Thursday, March 12, 2020
Friends,
We are on board our flight to LA, just catching up on email. Below is the email we couldn’t send Tuesday evening; we’ll send a final email concluding our trip updates over the weekend.
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I’m writing from Kokee State Park, in a very rustic cabin. Not only do we not have internet reception or wifi, we also do not have heat. Yes, there is a wood stove in the cabin, but did not bring any wood, not realizing that it would be about 40 degrees inside the cabin (yes, you heard that correctly.) When we walked into the cabin, the classic slats that are in every Hawaiian house were wide open, ensuring that fresh, cold air permeated the building. Dave is ready to deconstruct the table and chairs and feed the legs one by one into the wood stove to make some heat….instead, I have piled all four of the comforters in the building onto our bed, where I’m sitting with my feet under the covers and a wool hat on my head. Whoops, we found winter in Hawaii.
On the up side, it’s been another amazing day in Paradise. This morning we stopped at two coffee farms and tasted both milk and dark chocolates. Better yet, we touched the cacao pods growing on a chocolate tree and ate the tropic fruit-tasting covering off the chocolate beans before chewing the beans until tasting a distinctively chocolatey bitter taste. We learned all about the process of making chocolate, from tree to fermentation of the beans, to roasting and shelling the nibs. We ate the nibs, drank cold chocolate, enjoyed a chocolate-covered banana and ate a Popsicle made from the juice of the fruity substance that covers each chocolate bean. Yum! We also visited the Hawaiian Trading Post, which sells race shell necklaces made by native Hawaiians.
After finding a fish market that served up some of the most delicious poke we had eaten, we boarded a catamaran in Port Allen for a 5-hour sunset cruise to see the Napali Coast. We had only been on the boat for the length of time of one mai-tai when we saw the fluke of a humpback whale. In a few minutes, another humpback breached in the distance, arching up above the water and then disappearing amidst a hug splash. We had never seen whales breach in person before, and it was breath-taking. By the end of the boat tour, we had lost count of how many whales we had seen breach. Evidently this is mating behavior of the male humpbacks, which were evidently in a frolicking mood. At one point, we saw a dorsal fin of a humpback rise up and smack the water’s surface 16 times in a row. This guy was staking out his territory.
When we got to the Napali Coast, just a little farther around the island, the light on the cliffs was stunning. (For you movie fans out there, Jurassic Park, King Kong, South Pacific, and a slew of other Hollywood blockbusters were filmed in Kauai because the scenery is so unearthly.) The crew kept the drinks coming (unfortunately, it was bring your own kombucha, and Erin did) and served up a decent Luau fare, including several vegan options, and taro, an important staple that allowed the native Hawaiians to live on the island when they first arrived from Polynesia. A helpful crew member explained that this purple taro sauce tasted like dirt, so we tried some, and found it pretty tasteless, although supposedly high in nutritional value.
One of the highlights was seeing the endpoint of the Kilalau trail, a secluded beach where boats are not allowed to land. Across the water, we could see hikers camped out on the beach. And just a little further, we could see the trail itself, including the very point at mile 7 where we had turned around the day before at Crawler’s Ledge.
We’re so glad we took the boat trip because seeing the Napali Coast from offshore provided a whole different perspective, including going right up to the entrance of some of the sea caves and water falls that flowed off the cliffs into the sea.
As we headed back toward port, we saw yet another rainbow arching from shore into the water. We didn’t bother to pick up our cameras this time, but instead simply enjoyed the vivid colors spread across the landscape.
Erin & Dave
