June 25 first full day

Monday June 25, 2018

After all the disruption of the previous night and early morning, I was able to manage a couple more hours of sleep.  As dawn began to break right around 5:24 a.m., the sound of birds wafted through the screen door and I determined this would be a decent enough time to finally get up.  I made a pot of coffee, roused G out of sleep, and enjoyed the view from the balcony while she and D got themselves ready for the morning.

The view from our balcony, slightly warped by the cell phone camera

We decided to start our day with an early dip in the ocean.  The sun was not even on the water as of yet, but the temperature was already warm and the water mild, so we strolled north along the beach seeking out an ideal place to swim.  There were several people jogging or speed-walking along the beach path and only one other person in the water, swimming laps up and down the length of the beach.

At 6:00 A.M. the water seems a bit chilly.

I had hoped to see at least one sea turtle during our trip, I had no idea my goal would be reached so quickly on the very first morning!  We were only about ten feet out from the shore when I looked up the beach and saw a shadow swimming towards us.  I assumed it was a stingray, and as I turned on the camera I put my face in the water I saw that it was, in fact, a sea turtle!  I caught a quick couple of photos of the turtle as it swam between us.

Our first sea turtle!

Later in the morning, I sketched the turtle while we waited for breakfast.

After our morning dip, we headed back to the condo to freshen up before making our way out to breakfast.  D texted his brother to give him the details on the location of our condo keys, and the address of where to mail them.  He agreed to pick the keys up and send them out to us as soon as he could.

We had decided to drive north along Highway 30 to take in the coast in that direction and have breakfast at The Gazebo on Napili Bay.  Parking was very difficult to find, and after circling the small parking lot a few times, D let me out to go put our names on the list for a table.  The restaurant was located within a resort, and as I approached I saw, with the long line ahead of me, that the likelihood of getting a table prior to lunch time was rather slim.  I messaged D with the news (1.5 hour wait for a table) and he set to work searching out an alternative while I made my way back to the car.  The temperature was already climbing, and it was a relief to get back into the air conditioned Jeep.

D found a place on the other side of Napili Bay called the Seahouse Restaurant, which was also located within a resort.  They were able to seat us with just a short wait, and we were soon happily sipping coffee and taking in the view of the beach and bay through the open wall.   

G ordered some kind of custard filled pancake

The breakfast menu was limited for me, I had papaya and yogurt.  Though I would have preferred something more substantial, this is the moment I discovered that Hawaiian papaya is so much better than the South American kind we get on the mainland.

I sketched while awaiting the arrival of our breakfast.

Due to the distance from the condo and driving around, our breakfast was a little later than we'd anticipated.  Upon arriving back at the condo, we re-lathered up with sunblock, gathered our snorkel gear, and by 11:30 we were back on the beach for some more time in the water.  For this outing, we decided to explore the coral areas directly in front of our resort.  The coral was a good distance from the shoreline, so I brought my inflatable snorkel vest to stay safe and secure.  

I followed this humuhumunukunukuapua'a (state fish of Hawaii) for a while, attempting to capture a better photo

D striking a pose... the water was a beautiful shade of blue

I found some other fish near a shallower island of coral down the beach

We enjoyed the water and beach scene for a couple of hours, then my stomach began to grumble for lunch.  It was still on mainland time and felt that dinner should be upon us at any minute.  We determined that given the time, and the desire to get ourselves onto Island Time, we opted for a light lunch in the mall next to the resort, saving our appetites for a proper dinner time later.

I found a placed called "Choice Health Bar", where they served a selection of pre-made salads and freshly pressed juice.  My soba noodle salad was amazingly refreshing.

G opted for an acai bowl from the coffee shop near by.  The fresh fruit, granola, and acai blend was just what she needed to cool down after being under the hot mid-day sun.

  

Our late lunch consumed, we went back to the condo for showering and a little down time.

Lahaina is a very popular town on the west coast of Maui, filled with shopping and art galleries,  and was just a short 10 minute drive south from our resort.  With so many restaurants within close proximity to each other, we decided to take the drive down, park, and see what might be available.  After reading through a few menus and checking wait times, we chose Lahaina Fish Company.

The restaurant had both indoor and covered deck seating.  The deck extended out over the water, giving us a lovely view of the ocean.

