South Side of Kauai

On Thanksgiving, Rich and I took a trip to Kauai for nine days. Here’s a recap of the first few days on the South side of the island.

The first two nights we used points to stay at the Sheraton Kauai in Poipu. They must have had us confused with some high rollers or something but they upgraded us from the Garden View King room I booked to an Ocean View Suite (named the Orchid Suite)! And they threw in a free welcome drink and dessert at their restuarant Rumfire. Our room was amazing! We had a wrap around patio with ocean views on both sides. We had a full on bedroom suite with a wet bar. And the Sheraton property is awesome- lots of green space, tiki torches at night, a few beach access areas, a big pool/hot tub with a bar/restaurant. We could have spent the whole two nights just at the resort. But that’s not our style.

We did have dinner the first night (Thanksgiving) at Rumfire which was the best meal of the trip. Rich got the banana seafood curry and I got a whitefish dish that was just incredible. We were too full to take advantage of our free dessert (but we did that the following evening).

Friday Rich had booked us on a river tubing trip with Kauai Backcountry Adventures. We drove back to the Lihue area to meet our group and get fitted with a helmet, gloves and a headlamp. Then we piled into an open air bus and drove through old sugar plantation lands for about a half hour. Along the way we learned about the island’s history and the history of the sugar plantations. We stopped at an overlook of one of the wettest areas in the world and then continued to the river. After an entertaining safety briefing, we got in our tubes and headed down the river. The time on the river is a little over an hour and during that time you float through five caves (hence the headlamps). The current flows steadily, never too fast, but it spins you around making it feel like more of a wild ride than it is. In the last cave, we all turned our lights out and cruised through in the dark. The guides were great and Rich and I loved it! They provide deli style lunch after you get out of the river.

Saturday we checked out of the Sheraton early and drove to the far West side of the island to Waimea Canyon. We beelined directly to the ranger station 4 iles from the northernmost lookout to get a hiking map and then drove up to see the various viewpoints. The views over the Napali Coast were terrific!

We then found the not-very-well-marked trailhead for the Awaawapuhi trail (hence the map) and hiked that. It was a bit slippery since there had been rain recently and we were both glad to have our poles. The hike is 3.5 miles to a beautiful lookout over the Napali Coast. We hung out at the lookout and admired the scenery and redheaded birds and then hiked back out.

We planned to do another hike into Waimea Canyon but ended up doing about 1.5 miles on a dirt road looking for the trailhead and gave up. So we decided to just stop at the lookouts and, at the first one, we found the trailhead we’d been looking for. At that point we only had another hour or so of daylight so we skipped the hike and just took in the views all along the road back. Still an incredible day!

Sunday was supposed to be a boat trip along the Napali coast with snorkeling, but we got a call at 6:15 AM as we were getting ready to drive to the boat that the conditions were too rough to sail and we rebooked for later in the trip. We went to the Allerton Botanical Gardens but we didn’t want to pay $30 and wait 45 minutes for the shuttle. So we headed to the Spouting Horn (natural water spout) and then hung out by the pool at our AirBnB and read and I had a beer at a bar nearby.

Monday was our scuba dive day. We booked an afternoon dive so we lazed around a bit and got breakfast on the way. We dove with Bubbles Below in Port Allen. There were two groups of divers- we were with three others and there was another family of four with a separate dive master. We did two dives and were not disappointed. On the first dive we saw multiple eels, three turtles, tons of colorful fish, and the whole group saw a white tipped reef shark. I had more air left than the rest of the group so our guide stayed down with me and we saw another turtle and another reef shark. The other group saw a pair of hammerheads. On dive two, we saw three more turtles, lots of fish, an eel, and the highlight of the dive (for me at least) a spotted eagle ray that floated by us for a good 3-4 miutes before swimming off. Rich was arm’s length from a huge turtle which he loved. After the dive, we had a beer at the westernmost brewery in the US and then headed back to Poipu.

That was the end of our stay on the South side of Kauai. North side post coming soon.