Aloha!
Yo. Just returned from Hawaii. What an astounding place. Words really can't capture it. Not my words at any rate. I used to think that Hawaii was just a place for lazy rich people to lay on the beach...wrong, wrong, wrong. A good bit of it's just a big resort wasteland, but much (most?) of it is still a tropical paradise. We only went to Oahu (of which we saw little), Kauai and the Big Island, so it's not like I'm an expert or anything... But I'll hold forth briefly anyway. Oahu was amazing, but the other two islands blew it away. When you're in Kauai (much of it, anyway, especially the Na Pali coast), you really do feel like you've fallen into a movie like The Lost World. (Apparently they filmed Jurassic Park and King Kong there...but the place looks even more amazing in real life.) Sheer, verdant cliffs soaring up thousands of feet, with waterfalls everywhere, routinely falling hundreds of feet, often several of them falling from the same cliff face. Weird, amazing tropical plants that hardly even look like they could be real. And one of the most amazing things about the Na Pali coast is that the plants change in almost every little finger canyon that you hike through. So you see the most amazing plants you've ever seen, and then twenty minutes later, another, completely different type of most amazing plant you've ever seen starts to predominate. Unfortunately, because of the weather, we weren't able to do the Kalalau trail to the end, but had to camp at the first stopping point, at Hanakapi'ai beach. (Barely starting the hike at all, but, given the weather, we were surprised and grateful to get that far.) Our night there, in the Hanakapi'ai valley, camping on the beach, under an almost full moon, was, perhaps, the most amazing part of an amazing trip. The next morning the weather had cleared completely, and I hiked a ways farther down the trail, but had to high-tail it back so that we could hike to Hanakapi'ai Falls before basically running all the way back along the trail so that we could get our other gear back from the store that was storing it before they closed. [I'll post some of my own pix later, since I'm sure you're dying to see 'em...maybe we can have a little slide show, wherein I hold forth about every single shot I took during the whole trip...]
The Big Island was great, the highlight being a night hike out to see the lava from Kilauea hit the ocean.
I was blissfully disconnected from the world for the whole trip.
More sometime.
Yo. Just returned from Hawaii. What an astounding place. Words really can't capture it. Not my words at any rate. I used to think that Hawaii was just a place for lazy rich people to lay on the beach...wrong, wrong, wrong. A good bit of it's just a big resort wasteland, but much (most?) of it is still a tropical paradise. We only went to Oahu (of which we saw little), Kauai and the Big Island, so it's not like I'm an expert or anything... But I'll hold forth briefly anyway. Oahu was amazing, but the other two islands blew it away. When you're in Kauai (much of it, anyway, especially the Na Pali coast), you really do feel like you've fallen into a movie like The Lost World. (Apparently they filmed Jurassic Park and King Kong there...but the place looks even more amazing in real life.) Sheer, verdant cliffs soaring up thousands of feet, with waterfalls everywhere, routinely falling hundreds of feet, often several of them falling from the same cliff face. Weird, amazing tropical plants that hardly even look like they could be real. And one of the most amazing things about the Na Pali coast is that the plants change in almost every little finger canyon that you hike through. So you see the most amazing plants you've ever seen, and then twenty minutes later, another, completely different type of most amazing plant you've ever seen starts to predominate. Unfortunately, because of the weather, we weren't able to do the Kalalau trail to the end, but had to camp at the first stopping point, at Hanakapi'ai beach. (Barely starting the hike at all, but, given the weather, we were surprised and grateful to get that far.) Our night there, in the Hanakapi'ai valley, camping on the beach, under an almost full moon, was, perhaps, the most amazing part of an amazing trip. The next morning the weather had cleared completely, and I hiked a ways farther down the trail, but had to high-tail it back so that we could hike to Hanakapi'ai Falls before basically running all the way back along the trail so that we could get our other gear back from the store that was storing it before they closed. [I'll post some of my own pix later, since I'm sure you're dying to see 'em...maybe we can have a little slide show, wherein I hold forth about every single shot I took during the whole trip...]
The Big Island was great, the highlight being a night hike out to see the lava from Kilauea hit the ocean.
I was blissfully disconnected from the world for the whole trip.
More sometime.
posted by Winston Smith at
2:55 PM
3 Comments:
Yes, that's all very nice but how was the flight?
A frequent reader glad to know you had an amazing time.
I think I drove through there once on my way home from college but we were kinda wasted. Didn't stop. Sounds nice, tho.
You guys are a riot I tell ya
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home