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!

Monday March 31 - excursion to the Black River and Pelican Bar

Monday was our first big excursion day... we had a fantastic day taking a boat ride out on the Black River, then straight out to Pelican Bar before coming inland for an amazing dinner. In all, our outing was about 12 hours. A trip out to the Black River alone would not normally be so long, however D booked us with a private boat that would take us up the river further than the average pontoon boat can get to, and our captain was a conservationist himself, and therefore eternally patient with my desire to get good photos of any wildlife we might possibly encounter.

Our day started early, with a quick continental breakfast at the hotel before gathering up our gear for the day and loading up into the van. Though I tried to sleep in a little, I ended up waking early due to the sounds of birds just outside our room.  I wandered down to the restaurant for a cup of coffee and spotted a heron hanging out by the edge of the pool... of course I had to run and get a photo.

Our driver for the day was Ashton, an independent drir who greeted us with fresh fruit and tips on avoiding sunburns. (Put pure Aloe on your skin first, and then sunblock, and this is supposed to keep you from burning, and give you a deeper, longer lasting tan with no burning)

Our ride out to the meeting spot on the river was long and bumpy... the main road over to the Black River had a portion which was being repaved, so we took a detour up into the hills to get around the badly potholed road. Along the way, Ashton stopped to pull some leaves off of what seemed to be a laurel bush.. he passed them back to us and asked us what we thought they might be. We immediately recognized the smell as being allspice. Once we made it out to the black river, we all gathered up our gear, slathered on the fresh aloe (from a huge aloe plant Ashton brought for us), then sunblock, then were driven down the street to a pier to meet our captain for the day... Captain Dennis.

For the most part, I will let the photos speak for themselves on this blog post. Rest assured, this is just a hint of a sampling or what I managed to capture... I was extremely pleased with having been able to find 4 different crocodiles on this trip, along with an amazing amount of birds. As I said before, our captain was incredibly patient in allowing me time to concentrate on focusing and shooting, and he had a keen eye for spotting crocodiles and birds that I would have otherwise missed.

G and I in the front of the boat.  This is why I have a strangely shaped sunburn on my forearms, I was pretty much posed like this for the entire boat ride.

We headed up river, pausing long enough for Captain Dennis to point out the multitude of birds near the entrance to the river, and slowing down to creep up on some crocodiles hidden amongst the mangrove trees in the river.

A couple of egrets in the bushes near the riverbank.

One of the crocodiles we encountered... I call this one Charlie.

The mangrove trees along the riverbank of the Black River

Further up river than we've ever been before, the shoreline changes to limestone.  

D and two of my nieces, being cool.

The pontoon boats normally ride up the river about 20 minutes, pause for a beer break, and then head back down to the dock. Being in a much smaller and narrower boat, our captain was able to go further up the river, under a very low bridge (we all had to duck) and up to where the water turns from brackish to fresh, where we paused for a swimming break. Back down the river a bit, we stopped at Sister Lou's crab shack for some of the most amazing crab I've ever had.

Sister Lou serves Blue Crab in the shell... she takes the crab and boils it, then cleans the meat out of the crabs, mixes it with some kind of diced peppers, then puts it back in the shell to serve. One serving is 2 shells filled with crab, all for 400 Jamaican dollars (roughly $3.80 US) Our stop was meant to be a snack, however we lingered so long on the river that our stop at Sister Lou's ended up being lunch. We ordered a tray of crab backs, then went back and ordered a few more servings.

The view of Sister Lou's from the river

Lots of crab!

Our crew hanging out under the shelter waiting for the food

One service of crab.. D put a hot sauce on his (on the bottom)

Our boat for the day, parked at Sister Lou's... we actually went under the bridge in the background, we had to load up the front of the boat with passengers to get the bow low enough to get under the bridge.

On the way back down the river, Captain Dennis slowed in a few spots for me to get some more photos of crocodiles and birds, before heading out of the black river and out into the ocean to head out to the Pelican Bar. Our ride out was surprisingly choppy, and we all noticed the black rain clouds making their way across the island. We arrived at the Pelican Bar, grabbed a few Red Stripes, and generally hung out on the decks or out in the water. The bar is built out of driftwood and sits on a sand bar a few miles off the coast. The area around the bar itself is only a few feet deep, so G found enough confidence in her swimming to take her snorkel vest off and go diving for shells. After a bit of time, our captain came to point out the rain clouds and voiced his concern that we would get rained on soon, so we quickly gathered ourselves together and headed back to shore.

Here we are with Captain Dennis and his first mate, after a successful day of being on the river and the ocean.

Ashton drove down to meet us at the beach and we were not in the van more than one minute before the rain came pouring down in buckets. It was nearing dinner time, and Ashton recommended a local spot for us to stop at, so we headed just a bit up the road and were soon racing out of the van, dodging the huge rain drops, and piled into the little restaurant on the beach.

