Travel and Tweets

An Aerial View of Kauai

We took an incredible helicopter tour over Kauai. This was my first ever helicopter ride, so I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I got a lot more than I expected. The scenery was amazing! Amazing waterfalls crested the cliffs and White-tailed Tropicbirds rode the wind along the sea. We got to see the Napali Coast, which is only visible to tourists from the sky or the sea. Although the clouds are usually low across Kauai’s mountains, during our ride the mountains were not covered by fog (for the most part… Even the wettest spot on earth had clear views). We also saw an air view of Waimea Canyon.

Wonderful Waimea

The ground view of Waimea Canyon was even better than the view from our helicopter. We were lucky to get to see this part of the island because our flight home had a monstrous delay. This part of the island looked like its dirt was the sand from a Minecraft mesa biome. The dirt in Waimea Canyon almost looked like Mars to me. When we got to the top of the path near observation platforms 8 and 9, we saw an Erckel’s Francolin, a pheasant-sized bird with a name the size of an ostrich. We also spotted another White-tailed Tropicbird from one of the observation platforms. The canyon was huge and beautiful waterfalls spouted from the sides of the canyon.

Treat-tastic

Hawaii also has a gigantic stock of delicious treats, including shave ice. We had this delicious shave ice treat every day, except for the first one. It was so good that we had it twice on the last day. My first shave ice from Hee Fat General Store was bigger than my head and very delicious. It was raspberry and coconut, with a layer of vanilla ice cream at the bottom. I also liked the shave ice that I had from Waikomo Shave Ice, which came in a coconut bowl. I definitely recommend that you go to both places. Great drinks are also available on the island. I had an excellent virgin Pina Colada from The Dolphin Restaurant. I had a different drink that I liked even better, the Poipu Pina. The Poipu Pina is served inside of a fresh pineapple. The mint gave the Poipu Pina a refreshing blast of flavor.

Fish + Little Fish = Breakfast and Dinner in Kauai

When we got dinner in Kauai, it almost always had fish or shrimp in it. While I was there, I had an assortment of Mahi-mahi, Wahoo, Monchong, Marlin, and shrimp (that’s a lot of fish). For breakfast, I usually had a buttered bagel from Little Fish Coffee (https://littlefishcoffee.com/). I also had a Little Fish smoothie every day (I had the Banana Colada most days, but also had the Monkey Nuts once). Little Fish was our pre-snorkeling fuel-up station. There was always an assortment of wild Junglefowl walking around Little Fish Coffee. If you actually think about it, it is funny that something edible is walking around a cafe (although I don’t think that they are too worried about being put on the menu).

Snorkeling in Kauai was like getting dropped into a saltwater aquarium.

All Photos in this Post Taken by Z-Tourz

I just recently went to Kauai and would like to talk about my Kauai trip while it is fresh in my mind. Snorkeling was a major part of this vacation. The only day that I wasn’t in the water was the first day (although I was in the pool that day, which had a waterslide… it was so fun #bestpoolever). Anyway, back to snorkeling now.

As Moorish Idols gracefully glide along the rocks searching for algae and Humuhumunukunukuāpuaʻa cruise about, the world seems to slow down. Humuhumunukunukuāpuaʻa (aka Picasso Triggerfish) means this in Hawaiian: humuhumu means to put things together (referring to its nest building habits), nukunukuāpuaʻa means nose like a pig (oink oink). We usually snorkeled on Poipu Beach, which hosted a wide biodiversity of fish. While we were on Poipu Beach, before we snorkeled, we saw a… Monk Seal! Once we were in the water, we saw tons of fish. These are just examples: a three foot long Trumpetfish, a smaller but more beautiful yellow Trumpetfish (which I thought looked like a swimming banana), a Spotted Hawkfish, two Snowflake Moray Eels (which were about the size of my thumb at their widest when they opened their mouths), huge schools of Sergeant Major fish, Giant Trevally (which are known to headbutt sharks and can jump out of the water to eat terns, a surprising reversal of the food chain since birds usually eat fish, not the other way around),Humuhumunukunukuāpuaʻa, Moorish Idols, Christmas Wrasse, Saddleback Wrasse, Orangeband Surgeonfish, Hawaiian Whitespotted Toby, Orange Spined Unicornfish, Needlefish, and Raccoon Butterflyfish. Whenever I saw a Raccoon Butterflyfish, I scared it away on purpose because they eat Sergeant Major eggs and the Sergeant Major fish are so timid that the Raccoon Butterflyfish will take advantage of this and eat their eggs. I recommend snorkeling at Poipu Beach (on the right side) and Lawa’i Beach behind the Beach House restaurant, which I also recommend (get dessert and you’ll thank me later).

Another snorkeling experience that we did was Z-Tourz. The first spot that they took us to on their rigid-hulled raft (which is very fast and generates a lot of sea spray… so sit on the right side when going out and the left when coming back) was a crushed lava tube area that turtles absolutely loved. The turtles slept in the condensed tubes and came up when they needed air. We saw eight turtles while snorkeling at this spot alone. The largest of these turtles had shells as long as small boogie boards and were as graceful as underwater angels. The snorkeling guide said that these turtles can be over 200 pounds when fully grown. I could get pretty close to them (about three feet), but they were protected under Hawaii’s laws so I couldn’t go any closer. The next spot that we went to was more of a coral reef. It was about 20 feet deep instead of the 40 feet deep near the turtles. There were more fish at this spot, but I still saw two or three more turtles. The current was really strong here and we got dragged very far from the boat. Swimming back to the boat against the current was like trying to row a boat on land.

Here are pictures of me snorkeling with the turtles (I am the one in the green shirt, with the blue mask, and blue fins) that were taken by our Z-Tourz guides (all of the pictures in this post were taken by Z-Tourz).

Snorkeling in Kauai was, and still is, epic!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’ll get back to posting about Croatia after this series of posts about Kauai.