A Week in Kauai - What To Do
We are in Hawaii, on the island of Kauai. We're on the south shore, in the town of Poipu. Just above Poipu Beach, there's a bunch of cool beaches down here. There's Poipu Beach, Brennecke Beach, Shipwreck Beach, and yeah, down the south shore of Kauai.
The plan is just to have a good time, relax, go to the beach. Just enjoy the good times with the friends. See what Hawaii has to offer. We had a great team of people this entire trip. Myself, Jeremy Johnston, best friend since seventh grade. Vinnie Hathaway, I've know her since junior high and high school as well. Vinnie Hathaway's boyfriend Clark. We had Jennifer, who is Vinnie's roommate. We had Lee, who is a good friend of Vinnie's and I've known him since college as well, and Kelly's boyhood friend John.
Kelly is a friend of mine, that I've know since was that fifth grade. Yeah, fifth grade.
Everyone was willing to do everything. We all worked good as a team. We ate together, we slept together, we did all of our activities together whether it was hiking, going into the ocean, at the beach, hanging out, just having good times. So far the trip has been an incredible roller coaster ride of emotions. Thrills, it was great.
I've never been to Hawaii before this. This was my first time. It's kind of why I wanted to go. When I got that email, it was like, I got to make it work. Got to get the time off work to go. Got a lot going on at work. Kind of stressed before I came, just because there was so much going on at work. Yeah I had to be stuck at work, stuck in my office.
We're going to an incredible adventurous rope swing. It's going to be awesome. To get to the rope swing and the cliff jumping spot, it was parked on the side of the road, and it was about a five minute walk. Through kind of a junglely area, and that was about it.
Whoa! Whoa John, careful buddy.
The rope swing was probably one of the greatest, greatest days of my life. We went to this place called Kipu Falls. Where there's a river running inland that fills into a little waterfall. Then there's a pool, and they have giant rope swing. This is incredible. A little scary, a little intimidating at first, but once you start seeing people doing it, you realize it's not a huge deal. What's the worst that can happen? Belly flop maybe.
You go pretty deep. Went down and could feel the bottom. To me that's pretty deep. What'd you feel when you jumped? Pure adrenaline. Nothing but extreme, extremeness. It's a rush. It's an affirmation of life. It's telling yourself, I can conquer the elements. It was just totally awesome. I loved cliff jumping. It's fun jumping off stuff into the water. The water is like cool, but it's not freezing cold. The pool is really deep, perfect rope swing to do, you know, jumps and flips and what not off the rope. Awesome time.
It felt great. Cold burst of water hitting your face, hitting your body all at the same time. Not know when your going to hit the water. I swear to God I counted like thirty seconds before I hit the water. Next I'm doing the rope swing. The first thing that went through my mind, as I jumped off the rock on the rope swing was, I hope I don't die. It's a little intimidating, but a lot of fun after the first time you do it.
Not the highest cliff jumping in the world, but it's cool to see someone get up there, get freaked out, sitting on the edge. Everyone coaxing along, trying to get them to jump off, and then finally do it. It's totally fun to jump off, so it's good when someone finally conquers their fears.
Beach! After we were done riding the rope swing, we knew we wanted to go to a beach. We're at Poipu Beach. It was the first time I'd been to a beach in a very long time. It was just great for everybody. Everyone was having a good time. Everyone's playing around in the ocean, laying out. Trying to work on the tan. It was just great for everybody. Best part of the beach is definitely the ocean. Kind of like suntan lotion, saltwater spraying all over your face. Getting in your mouth. Taste great. People are so nice. So friendly. The water is to die for.
The value of this trip is priceless. I do this for the friends, and the good times. Relaxation's just one of the side notes, but friends and good times, that's what it's all about. To kill the time here in Kauai in between our activities, we played a lot of Tetris. Had quite a few Tetris tournaments, broke out the brackets a couple nights. It's just a lot of one on one battle action. We did the first hike. It was a lot of fun. After that, we knew we wanted something a little bit more intense. A little bit more challenging. Something you can write home to Mother about. Swamp Hike it was actually one of the most intense hikes I think I've ever been on. Hiked fourteen years in Utah. Nothing compares to Swamp Hike. It was raining almost the entire time, walking up and down muddy slopes, slipping, sliding, trying to go to the world's highest swamp in the world.
The Alakai Swamp, we're on the Pia Trail right. Well the book says which way to turn. I know that what's confusing. Does up mean that way, or does up mean that way? I think up means that ... Well I don't know. When the trail intersects Alakai Swamp Trail, go left.
What is going through my mind as I'm climbing up the slippery, slimy, mud, is that I really hope I don't fall, and somehow slide down the side of the mountain. Just when I didn't think the Swamp Hike could get any harder, the boardwalk was laid down, made the hick a lot easier. At the top of the Alakai Swamp, the fog was so intense. It was so hard to see through it. If there was somebody twenty feet ahead of you, you wouldn't be able to see them. When we finally reached the destination of our Swamp Hike, it was kind of a let down. You couldn't really see anything. There was so much fog, that you couldn't actually see.
Total let down. Total let down. Your hiking for four miles, it's hot, it's swampy, it's windy. You get to what's supposed to be the culmination, this lookout point over the north shore, and there's this big cloud. It was still cool though. The hike was the important part, even though we got to the edge and could only see cloud.
When you think about it, and the real true value of it was just the great hike with the great friends. Did really have anything to do with the overall outcome. Just had to do with being there with good friends, and having a good time along the way. I think it's cool to go somewhere like Hawaii, where you know, people think about going to the beach, think about drinking daiquiris, and hanging out, but what we went to, it was a pretty rugged hike, you know. We went out there, it was eight miles round trip, and take with it you know, I went and conquered a part of the island most people aren't going to see.
There's some hard core waves out there. You would not believe it. Just past Hanalei, we went to the Haena Beach Park. It's totally different than the south shore. The south shore got a lot of hotels, and a lot of condos and what not built up right next to the beach. Where as the north shore, is pretty much jungle, right up to the water. Wicked undertow, the waves were like capping out there. It's out of control.
The waves were pretty intense. We found out afterwards in the guide book, that they recommended not swimming in that area, due to the strong undertow, but we didn't know that. Every time I was trying to ride the boogie board, I'd get crashed in the face with one wave. Not expecting it, get crashed with another wave. There was a couple times where I drank half a gallon of saltwater. You win some you lose some. We ended the trip with sort of our grand finale at night at the beach with fireworks. It was a good time. It was going to be the last time that we all hung out together. John leaves on his flight tonight. Last night, we set it off with a bang. Lighting off fireworks at the beach, having a good time, spending time with the friends. Everyone got involved. Lots of picture taking. Lots of just hanging out, playing some Frisbee. Just having a good time at night at the beach.
Went down to the beach. Vinnie and Jennifer bought some fireworks. We went down, played some Frisbee under the moonlight. Saw the fireworks on the beach, had some drinks, it was a good time, good way to end the vacation.
I'm going to take away a lot of things from this trip. I'm going to take mostly the memories. Hanging out with friends, being able to look back at the pictures, and kind of explain to people what was going on at the time. Telling stories about what happened. It's just a lot of good memories. I'll never forget the trip, never forget all my friends.
I don't get to see anything like this back home in Utah. The north shore, that coast, it's just so gorgeous. It's awesome. Awesome vacation. It was an awesome time, gorgeous place, had a lot of fun. We just had a blast everyday. I'm just going to take away a lot of fun times with friends on the island.
