Day 12 - Jungle Love

Okay, so it's a corny title. (Can anyone name the band who played that song? Without using Google?)

Anyway, today unscheduled as are the rest of our days we here (we did that on purpose), so we spent a bit of time figuring out what we wanted to do. Since we'd only been north once so far, we decided to check out a a couple of North Shore beaches. On the drive up, we stopped at the Kilauea Lighthouse...or rather, stopped at the entry gate to the lighthouse. Since today was a national holiday it was closed.

While there, we decided to do a little walking/hiking on the Kalalau Trail. The trail is pretty famous - and long - and strenuous (I read tonight that the Sierra Club rates it a "9" on a scale of "10" in difficulty). The full trail starts at Ke'e Beach and is 11 miles long, through tropical coastline. Our plan was to go to Hanakapi`ai where there is a 300 ft. waterfall, 2 miles in (the plaque describes that portion as a 3-4 hour round trip). We hiked about a mile into the trail when we realized that there was no way we could get to the falls and back before it got dark so we headed back down. We were able to get to a scenic lookout that gives you a great view of the first peaks of the Na Pali coast. We took a breather and a couple of pictures there, then headed back. Even so, we got back to the Jeep a little after 3:00.

We're going to check the surf report tomorrow. If it looks good, we're going back to Ke'e Beach to snorkel tomorrow. It was so beautiful and the reef looked absolutely perfect for snorkeling. God willing and the weather holding...that's what we're doing tomorrow. Until then, I leave you with some pictures of what we saw today.

Kilauea Lighthouse Lumaha'i Beach


Lumaha'i (This beach was made famous by the movie South Pacific where Mitzi Gaynor "washed that man right out of her hair"!)


Waikanaloa (Blue Room Wet Cave), near Ha'ena Beach Park




The Na Pali Coast as seen from Kalalau Trail


Looking east from the same spot we took the pictures above.


More of the trail...






Aloha!