G and I waiting for dinner

The Mai Tai at Lahaina 

The restaurant is next door to a house which also extends over the water.  I sketched the house while waiting for our food.

G began her meal with a refreshing salad

D and I both had chowder

My dinner: grilled opah in a red sauce with Maui onion mashed potatoes.  Opah is one of my favorite fish to eat on the islands, the texture and density is similar to halibut, but with a brighter flavor.

With dinner done, and still feeling the mainland drag of time on our brains, we drove back to the resort and settled in for the night.

Sunday February 15 - the last day

Sunday dawned with clear skies.  With the lack of clouds, the sunrise wasn't as much of an enticing photography subject, however the moon was still out when I wandered down to the beach, so I grabbed a few pre-dawn shots.

The original plan had been to eat breakfast in the room, however since we didn't have to be out until 10, we figured we had time to go back to the Olympic Cafe for a full meal and fresh coffee.  I had the oatmeal again, and we got into a conversation with another table full of tourists while we waited for our food.
After a satisfying meal, we drove back to the condo for our mad-dash shower and packing.  It took a bit of scrambling and creative shoving of clothing, but in the end we walked out the door of the condo at exactly 10:00 a.m. on the dot (though the bags were not quite airplane ready, as we grabbed everything out in shopping bags just to get out the door on time and figured we would sort out the details of packing later)
Our flight wasn't scheduled to leave until nearly midnight, so we had pretty much a full day to wander around, so long as we didn't get into any water-related fun.  We turned right and drove north up the island, stopping at lookouts along the way and soaking in the scenery and watching surfers in the distance. We contemplated trying a new restaurant for lunch, but we enjoyed eating at the Dolphin so much, and felt like we should take advantage of the perfectly blue skies, so we took a table outside at the Dolphin in Hanalei.

I enjoyed the lunch salad with grilled ono

From lunch, we continued up the highway back to the northern-most driving point, Ke'e Beach.  While we'd had no trouble parking the week prior, today the entire area was jam-packed.  Given the crowds, photography would prove to be difficult so we back-tracked down the highway to the town of Hanalei.  We hopped out in the shopping area to pick up a few snacks, some coffee mugs from the local roaster, and of course a shave ice for G.

While G enjoyed her shave ice, I wandered the grounds seeking out these cute little chestnut mannikin.  They are common, but I found their unusual blue beaks to be exotic enough :)

Heading back towards Kapa'a, we stopped off at another viewpoint and found a flat area of easily accessible tide pools and I hauled the gear down to do some shooting.

Tidepools from the fisheye... clever!

While we meandered the tidepools, we were approached by a volunteer who told us that a monk seal was asleep just on the other side of the rocky outcropping.  The volunteers keep track of the seals, and when there is a report of a seal sleeping on the beach, they race out to surround the seal with "do not disturb" signs.  The volunteer invited me to come down by her station to take pictures of the sleeping seal.

After quite a long photo shoot of the seal (she kept moving around and I grabbed a lot of great shots from different angles) we headed back up to the car to move on, then D spotted spouts of water off in the distance.  Whales!  I figured we were safe enough to whale watch from the cliffs (they won't ram the cliffs, right?) so I plugged my 300mm onto the camera, along with my teleconverter, used the door frame as a brace and pointed out to the spouts.

No joke, I took about 800 photos, most of which are simply a blue horizon line.  I put my camera on rapid-fire so that I would be more likely to capture the action... I have a lot to delete, and none of these are worthy of blowing up to poster size, but they are a great memory and I got some pretty decent action considering how far off in the distance they were.

Fin-slapping the water

Two fins slapping together

Whale tail!

As the afternoon stretched into evening, I got my fill of shoreline whale watching, and we loaded up the gear and headed towards the airport.  We'd contemplated having dinner back at Oasis on the Beach, but it felt bitter-sweet to park there again after having checked out already, and I wanted to be closer to the airport, so we drove down to Lihue instead.  There were several restaurants within walking distance of the big Marriott, so we just parked there and meandered around.  We decided to try out Kukui's Bar and Grill located pool-side in the Marriott.

It is a beautiful setting, the pool has these massive Roman style columns and bridges over the water, however there seemed to be a disconnect between the hostess and wait staff, as we were seated and had nobody acknowledge us for at least half an hour (and the hostess had disappeared for most of that time, so we couldn't find her to ask her where our waiter might be)  He was apologetic, but it was obvious to us that he was being seated with too many tables at once, and since we had a good 3 hours to eat dinner and drive maybe 3 miles, we weren't too worried.

