A Random Walk and a Bike Ride

Today started as something of a random walk, mostly because of the rain showers that were ribboning their way across the island. We never really knew when it would happen, but there would be a sudden downpour and then it would eventually stop. So we started out by going to look at waterfalls.

Okay, yes, that's not a waterfall, but the first one was pretty far from the area that was set aside for viewing it, and it wasn't that great, and well... Magenta Bougainvillea!

Yes, that was kind of the flavor of the day, honestly. We went and saw an old valley for the river there, that had, long long ago been a set of terraced taro beds, which Japanese farmers turned into terraced rice beds, and then modern day farming came in and turned it into beef cattle fields, and today you can see the pastures with cows grazing, but the grass shows the lines of the old terraced beds. That was pretty cool. 

Beautiful scenery and a car to run to when it started pouring. 

And I'll admit this was very distracting, too. 

NOW I see how Jurassic Park got all the fights between dinosaurs down, though they really should have put bright plumage on all their dinosaurs because how could you get a better display than this? I mean really? The red roosters are super common, the whites less so, from what I've seen, and I'd just been chasing this big boy around trying to get closeups for a good painting of him, when he went and challenged this other guy for whatever reason. Tho maybe me chasing him had gotten his dander up and he was Ready To Go. They fought a few rounds and the red one kind of lost, though they both ended up on the same lawn with the three dozen hens that had gathered to watch the fight. So maybe they both kind of won. 

Believe it or not this is a birthstone. Not the usual kind that you put on a ring or a necklace to indicate the month you were born. This the stone that Hawaiian kings were, literally, born on. If Mom had designs on making her boy king, she had to come here while she was delivering said boy, and she had to deliver her boy ON this stone. The placenta was placed in that niche nearby and if a rat ate it, the kid was supposed to turn out to be a thief, which makes me wonder if they had something else ready to chase off the rats or to eat it? A dog had to be sacrificed under a stone to keep this place sacred, so no commoners could come here. So Mom had to be pretty special to begin with, but that kind of special I couldn't contemplate, coming out here to give birth on the stone. That was pretty amazing and was part of the Holoholoku Haiau.

The Wailua River was the river that went through those fields I mentioned, and they dove over a cliff for the less interesting falls before, but then we found this particular fall of the same Wailua River, in Wailua River State Park. These were pretty spectacular. The parking lot was tiny and weird, and we had a hard time finding a spot to start, but ended up settling in a spot and walking out, in the rain, of course, and got to really watch the water fall. There were actually three different areas the water was falling from, one was lower, under the right leg shown here.  

These were really lovely, and we also saw a pair of white tailed tropicbirds flying through the canyon, occasionally diving into the mist of the falls and then flying out again. 

There was also an obviously local lady selling banana bread in various flavors in the parking lot, part of why it was so full... but the tender loaves were really tempting, and it was a nice way to support someone we could see was trying really hard, so I bought a loaf of "plain" banana bread.

Or maybe I was just hungry. I didn't eat the banana bread, but we packed it gently away in the trunk and made our way to Hamura Saimin, a place that Mona had recommended, especially the won ton saimin. It's super local, and filled with brown people instead of the white tourists, and the decor was 60's lunch counter in spades, and by noon it was completely packed with people. We had to shift a seat to allow another group to fit into the place.

We ordered a side of tempura shrimp and one of their special saimin, in a medium size. It turned out to be plenty of food for the both of us, even though everyone else in the shop had their own bowl. Perhaps I could have just gotten a small and added a few things, but with the special saimin, we could taste everything, even if we only had one of each thing. And it was so good we ate the whole bowl before we thought to take a picture. 

John and I have this phrase, "It's sea level hot."

At our altitude of about 5000 feet, water boils at 

203°F (95°C), which is significantly lower than it does at sea level. This means that everything that is made at the boiling point is cooler at altitude: coffee, tea, and all soups, especially ramen. Ramen in Denver or Golden is a very different experience than it is here in Hawaii or in Seattle. The broth just can't be as hot that high up. So when we experience a soup or a coffee that was actually prepared correctly and served piping hot at sea level, we look at each other and say, "It's sea level hot."

This saimin broth was sea level hot, just like my TanTan mien the other night. So hot we had to slurp our noodles to start, and had to do it correctly so that we wouldn't burn our mouths. The dashi was deeply savory, and all the things in the soup were cooked exactly right, nothing was soggy and if we ate it fast enough, it wouldn't ever get that way. And we did, trading the bowl as we needed, and just slurping it all up. 

From there, John went down an unmarked way and onto a dirt road, and in the way of his best adventures, we bumped along that for a while, until we reached the Ninini Point Lighthouse. 

It was beautiful out there. 

The weather cleared so we could see all around. There was mostly nothing but stone, water, and sky. Behind us was the airport, with "restricted area" signs all over the fences, but no people. 

It looked like an end of the island, and in a way it was, and it was really fun to just wander around and enjoy it and the waves that battered the rocks out there. 

A lovely find that was well off the beaten trail.

And then we dove right back into all the very beaten paths. We went to Costco. 

It was Sunday crowded, too. We were intending to do nothing but browse for when we were going to shop for gifts on the way out on Thursday. But then we saw this rack of Hawaiian shirts.

The label on their collar was Cooke Street, and I remembered some Hawaiian shirts that I used to wear to Data I/O in the 90's. I wore through them. They were cotton, well made, and I'd loved them and looked for that label when we'd gone to Maui and Hawaii as well, but didn't find them there. And it turned out that this whole rack was Cooke Street shirts!

The funny thing was that I know that we combed through the Costcos on the other islands as well, so I wonder, now, if these are only available on Kauai and we'd gotten them all on that trip thirty years ago?

