It would be scary to think of the things I would never have done if it weren’t for Suzanne; Thursday brought another one of those things. The boys stayed at the hotel while Suzanne and I headed up back to Lihue to take a one-hour helicopter tour of Kauai.
Started off the morning, since of course everyone is up early, with a quick walk down to see the beach and the ocean (two things we didn’t do last night, in the dark)
(looking southeast at the ocean from the beach near our hotel at sunrise)
(the moon; looking west)
Leave the boys to fend for themselves (they did have some specific rules to follow about the ocean..) and Suzanne and I headed north.
Can’t say I was all that thrilled about this idea; the doors-off 1-hour tour of the island. The last time I’ve been on a small aircraft was back when we lived in Ann Arbor ages ago…that little Cessna moved all over the place. So, I had some concerns about this small thing, especially with the swooping around you normally see helicopters do.
Lift off at 8:30. You can see it’s partly cloudy; looking at the pictures below is a study in just how much the weather can vary from place to place around here; I don’t think these weather variations were that noticeable last time on Maui and Oahu but they definitely have been a big deal for the first day or two of this trip.
My concerns about how bumpy this ride might be? Turned out to be much ado about nothing…I think we were up against some pretty substantial winds at times, especially while going over some of the ridge lines, and the chopper really didn’t dip and rise like I thought it would. In fact, it was smoother than I would have imagined given the circumstances….
That’s the runway at Lihue airport as we take off. All of the pictures are from Suzanne and her camera on the right side of the helicopter; I took video from the left side and will put that together at some point…..
The weather for the first part of the trip wasn’t bad…you can see lots of blue, both in the sky and on the water.
The southern side of the island; our hotel I think is over here somewhere…
Lots of rainbows today….
As I said, lots of rainbows….
There was one rain gauge here on Kauai that recorded 17 inches of rain in the 24 hours before we arrived. What that means is that all of the waterfalls we were going to see on this trip were going to be about as spectacular as they were ever going to be. This is the first of the movie waterfalls; the falls that the helicopter flies up to at the beginning of Jurassic Park…
We wore headphones on the helicopter, they had music playing in the background when the pilot wasn’t talking or there wasn’t any chatter from the tower. Surprised they didn’t have the the music from Jurassic Park playing when they got to this point….
the first of the photos from Waimea Canyon, the Grand Canyon of the Pacific. More on this on tomorrow’s post; we joked with Kevin that we’ve certainly knocked out the big canyons of the Americas on his must-do list….
and again, the weather is holding up pretty well here….
and even when it does get a little cloudy, I think it added something to the photos….
The tour goes basically clockwise around the island; you come almost straight across the island from east to west from Lihue, and then circle clockwise back towards Lihue around the Napali coast The coast is one of the big draws for this tour, can’t get there by car and the mountains and beaches are stunning…
This waterfall is more towards the western end of the island….
That big beach down there is part of Polihale State Park…again, more on that tomorrow…
Of course, just as we are getting to the good part of the tour, the weather takes a turn for the worse…
so, the pictures and views aren’t nearly as stunning as we were expecting…
But I think they are kind of cool…..definitely have this horror / suspense movie type of vibe….
the Napali Coast…hey, it looks like it’s going to clear up just as we get past all of the coast…
Yup.
Literally, as we come past the coast it is blue skies and blue water again….
We flew back into the interior of the island to go near Mount Wai’ale’ale….one of the highest points on Kauai and one of the wettest areas on earth, 460 inches of rain a year. We found out later that helicopters can’t always get back into this area because of the clouds, but, we were able to do it today…
and it was literally the highlight of the trip; heading into this area with sheer vertical walls and waterfalls everywhere….
Could never have gotten back here any other way…I hope my video does this area justice, I’m not sure the pictures capture just how cool this part of the trip was….
Get away from the northern ridges and mountains and the weather improved again…
The second of the big waterfalls, this time the Wailua falls….seen at the beginning of Fantasy Island…
We circled around and got progressively closer, so, the pictures improved as well. Think we are coming back here later on in this trip…
Landed after an hour; enjoyed the trip more than I thought I would. Suzanne had chosen the doors-off option; that didn’t bother me at all (one of the warnings is to keep your hands inside the copter; it is deceiving how fast you are going and your arms will get pushed backwards…the urge to put your camera out past the door for a better view is very tempting at times…)
Not much to report for the rest of the day; Suzanne and I stopped by Costco to pick up supplies on the way back (making more of an effort to eat here at the hotel this trip).
(the view from the balcony….some views at this hotel are out onto parking lots, happily, we look out onto the courtyard and pool. Right next to the barbeque grills though…the smells are heavenly at times….
Swimming at the pool and on the beach, some snorkeling, and then a sunset walk to finish the day. Will throw some pictures of that in the next post I guess….
