The Hawaiian Hiatus: Part 4 – Kauai

By Ryan LuckieUncategorized

This is the final installment, Part 4, of our series documenting our 2017 Summer vacation to Hawaii.  For additional entries, click the links below.

Ryan & Amanda’s Hawaiian Hiatus – Part 1
Ryan & Amanda’s Hawaiian Hiatus – Part 2 – Haleakala National Park
Ryan & Amanda’s Hawaiian Hiatus – Part 3 – The Big Island

Kauai

Kauai and Maui were by far our two favorite islands, both providing extraordinary natural beauty.  Our captain announced the night before arriving in Kauai that he was going to book it from The Big Island and get us to Kauai two hours early.  This ended up changing our plans a bit, as we’d previously thought we weren’t going to have enough time for the Kalalau trail.  The Kalalau Trail is an 11 mile in and 11 mile out hike of the Napali Coast.  The first beach on the trail is at two miles in, providing a popular day hike.  We decided the extra two hours on the island would likely allow us to check out the first 2 miles in and out and also get around the rest of the island some.
We had bad luck with the rental car shuttle and ended up losing about 20-30 minutes early on.  This ended up biting us twice; when we finally arrived at the Napali Coast State Park we found no good parking options.  We ended up parking at a public beach about a mile away, losing another 20 minutes.
Wilderness is a good description of Kauai.  Most of the Island is not accessible to car.  There is one main road that does a circle around 75% of the island, with 25% of the coastline only accessible by foot / boat / helicopter.

About a mile in we got to this gem of a lookout.

South American Red Crested Cardinals are common in Hawaii, we saw them on multiple islands.

Kauai was a regular filming location for Jurassic Park.

The first two miles of the trail ends at a beach lined on each side by cliffs.

Google is showing off its skills.

After 45 minutes on the beach, we were heading back.  Crossing this river was actually really refreshing.  Lots of folks tried to jump from rock to rock; we walked right through.

 After leaving the Napali Coast we hit up a well reviewed taco truck and started our 80 mile drive around the island to get about 5 miles away from where we started.

More photographs of my photographer.

Lots of scenic stops along the way.  The road wraps around Kauai because Kauai is essentially one very uniformly shaped volcano and its top is one of the wettest places on earth averaging 450+ inches of rain each year.  These conditions make possible gigantically tall waterfalls like the one shown in the center of this photo.

So, after spending a few hours in traffic trying to get around the island, we entered Waimea Canyon State Park, the Grand Canyon of the Pacific.

When we finally reached our destination, Kalalau Lookout, we were disappointed to find that we had no visibility.  We could hear the waves crashing on the beach, but could not see anything.  We headed for the car and back to the ship.  Perhaps we will get another chance next time we are in Kauai.

The last full day of our cruise we did not leave the boat.  The ship was scheduled to leave the port at 2 PM for a scenic cruise of the Napali Coast in the afternoon.  We laid low, went to gym, and sat through an art auction before heading to the deck to enjoy the view.

Phone panorama showing a full 180 degree view.

We’ve got many wonderful shots of coastline that we need to try to tack together into a high resolution panorama.

The peaks overlooking this valley is where Kalalau Lookout is, the location we drove to the day before but were unable to see anything.  Looks like the visitors on this day also might have had some trouble.  The beach at the bottom of this valley is Kalalau beach, the end of the Kalalau trail.  Next time we are in Hawaii we’d love to spend some extended time on Kauai and hike the entire trail, spending the night on this beach… fyi… camping permits have about a 1 year waiting list.

But despite some low clouds we did have plenty of marvelous views of the amazing coastline.

Pearl Harbor 

We first toured the USS Missouri, the battleship on which the treaty ending the war in the Pacific was signed.

We then made our way through the Pearl Harbor museums and to the USS Arizona Memorial.  I particularly enjoyed the museum focusing on the decades and years leading up to Pearl Harbor and the seeming inevitability of conflict that surrounded Japan and US.  It seems to me that we focus so much more on the geo political landscape in Europe during the 1930s when discussing pre-WW2 history, and gloss over the US/Japanese relationship too much.

The gun turret base of the USS Arizona remains exposed.  

We took the late flight out of Honolulu that night and got back home around 3 PM the next day.  Hawaii was a great trip and we will be back.  We highly recommend Norwegian’s Pride of America cruise as a great way to get a broad introduction to the Hawaiian islands.