We also found a few gifts. From there we headed back to the room and the day had turned beautiful, mostly clear of the big rain clouds, so John and I went on a ride. We rented two bikes, with helmets and headed north along the bike path that runs right outside our complex. This way was all along the coastline, and the bike rental company recommended that we go that way. They closed at 4, and we arrived around 2:30, so they gave us the bikes for the minimal 2 hours and she said that we could probably do the whole path in that time, but that we had to be back before they closed.

The bikes were three speed, which was really nice with the gentle slopes of the bike path, and we rode through Kapa'a and up the coast past a bunch of beaches. The path has this amazing name: Ke Ala-Hele Makalae, and all of the first three beaches were part of Kapa'a Beach Park, but for the northmost one called Kealia Beach, and the locals call the stretch of sand just south of there Donkey Beach. 

Along the way we saw a set of cliffs that turned out to be connected to our resort. There used to be a pineapple cannery on the property we were on, but when Iniki came through and destroyed so much, the cannery was sold to be developed into our resort. 

The thing was that on the weekends, railcars of waste from the pineapple processing were dumped over the edge of the cliff. If the winds went the right way, the wastes would go out to sea, if it went the wrong way, though the decaying wastes would come back to haunt the island.

This was the rail they used for the cars, and there was a well fenced platform, and the fences were shaped like pineapples. That was pretty cooll The problem with having it still there, though was, as we passed later, we saw a guy climbing over the neat fence and walking out over the water. 

It's still pretty solid, I guess.

The end of the road was pretty unprepossessing. Just a rock in the middle of where it might have gone on. No beach, no accesses, nothing. So we just took a photo (or it didn't happen) and went back, and this time we stopped for pictures along the way.

The bike itself wasn't that bad? It had an odd angle for my legs, so that my heels had to be on the pedals, and when we first got it, the guy fitting them to people had to raise the seat nearly eight inches, and he probably could have raised it a bit more. But I'd had a hip problem that actually is exacerbated by having the seat too high, so it worked out. 

The best thing, though, was that we had a head wind the entire time north, and we were going uphill. So that meant, on the way back, we had a tailwind and most of the path was going downhill. 

This is "Donkey Beach" and I have no idea why it's called that, but it's a beautiful little beach, and is only accessible by bike or by a steep path from the road above and a pull out on the main road. There was only two other couples out on that beach, and one left as we picked our way down the stones to go down to it. 

I love tough paths, especially while following John, as he picks very different paths than I might, but both of us manage to get where we want to go. I really enjoy that. He does scout well, so I know that a way might be passable, but then I get to look and choose if I want a different way. 

The waves seemed so tall there, but they died before they reached the beach on the most part. We could walk almost up to the same place that the previous water fell, and usual get touched by the water in the same spot while huge waves towered up right before us. 

The sand was pretty course, but it was fun to just be out there for a while, basically alone on a beach on Kauai, which is rare. It was a really great thing to have been able to do. 

And on the way out, we got to stop and take a look back.

The path had some amazing overlooks to the various beaches that it wound around. The waves were so evident up there, too. That was fun to see. 

One cool thing was that there was a lot of plastic trash mixed with the sand on the beach, and right at the access path, there was a pile of those bits. People who had gone on the beach had picked the plastic out of the sand, and put it all together where someone might collect it if they were so inclined. It almost felt like a farewell ritual to find a couple of pieces of plastic trash and put them in the collection. 

It was cool to see town coming back, too. Not a view that we got going out, and getting to see the whole of the coastline in that direction was really great. The road had the characteristic red dirt, and I loved just wending our way long known paths again as we headed back. 

Journeys back, to me at least, always feel shorter than the discoveries going out. Or maybe I'm just more focused on our destination.  We got back in plenty of time to return the bikes before the rental place closed, and we went back to the room. I, of all things, went and "worked out" in the weight room, doing the things I needed to do to strengthen my back and hips while John went to Safeway to get a few supplies. I showered after that, as I really needed it, and did some of my hand workout stuff while John watched football. 

When we were done with all that we went to Ono Bar and Grill Indian Cuisine. It was surprisingly comforting, as the flavors are so familiar to us. There's a huge Himalayan population in Boulder County, including a lot of families that live in Longmont as it's cheaper than Boulder itself, so there's a lot of Indian and Himalayan restaurants around, along with markets that sell supplies for their food. 

The coconut curry here, though, had local, fresh caught fish in it. And they had a dish called Vegetable Jalfrezi that was a good dozen different kinds of vegetables in a tangy, deeply layered curry that was gorgeous to eat with both rice and garlic naan. Their garlic naan was rich with garlic and butter.

It did rain a little while we ate. 

It stopped by the time we went back home to our fruit and goodies. 

There was a whole bowl of longan we'd bought, and it was funny to find out that a lot of them had seeds that were already sprouting. I am Soooooo tempted to take a fruit home and plant it and see how it turns out. 

The hot tub was good and hot and filled with people tonight. Three ladies who were finishing their first day here and an older California couple who had been here for a week and was heading back soon. They were talkative enough I didn't have to say much of anything, just enjoy basking in the hot water. 

Unintuitively, after I did my workout, most of my aches and pains stopped. It's actually just like that with my 1HP exercises, too, my hands and forearms stop hurting if I do the exercises, which is a great reason to do it. But before I do them, everything hurts and my back brain says that there's no way doing a workout is going to make everything hurt LESS, but then I do it and it does. Conversely, sitting in the car for long periods makes everything hurt even more, these days. 

So... I feel pretty good now. I suspect that sleeping all night in a bed that is not my own will "fix" that. I am usually most achy in the morning, before the morning walk. 

Tomorrow is going to be another rainy day, so we'll see how it goes, but Tuesday should be nicer, and we're planning on bento and a kayak ride up a river... I hope it works out.