Liz, Helen, and I arrived in Hawaii on January 25th, and found our vacation rental easily at Puu Poa in Princeville on the northshore of Kauai. The two middle lanais pictured on the left on the second floor are our lanais for the 2BR/2BA condo. The one with the potted palm is off the living room and the one overlooking a garden area with a palm on either side is off the master bedroom and entry area to the condo (passing through our blue-weathered bronze entry doors).
We are right on the cliff next to the sea and whales move past within easy view. Spouts are everywhere, and we have seen flukes and backs, and one breach. Ne Ne, the native Hawaiian goose, come in each day and graze on the lawn. Of course, the ever-present feral chickens graze on the lawn all day long. 
The view from either lanai at our condo (as well as from the kitchen, dining room, and living room) is spectacular. A small beach is just below us, and surfers are usually out during the day. The roar of the ocean lulls us to sleep every night. The picture at the left was taken from our living room lanai.
Each day we have had an outing--some more strenuous than others and some lasting from 7 a.m. till 6 p.m. Today, both Helen and I decided to pass up the planned outing (Liz is going with her friends Wanda and Glenda on a cliff walk led by Wanda's friend Chris, who lives here) and just be lazy around our condo. Of` course, that gives me an opportunity for updating this blog.
On Wednesday, the day after we arrived, we headed to the southcoast about an hour-and-a-half away and went for a whale-watching excursion in a rubber raft boat. It was quite a trip, and I wasn't sure if it wouldn't be the last excursion of the trip....The pilot raced across the waves, slapping sharply against the bow, and would easily have tossed us all into the sea if we hadn't followed instructions. Sitting on the sides of the rubber raft, we were told to hold on to the top rope with our right hand, the middle rope with our left hand, and to hook our feet under the bottom rope on the boat's bottom. Lizzie hung on for dear life and I was next to her following suit--Helen was more to the rear where the wave crashing was less severe, but still she had a death grip on the ropes.
The trip did reveal whales at a distance, but bottlenose and spinner dolphins were up-close and personal. The bottlenose were flipping a dead fish around, playing some dolphin version of soccer, and the spinners were leaping and turning next to the boat for a quite a while. We also saw a rare monk seal, and a large school of flying fish, one of my favorite sights.
On Thursday, after a rainy night, Liz and I climbed down a steep trail to the beach below our condo--we have now made two trips: first and last. The trail was steep with only frayed rope handholds for part of it (Helen wisely turned back), but Liz and I made it all the way to the bottom, where the sea was clear. We can access the same beach area from either the easy trail through the St. Regis Hotel or through a paved trail along the condos to our immediate east. That's our intent during the next exploration of the area.
Later in the morning, the three of us split up--Liz and I went snorkeling at Lydgate Park and Helen joined Glenda (Wanda had not yet arrived) for a day of shopping. The diversity of fish contained in a pool behind a rocky wall was great--the high tide sweeps them in, and mostly they stay within the pool. Needlefish and other tropicals abounded. This was the first time snorkeling for Liz, and the first time I have snorkeled in the sea, so Lydgate is protected and a nice calm place to get our sea legs, so to speak. Helen's shopping trip proved worthwhile and she bought some material at the Stichery.
On Friday, we joined Wanda who had arrived the evening before, and explored to the end of the road on the North shore, all the way to Kee Beach. The surf was high, and althouigh we had our snorkeling gear, there was no safe way to be out in the sea, so we hiked along the cove trail for a ways, before returning to the beach. We stopped briefly on the way back at both wet Cave (pictured) and dry cave--these are lava tubes similar in appearance to the Lava Beds National Monument which we have frequented in Modoc County, CA, but are right at the cliff edge to the sea. Exploring the wet cave requires a swim (which we didn't do) and exploring the dry caves requires scrambling and a flashlight--so we postponed that as well. The next stop was at the Limahuli Gardens, built on the site of an old (700 years) native encampment. The gardens have terrifc information on indigenous, introduced, and invasive plants, and also are quite lovely:
The bottom terraces had taro growing at differnt stages of its life cycle. The taro plant, introduced from Polynesia, has been an important staple for the Hawaiians for centuries. This is the sticky purplish food often found at luaus and frequently described as bland or unpalatable. However, it is not prepared and presented in the best way at a tourist luau. We were told by a native Hawaiian that first the root is pounded into a soft sticky pulp which is then kneeded. It may also begin to ferment--the thicker it is, the more sweet and flavorful. The thin poi found at luaus is a far cry from the thick, sweet poi eaten by the Hawaiians. Taro fields are abundant in Hanalei. The valley below the overlook along the haighway is shown below, and we hope to exlore the valley in a few days.
Next we returned home to our condo for a brief rest as that night we were returning to Hanalei for a slack-key guitar concert. Slack-key is a traditiobnal way of playing the guitar, learned by the Hawaiians as they taught themselves the instrument introduced by cowboys from South America. It is quite lovely, almost tranquil.
[to be continued in the next blog entry as Little Red's computer's memory is not great for all the pictures, so I need to post this before continuing]
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