So.... our first "night" in Kauai... we found out very early that the island is overrun with chickens and roosters. We had a 430am wakeup call with about 5 different roosters screeching their heads off.... and one sounded as if it was outside on the deck..... I tossed a rock at it... and got about 90 more minutes of sleep before the roosters beat me mentally. I feel like eating chicken now:
Oh... and we're 4000 miles from home... and Jenny still has a cat at the house... go figure!!
It started raining at about 6am... and right now as of 850pm has not let up. We are staying on the north shore and are deep in the mountain valley...literally in a jungle-rain forest:
But, we didn't let the rain stop us. We decided to explore a bit, since the hiking we planned was kinda out of shut down by the nonstop rain. We drove up and around as far as we could up the north coast. We found a cool cave across from a beach area and explored that a bit, watch some surfers and a crazy beach dog chasing the waves:
We found a lighthouse at the end of an out-of-the-way road with no traffic:
We hit the dead-end of the highway, turned around and saw the National Tropical Botanical Gardens of Limahuli. I'm not big on looking at plants, but with the setting around this place, it was a nice 90 minute hike we could do in the rain and drizzle. It had hundreds of native plants and trees and had a river stream that ran thru it that fed all the plants... the stream had been diverted to create irrigation for all the plants. They said that the walls built up out of lava rock and stones have been there for over 700 years and have been used for planting crops ever since:
this is the "sour-sop"... supposedly it's 10,000 times stronger than Chemo for treating cancer, but has a foul taste and can cause nervous disorders:
After the gardens, we checked out a farmer's market and had some Hawaiian-grown coffees. And to work it all off, we went to the beach and played in the surf...although, i'm pretty sure Jenny was scared to go out more than 20 feet.... and i couldn't blame her... I tried to brave the surf and got a boogie board and tried to pretend not to drown while surfing these 10-12 foot waves. Bad idea! I only caught 2-3 good waves, and the rest pummeled me and slammed me on the ocean floor and i got a few mouthfuls of seawater.
After get beat up by waves, we decided to retire for the night, but instead of dropping $150 on dinner... we hit up a "fresh-catch" fish market and got Ahi Tuna steaks and a filet mignon, and i cooked us up a killer dinner at home for under $30. Reggae music and fruit cocktails ended our night... can't wait for the EFFING roosters again!!! ha!
No comments:
Post a Comment