One of the reasons Ashton prefers this restaurant is because the customer is able to pick out the fish to eat. I don't mean pick out a type of fish off the menu... I mean they will bring the plate of fish out and you and you can pick which specific fish you want to eat. After a bit of conversation, and asking about ingredients and cooking methods (for my allergies), Ashton sized up our group and ordered dinner for us. We sat and watched the amazing thunder storm outside as we waited for our food... with every stunning flash of lightening we witnessed over the water, we all mentioned how grateful we were to have decided to come inland when we did.

We'll take the ugly one on the left.

Curried Conch - much better than it might sound. I expected the texture to be like squid, but it was much closer to scallops

Garlic Lobster.  Yum.  Just... Yum.

Brown Stewed Snapper (the ugly fish in the photo above)

Steamed Snapper.  Normally this would seem like a boring dish, however this snapper was incredibly flavorful... in fact I liked it better than the brown stewed snapper

Bammy... which I've never had before.  This looks like pancakes, but it is made out of shredded and flattened casava.  The texture was similar to an overcooked pancake, and I didn't really enjoy the flavor of it alone.  When I mixed it with some gravy from the brown stewed snapper, however, it was quite tastey

the outdoor seating area of the restaurant, which was rained out at the time

This is the building we sat in... our crew took up all the tables inside.

Cloggy's is the name of the restaurant.

The restaurant also has deck seating outside (which was also rained out at the time of our arrival)

this is the kitchen of Cloggy's... open fire, mostly cast iron and dutch oven.

Dinner was so amazingly good... we ate family style, diving into a little of everything and passing the platters of food around the two tables. The rain let up during our dinner and we were able to open the shades and enjoy the view of the beach as we finished up our food. Dinner being done, we piled into the van for the bumpy ride home.

I cannot say enough good things about our driver, Ashton, and our boat captain, Dennis. The conversations were fantastic, we learned a lot about Jamaican culture, and we all felt very well taken care of. They truly bent over backwards to make our experience amazing.

Thursday May 5 - Beach day

Thursday dawned with bright sunshine and calm waters again.  We woke up and meandered our way down to the deck for our breakfast of oat porridge, toast and coffee. 

 Gayle likes to help mark our chairs with our towels while we finish up our coffee.

 Breakfast this morning includes a bottle of fresh squeezed orange juice from a vendor on the beach.

As we finished up breakfast, I noticed a heron flying in and landing under the tree to the side of the property.

Looking forward to properly editing these at home - sometimes the lighting on the sand is a hassle to deal with.

We spent some time back and forth in and out of the water...

D's view of me walking out into the water to chat with some of the other guests.

Around lunch time we wandered our way down to the Waves market area to see about getting some patties from Niah's.
Of all the market places along the beach, this one is my favorite - save for the indoor gift shops, it's the only spot on the beach where you don't feel hassled.  The wood carvings that are for sale are being shown and sold by the actual carvers themselves... last year we bought from Robert Woolery, who was not in his shop today, but we met his mentor Mason, who has a shop directly across from Robert.  We absolutely plan on going back to buy something from the folks in Waves before we leave, but for today we were just looking and getting an idea of who carves what kinds of subjects.  Mason specializes in faces, some are abstract, some realistic, but all are incredibly beautiful.  I'm hoping to go back when I'm not so greased over with sunblock so I can take proper photos without fear of dropping my camera.
We ordered our patties from Niah's and they said it would take about a half hour (they had just opened) so D hiked back to the room with G to pick up some chicken across the street to go with them.  I stayed, and chatted with some women who were selling whole aloe leaves.  I was turning red in a few spots and was interested in seeing what raw aloe vera would do to help.  I picked up a stalk, and one of the women also offered to rub some on me right there (for a fee, of course)  I went ahead with it, expecting it would just be put on my shoulders where the redness was showing... and ended up with pretty much a full body aloe rubdown right there on the beach. 
I think if I'd gotten it on video I might possibly be able to make a few bucks off of that on certain websites. :)

On the way back to the hotel I noticed the stingray in the water, very close to the edge.  I grabbed a shot before stepping into the water, but once again she swam away before I could get an underwater photo.

As much as I want an underwater photo, I'm also still rather happy that she's so shy around people.

