Anyway, we got up early to get to Tunnels beach, which is supposed to be some of the best snorkeling on the island. We saw tons of beautiful fish, and a sea turtle! It was so cool to just float in the water watching the turtle going about its business of being a turtle. We both seemed to be very taken with turtles, and just held each other's hands in the water, hardly moving while we watched. It was a really cool experience!
Tunnels reef is absolutely enormous, and can apparently be seen from space. It was a very cool reef with lots of different kinds of coral and topography under water. We really enjoyed it there!
My adorable snorkeling husband!We tried really hard to stay out of the sun during the really hot parts of the day to keep our chances of burning at a minimum. So we headed back to the condo for a shower, relaxing, and some lunch.
We decided that afternoon to check out Kilauea Lighthouse which we actually had a view of from our condo. It is not a functioning lighthouse anymore, but it has been made into a bird sanctuary. Kevin and I love lighthouses, and often visit them when we are on vacation. We saw many kinds of birds, including the Red Footed Booby, Red tailed Tropicbirds, Laysan Albatross, and the Frigate bird. There were also some monk seals on the shore below sunning themselves. That was as close as we ever got to those guys!
We enjoyed learning about the birds, and even got to see some chicks that had just hatched that week! After that we headed down to Kalihiwai Beach to relax for the afternoon reading on the beach, and then we swam in some very nice calm waters. It was an excellent day!Day 3 we decided to hit the Na Pali coast trail! I had been hearing about this trail for many years from Kevin, who as a 9 year old hiked part of it barefoot! It had been raining pretty hard, so I was a little nervous about it since I had read that it can get very slippery, but Kevin thought it would be just fine.
We decided to do the first 2 miles down to Hanakapi'ai Beach and then hiked another two miles up to Hanakapi'ai Falls. The hike went up first, across some very cool lava rocks and crazy tree roots.
The Na Pali coast trail is about 11 miles long over these incredible cliffs. There is no road connecting all the way around the island, this trail is as close as it gets!
Some very cool trees and plants along the trail.
Getting slippery!
We made it down to the beach after an hour and a half or so, crossed a river, and then found a nice spot under some caves to have a little snack.
We then headed inland to the waterfall. The trail was quite slick from rain, and there were several river crossings to make. Luckily, we had bought reef shoes our first night, so we just slipped those on and hiked up to the falls in them!
Cool bamboo forests lined our hike. They made the coolest sounds when the wind rustled them against each other!
Our first glimpse of the falls. Gorgeous!
And a much closer look! It was pretty wild up there, really windy with lots of spray coming off the falls. Truly breathtaking!
The hike back to the beach was ridiculously muddy and slippery, but we made it down with only one complete fall into the mud (by me of course!)
Here is the first river crossing you have to go across to get to that beach. It was pretty funny to watch people trying to get across without actually going in the water!
Back up the hill! It was hot!
And then it rained! It was quite a welcomed respite for us NW kids, though it made the trek back to Ke'e Beach a bit tricky. But a fantastically fun hike! Whew! That's enough blogging for one day!
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