Monday, September 26, 2011

A rooster decided to crow from the picnic table 5 ft from our tent at 4:00 AM. I had a few rotten avocados and mat’s flipflop to throw at the damn thing. Instead of stopping it just went a few more yards into the bushes and continued crowing but at least it wasn't crowing right into our ears. I maybe got another hour or so of sleep before waking up. We had our breakfast and broke camp, packing up the car. Down out of the canyon lands we made our way back to Lihue. It was still mid morning when we came upon the hwy junction to south Kauai coast and decided to try to get a few more hours of snorkeling and beach laying before going back to Portland tomorrow.

Chickens at Koke'e State Park

We ended up at Poipu beach park. Pretty crowded but supposedly a good place to snorkel. We donned our gear and headed in. Not a whole lot of features in the water but you could get close to little schools of fish. After an hour or so, we came back out to warm up on the beach. Since it was our last day, we decided to be easy on the sunscreen, our last chance to get some tanning in. We headed back out to snorkel one last time. We spotted some rock fish deep down under some rocks. We didn’t stay out very long because the seas got rough and we were being heaved up and down on the surface. We rinsed off and sat in the sun to dry out and warm up. A gnarly looking black cloud was hovering over the plateau out west and pouring out over the ocean where Waimea canyon dumped it’s waters. It looked very foreboding but it would have been awesome to be up there during the storm to watch the waterfalls go off, plunging thousands of feet along the cliffs.

Poipu beach park

Eventually we got hungry and made our way back to the car. This part of the island had neat little shops and towns but it there were lots of mega hotels and so lots and lots of tourists were everywhere. We decided to head back to Lihue to relax and reorganize all our items for the flight back home in the morning. We stopped at a little place called Mark's Place for box lunch. This place was awesome, a little tiny joint in the middle of an industrial area, so lots of workers come here for lunch. Large portions for cheap! I got my last Loco Moco deliciousness, Mat got Mark's special. We had our fill, stopped by costco for some souvineer chocolates and gas, then headed back to the Garden Isle Hotel for showers and naps. We decided a nice dinner was in order for our last night on vacation so we dressed up and headed to Duke’s for a nice dinner on their upper balcony overlooking Nawiliwili harbor. It was a nice environment and the food was decadent but we had so many fabulous meals during our stay that Duke’s dinner left us lacking. It was still nice to sit on the open balcony and enjoy each other’s company on our last night in Hawaii. The only bummer was realizing how sunburn we got from taking it too easy on our sunscreen today :(

Last night in Hawaii

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