We've noticed the pattern of her swimming seems to be fairly consistent... somewhere around 11 to noon she passes back and forth around this stretch of beach.  I'll continue to try to get her underwater, but so far this is the best shot I've managed.
 While hanging out at the bar munching on our lunch a couple came up to grab a drink and say hello.  They'd just had their wedding here at Idle Awhile the day before we arrived and were now spending the remainder of their honeymoon up the beach at an all-inclusive resort.  They were talking with the staff and us about the differences between the two, saying they much prefer the experience at Idle Awhile as compared to the all inclusive.  For one thing, the staff-to-guest ratio can't be beat (the all inclusive housing hundreds of rooms as opposed to Idle Awhile's 14) and then that morning they discovered that to leave their property just to walk down the beach, they needed to "check out" - put their name and room number on a list and let them know how long they would be before they returned.
A few thicker black clouds began to roll in, so I decided it would be a good time to pop back into the room for a shower.  When I came back out Shirley, one of the guests, spotted me and said - in a voice that was calm but urgent "Oh good there you are... go get your camera!  The one with the zoom."  I dashed back inside for the camera and crept up to where she was standing to see another heron posed in the tree.

While I was having fun chasing after wildlife, D had been picked up by Tyrone to go down the street and visit Courtney, a chef we know from previous trips. 

D snapped this shot of Tyrone in his colorful shirt - which we jokingly call his "tourist shirt"

While D was out with Tyrone, I took a nap in the hammock and G worked on some of her homework packet.  Once he came back we were all still feeling kinda lazy, so we decided to stick around the bar, playing dominoes and grabbing a few snacks as dinner. 
I have about a billion photos of generic sunsets... the glowing orb off on the horizon, so I've decided to try to make each night's shooting attempts a little more creative.  Tonight I put on the lensbaby and poked around behind the little baby palm tree.

Wednesday May 4 - more beach, May the 4th be with you

Today is our first breakfast next door at Coco La Palm.  They have a wonderful vegetarian plate that I look forward to every year, consisting of sauteed ackee, boiled cabbage, callalo and tomatoes.  It is rare that I can have anything so savory from a restaurant for breakfast, and as potentially unappetizing as boiled cabbage sounds for breakfast, mixed with the callalo it is a really wonderful salty goodness.

 The ackee is the yellow stuff, which you just can't get in the states.  

I struggle to describe callaloo... it is a green leafy vegetable with the texture of maybe mustard greens, but a flavor closer to spinach mixed with something else.  I love almost all green vegetables anyway, but coming here and being able to taste something with such a unique flavor, and which plays so well with other flavors and textures,  I have developed a greater appreciation for the potential of vegetables back home... and makes me want to explore them in more ways than just "steam something and throw it on the plate."

Our view from Coco La Palm

G enjoys her oatmeal

The banana bread here apparently surpasses anything I can make at home - I suspect it has to do with the bananas being so much sweeter and more flavorful than whatever it is that comes to us - under ripe - from Ecuador.  When I get back home I'm going to source some honey bananas and try making my bread with them.

As we finished our breakfast, I noticed a couple of woodpecker type birds concentrating on an insect nest tucked under the branch of one of the trees. I hustled right back to the room to grab my camera and followed them around the trees for a bit.

After breakfast it was back to the beach for more floating, swimming and snorkeling.  While we were on the beach, one of the local fishermen paddled up on a sit-on-top and was showing off his catch.

Tyrone popped in to chat for a bit on our porch, then drove us into town to grab some lunch.

He took us to a place called the Health Shop - a vegan place that serves up baked patties, puddings (what I would call a dense cake) combination meals, and fresh juices. Unfortunately they were nearly sold out by the time we arrived, so D and G ran next door to Juicy Patty to pick up their lunch while I nabbed the last veggie patty from the Health Shop for myself. 

After lunch we enjoyed some more swimming and reading out on the beach until it was about time to head in and shower up for dinner.  As I waited for D and G to be ready for dinner, I wandered out onto the beach to enjoy the sunset.

We gathered ourselves together and headed over to Canoe for dinner.  This place has consistently had the best food on every trip, and they lived up to our expectations once again.

G and I in front of the meny for Canoe, which is written on a chalk board out on the deck.

 

We picked the beach tables to sit at tonight... this roving dog decided to join us by alternating between laying 5 feet from our table, and jumping up to chase after crabs in the sand.

This is what Canoe looks like at night (without the flash of a camera lighting things up)

 The jerk shrimp.  The reason to come here... spicy as all get out but so good, and comes with a great fruit salsa to help cool down the burn.

 My dinner.

I had the mahi mahi, which was served with a citrus sauce overtop of it, grilled vegetables, a couple slices of fruit, and a pasta salad.  In the future I need to remember to have them leave that part off since I can't eat it.  Oh, and I normally completely despise green bell peppers, but the ones they grow here are actually not entirely disagreeable.  There is no... nickley flavor.. like the ones back home.  Though I will say, they are still better as an ingredient as opposed to a thing to eat on it's own.

After dinner at Canoe we headed back to Idle Awhile, where we wandered out to the bar to play a few games of dominoes before crashing out for the night.