My dinner was really great, I had a nice salad to start with, and the grilled opah for dinner

They didn't have balsamic vinegar, so they brought me a balsamic reduction... which I happen to like, but makes for a sweet and sticky salad dressing.

SUCH good fresh fish everywhere we went!

After dinner it was time to face the reality of having to travel back home.  We pulled all the luggage out of the car and rearranged everything into checked luggage vs. carryon, calculated who would carry what where, and finally resigned ourselves to going to the airport.  Our flight had been delayed, out to about 12:30 a.m., so after having the bags quadruple checked for any produce, we settled ourselves in a quiet corner of the seating area and waited.  

Boarding was a relatively swift process, and aside from the girls behind us trying to use D's seat as a footrest (which he quickly remedied with a loud "You wanna stop kicking me in the head please?") almost all the passengers spent most of the flight attempting to sleep sitting up like sardines in a can.

It is, honestly, quite miserable to try to sleep on a plane on an overnight flight... but had we opted for the day flight we would have missed the seal and the whales and everything else we managed to squeeze into the last day.  In the end, sitting on a plane for 5.5 hours will be uncomfortable whether you are sleeping or awake, and once we got home we all just crashed for a decent nap in our own beds anyway.  

And as I have 77GB of images to work on, I'll leave this blog for now and get to editing these, and the shots from Jamaica last year.  

Thanks for coming along!

Tuesday February 10

One of the big To Do's on my Kauai list was a visit to the Kilauea Lighthouse and National Wildlife Refuge at the northernmost tip of the island. This morning we all woke up early, had a quick breakfast in the room, then packed up the gear and headed north to Kilauea.  Along the way we stopped at a cute little coffee shop to grab a couple of iced cold brew coffees.

We arrived to the lookout over the lighthouse about 20 minutes before the park opened, so we hopped out of the car to take a few photos of the view looking out towards the lighthouse.

I also encountered a couple of Nenes... (another check on my Kauai bucket list) Nenes are the state bird of Hawaii and are endangered. I was incredibly excited to spot this bird and hopped out of the car with my 300mm, but to my surprise they came towards me instead of waddling away, so with this encounter I mostly managed some pretty head shots.

We spent over 3 hours in the park, wandering around grabbing shots, eating a picnic lunch in the car, and bird watching.  I'd hoped the large seabirds would float on the thermals closer to the viewpoint, however they seemed to favor the distant cliffs, only passing overhead once in a while.  The winds were moving fast so they were difficult to track with the zoom.

A - Brown Booby

Iwa - Great Frigatebird (on the left) and an A - Brown Booby (on the right)

Another A - Brown Booby

Family shot at the lighthouse.

We also spotted some whales way offshore, but they were too far for good shots.

On the way out of the refuge we spotted a small family of Nenes on the side of the road, I hopped out to get a few shots of their full bodies

The guardrail is a terrible backdrop, but look!  Baby Nene!

From here we continued on the highway to a farmer's market in Hanalei. We bought some fresh slices of pie and several fruits.

These are rambutan... you break them open and the inside is sort of like a sweet peeled grape, but with a giant seed in the center.

From here we drove over a few blocks to the beach side of the town and grabbed a parking spot on the beach. We'd brought bathing suits, however the wind and waves were to heavy for swimming, so we just enjoyed watching the weather move over the Na Pali coast in the distance. 

 G had some fun feeding the birds on the beach... it was so odd to me to see red-crested cardinals all over the beach, as I consider them a southern US bird.

As dinner time approached, we read through a few menus in Hanalei but opted to drive back down to the Dolphin. This time we took a table inside where I had more options from the full menu. I was both excited and impressed that this restaurant's philosophy is to simply grill the fish... no sauces with ingredients to worry about, just salt, pepper, and heat. I had a terrific piece of grilled uku.

It is an interesting firm, white fish. The best way I could describe it is this: let's say you are on the Enterprise and you tell the computer you want steak and lobster for dinner, but the computer messes up and blends the two types of meat instead of giving you a piece of beef and a piece of lobster. When dipped in butter, the flavor was like lobster, but the texture was like a medium piece of steak.

