiian!):
The view of a black sand beach:
One of the many waterfalls along the trail (the photos of me swimming in one of the waterfall pools are on my mom’s camera so I don’t have them ready to upload yet – pretty cool experience though!)
There are something like 56 narrow one-way bridges along the route (yet the closest call we saw was when a work truck and a tour bus nearly touched rear view mirrors while passing each other):
And this is the sunset I caught from the van window as we got back to South Kihei Road:
Just realised that most of the photos I’ve been uploading have been regular size (eg. 2-3 MB) instead of being properly re-sized for the web. Apologies to anyone who’s still on dial-up (uhm, is there anyone still on dial-up?)
Not sure if it’s been mentioned on my blog yet (if you’re following Shea’s Facebook photo album of our trip, it’s gotten a couple mentions there) but I’ve become a big fan of poke during my time in Hawaii. I had some shrimp kim chee poke tonight that’s one of the greatest things I’ve ever eaten. So damn good.
Words can’t describe how much fun Pace had boogie boarding on Kamaole Sands III beach across from our Maui condo today. I literally had to carry him out of the water to get him to leave!
Spent the day on Anini Beach swimming with Honu, another amazing Kauai experience.
Maui’s going to have to be pretty spectacular to compete with Kauai – everything from our condo and its ground-floor, watch the whales from your lanai, steps to a children’s playground location to the helicopter tour of the island to a visit to the home of Puff the Magic Dragon to swimming on one of the best beaches we’ve ever visited – has been unbelievable.
No, that subject line doesn’t mean Shea is fed up with me (at least as far as I know!)
We were heading for the Waimea Canyon today but a rainy morning made us decide to head back to our condo after breakfast. (A good decision – the radio cut in with emergency warnings of potential flash floods in different parts of the island that could see water rise seven feet!)
So instead of seeing the “Grand Canyon of the Pacific”, we spent a relaxing day drinking pina coladas and playing the card game, Shithead, which Shea and I joke is one of the reasons we’re married. We used to play for ever-escalating stakes as roommates – who had to do dishes, who had to cook supper, who had to pay for a movie and here we are, married, twelve years later!
There are lots of warnings online and in guidebooks about the condition of the road but to be honest, it sort of reminded me of some of the backroads in Saskatchewan – lots of washboard but nothing too bad! Unfortunately, the wind was howling and sand was whipping so we didn’t stay long.
Trivial factoid: this beach is the closest point you can get to Japan while still technically being in North America.
