Hawaii 8 - Beach Day

Day who-knows-anymore:

THE TURTLE IS GONE! He wasn't dead, just asleep . Great success. 

We woke up around 7 to head over to the beach at Ha'ena point on the other side of the island. Well, I woke up at 7, apparently the rest of the house woke up between 5 and 6, and I just didn't notice. My old friend insomnia has been stalking me across the globe and finally caught up, so I was awake reading deep into the wee hours. We had a casual breakfast, said hi to the semi-feral cat who loves me, packed our lunches, and headed over to Haena.

Most of the route was pretty standard, and we randomly picked a standard roadside park to take care of baby things, but standard means gorgeous in Hawaii, with roosters, cliffs, and signs explaining which whales you might see (in a few months when "winter" starts). Back underway, the last 10 miles or so were doubly gorgeous, and we started getting Road-to-Hana vibes, even a few one-lane bridges! Kauai is older than the other islands we've visited, and it shows. Everything is so green, especially the mountains. I was getting Jurassic park vibes, and it turns out they filmed some scenes right in this part of the island.  The mountains have the same abrupt jagged intensity typical to Hawaii, but every inch is verdant. Instead of discerning between various shades of brownish-black, there are a thousand colors of green. Very jurassic indeed.

Turns out you need reservations for this park. That explains the massive numbers of cars stacked at all the beaches prior to it, and it's too bad because it had some sweet looking mountains. There was no available parking at any of the public beaches we'd just passed, and even the side of the road was parked solid wherever a car could (mostly) fit. But we got creative and ducked into a neighborhood where there was plenty of parking, and very narrow trails out to the sea. I went to reconnoiter one such beach access pathway and found a seal at the end! Just a harbor seal, chillin.

I went back to update the family and one of the locals advised us that we should go two blocks down, where it's less windy. After 10 minutes debating a 5 minute walk (every vacation seems to have this day about a week in), we took their advice! It's a very steep beach with surprisingly soft/deep sand, but we found a nice big shady spot under some trees, and set up to chill.

I spent a lot of time watching the windsurfers, wing-surfers, and kiteboarders. They're all rocking the hydrofoils now, and it's super cool to see them rise up and glide over the water. After a while I set off to go visit the seal, since I'd neglected to take a picture of him and seals are so freaking cute. Definitely a top-five animal, they make me so happy. Back at base camp Adam and Dani (who had hiked the other direction during my seal excursion) reported sea turtles!  So we gave them back their angelic baby and set off in search. As described, there were a half-dozen sea-turtles off the point!  A bit further we saw a kite-surfer preparing to go into the sea, and when he was ready he whistled and immediately jogged into the waves. His dog appeared out of nowhere, sprinting down the beach at full speed, and chased him a hundred yards into the surf. Living the dream, both of them.

Back to our base camp, we did a bit of swimming. The temperature is amazing, the waves are massive but not really breaking, they just bobbed you about like a cork. I briefly attempted to snorkel, but only saw a single fish and a lot of silt so that was quickly abandoned. Most of my time was spent in my book.

Eventually it was time to go home, essentially the same trip as the way out, with two different but very important stops. Stop #1 was for these extremely photogenic horses:

Stop #2 was for dinner. We were all tired, poorly communicating, and couldn't make plans at all. Much like the first day of Rome last year, we seem exhausted with one another....  or we all have covid. Probably both.  Anyways, Dani and Adam had their hearts set on "sushi" made with fancy spam... I considered it, but I'm too tired to want weird food [I did sample it later, it was unexpectedly delicious but too salty for an entire meal].  After wandering the single block that made up main street I decided on Mexican, and my parents joined me. They don't have a local Mexican place, so they were excited to be adventurous.  I was pumped about it too, but just because I love fajitas.

The food revived us somewhat, and we finished the drive home in time to watch a fisher cast his nets by the light of the setting sun.... There was no green flash, allegedly due to clouds hovering on the horizon. I think it's a myth. Journal now, shower next, book and bed shortly (and by bed I mean couch - I'm quarantined to the living room... which gets far better breezes than the bedrooms, so apparently I coughed my way into the best room in the house).