Day of shooting ends with a mai tai!  I think they called this drink the No Ki Oy.

D was happy with his sushi.

After dinner we headed back to the condo to clean up and prepare for the next day. I wanted to hit the canyon early in hopes of better weather, so I sorted out my camera gear and went straight to bed.

Sunday February 08

We woke up Sunday early enough to enjoy the sunrise again, I meandered down to the beach with my camera and coffee and played around with some long exposures.

We packed up the car with our “just in case, who knows what we'll do” gear and struck out for a driving tour of the south side of the island.

Our first stop was in Kapa'a for breakfast at Ono Family Restaurant (technically that was north of the resort, but it is the closest town) 

I'm enjoying the fruit, but I'm wondering if oatmeal is outlawed on the island, as I haven't seen it in a restaurant yet.

 From there we turned the car south and then east to Waimea. The nearest waterfall to our resort, and easiest to see on the island, is Waimea Falls. You might recognize it if you recall the intro to the TV show “Fantasy Island”

This is one of the rare instances where I chose not to climb over the guard rail for a better view... though I was tempted, the drop was immediate off the side of the cliff and I just couldn't trust it. I did climb on top of the guard rail wall to try to get my camera angle above the tall grasses which were blocking my view of the pool below, and D helped prop me up so I wouldn't fall. (Clearly all the tour book photographers climbed over the railing, or they visited when the side plants were cut low)

Here I'm playing with the edge 80 optic looking at the mountain over the falls.

I also enjoyed watching a few white tailed tropic birds gliding around the valley below.

difficult to focus on with the vines behind it, but this is the best shot I could get.

From here, we backtracked to the highway and headed further south/west around the southern part of the island. We drove down a road lined with massive eucalyptus trees called Tree Tunnel, which lead to the little town of Koloa – home to a little stretch of stores connected by wooden sidewalks. We pulled over here for a little shopping and lunch. After exploring a few of the stores, we meandered behind the main strip where we found a couple of food trucks. We grabbed a table and picked up a couple plates of food from the truck named Chalupa, I had the camarones diablo. (spicy shrimp)

Back in the car, we headed further south to the coast to check out Spouting Horn. This is a spot along the beach where a hole developed inside a lava flow, and when the tide hits the shore the water spurts up like a geyser. I spent quite a good amount of time here playing with different lenses for various photo effects.

After Spouting Horn, we circled back up to the main highway and over towards Hanapepe to visit the Kauai Coffee Company. D and I did some coffee tasting, and G and I picked up a couple of smashed pennies (my favorite keepsake wherever we visit)

Here we felt the end of the day coming on and decided to head back towards Kapa'a to find dinner. We felt like eating someplace with a view, so we ended up heading down towards Lihu'e to grab a table somewhere by the water. Duke's Barefoot Bar had a more casual feel than the restaurant we'd eaten at upstairs, but still had access to the massive salad bar so we opted to pop in there for a seat by the beach. I enjoyed the view of the bay while we waited for our table.

I ended up having the same grilled ono I'd had the previous visit. After dinner we strolled up and down along the beachfront enjoying the view and the live music coming from one of the nearby restaurants.

Then on the drive home G exclaimed “YOU HAVE TO PULL OVER THERE ARE BUGS IN THE CAR!” I grabbed the flashlight out of my camera bag and spun around to take a look... I saw something flash a reflection and then disappear under the carpet of the car. D pulled into the parkinglot of an Ace Hardware and we turned on all the interior lights... sure enough, the car was completely infested with cockroaches! D got on the phone with Avis while G and I emptied our bags out of the car and began examining every nook and cranny of our various bags of gear. We found a bunch of colonies huddled in the deepest corners of every bag that held any kind of snack. After ridding ourselves of the extra passengers in our bags (and several pieces of crawled-on fruit) we sealed everything up as best we could and headed to the airport rental car lot. As luck would have it, we were only a mile away, and Avis happened to have another car exactly like ours which had just been returned. When we arrived they had the new car freshly washed and waiting, and all the paperwork set to just switch cars and continue on our way. To their credit, they were fantastically friendly and accommodating, and even chatted with us about the differences of the various islands of Hawaii. The suspension was shot on the original rental anyway, so it has made for nicer driving having traded the car in anyway.

(The infestation is the main reason why I have been held up in my updates, it made for a long night!)