Day 2 in Paradise

Today, after a leisurely breakfast, we headed to Old Koloa Town (k0e-loe-ah) to scout out the dive shop, Fathoms Five, we're scheduled to dive with next Monday and Wednesday. We discovered a cool, historic bit of Kauai - Old Koloa Town. This is a small village of shops mostly housed in buildings that were erected in the 1800's to support the sugar plantation. Each building has a plaque that describes the history associated with it. Very interesting and fun.

Next we headed to Poipu (poy-poo) Beach for a day of sunning, swimming, snorkeling and sunning some more. Ahhhhh... Beautiful stretch of golden sand protected from big surf by natural lava rock walls. THIS is why we came to Hawaii, and especially to Kauai. This is Saturday and the beach wasn't crowded at all. SWEET! The real unexpected bonus was that a Monk Seal was, sunning itself on the beach when we got there. Monk seals are one of only few species of seal living in warm waters. It is a rare (estimated population of 1200), endangered species. We'd left our phones and cameras locked up in the Jeep so we missed the opportunity to get a picture. (The only disappointment of the day...not a bad day.)

When hunger finally forced us to leave, we'd gone through all of our snacks and most of our water...and it was 2:30 in the afternoon. We did a quick bit of research in 'the blue book' to find a simple, good lunch place and were intrigued by the sound of Keoke's Paradise. Lunch was really good - we split a half-pound cheeseburger and a basket of fries and each had a cold, frosty beverage (okay, a beer...Di opted for the Kona Lavaman Lager, I had the Kona Lavaman Red Ale). The first pictures below are the 'inside' of the restaurant. I put that in quotes because although there is a roof and some posts to support the trusses, there are no real walls - only awnings to protect from the breezes.
We were sitting at a table next to this railing...with a stream. Don't see that much in Tri-Cities...

Or a waterfall, which feeds the stream (this was about 10 ft. behind our table.


















Sorry for the fuzzy picture of the bar area...I promise this not the effect of the ONE beer I had. Just shaky hands.


And what would a dining experience in Kauai be without a chicken or two roaming about? :)



















In case you're wondering (we certainly were, so we asked), no, nobody kills and eats the chickens. Evidently these chickens, freed by the hurricanes were brought by the Phillipine immigrants. The roosters are bred for fighting so they are lean, and the meat is reportedly very tough. One t-shirt we saw to day had instructions for cooking and eating a Kauai wild chicken.

Kill, pluck, and clean chicken.
Place in large pot of water.
Place over heat and put in a hot lava rock.
When the rock is tender, the chicken is ready to eat.

After our lunch, we drove a couple of miles to "Spouting Horn." Spouting Horn is so named because a lava tube under the rock shelf opens and, about every 20-30 seconds a spout of seawater spews up like a geyser. I got a couple of shots of part of a "spew" but couldn't seem to time the shutter click to get the whole thing.



















We ended the day with a sunset walk on the beach near our condo and a soak in the hot tub. Life is good.