I've left this one pretty late, just haven't found the motivation lately. But we want this record complete even if just for ourselves to look back on in years to come.
The night of the Lu'au the ship spent docked at Nawiliwili, so we spent 2 days on the island of Kaua'i. The next morning was our super special helicopter flight, and this time it WASN'T cancelled. Yay! The excursion was broken up into three parts, the helicopter flight, and brief mini-van trip, and then a bigger mini-van trip. Basically the helicopter could take 4 people at a time, and we had a group of 8, so while the first 4 people were flying we went on a little trip to a waterfall with tour driver
Frederick. We didn't have much time, since it took us 15 minutes to get there, but we took a photo anyway. Most waterfalls look pretty similar, but we liked this one because we got to see it from the ground AND the sky later on.So we were all excited about the helicopter ride. Honestly, I was pretty scared after the first 5 minutes. Turbulence in a helicopter feels so different to a big fixed wing plane: every little bump actually feels like you're suddenly dropping out of the sky. One of our fellow passengers was having a particularly bad time of it sitting up the front with Claire. She had a pretty southern accent, and I still remember after the first big bump "I damn near fell into her lap!" (Claire's).
Having been on the chopper flight and seen the view from above, I honestly don't feel the need to do it again. Claire loves flying, so she'll jump at the next opportunity I'm sure. We had heard from lots of people that this island is the most beautiful of them all, and for a pretty small area it packs a lot in: from sheer seaside cliffs, to nice green plains of sugar and fruit, and even the great big Waimea Canyon. All of this we got to see from the air, so if I have to fly once in my life, I'm glad it was this one.
The rest of the day was spent on a longer tour of the island. It was fairly haphazard, with Frederick seemingly deciding where we were going on the spur of the moment. This was cool, because it meant that as a small group he could give us
some options and we'd get to see what we'd be interested in. We visited the small town of Hanalei, also known as Honalee from the song "Puff the Magic Dragon". Peter, Paul and Mary stayed here with a lot of other hippies and thought the hillside across the bay looked like a lying dragon. We took a photo of it, and when you think of the triangle piece of earth being his eye, you can see what they were on about. The rest of the song requires some "other" inspiration to understand though I'm sure.Other things we saw on the tour were a lighthouse with many Nene geese wandering around; more whales just offshore; Ben Stiller's house; and a bunch of other film set locations. There is in fact an entire tour dedicated to showing people the film locations, with TVs in the buses for watching parts of the movies. Just like I imagine a Lord of the Rings tour would be I guess.
We couldn't muck around too much though, because our ship was setting sail at 2pm today. What was really cool was that the ship sailed up the Na Pali coast for an hour and then went back the way it had come for another hour before heading off back to Oahu. This coastline is really cool, with lots of craggy bits that I couldn't understand how they got there. We saw it all from the comfort of our balcony while sipping cocktails. And THEN! On the way back when our room was on the seaward side we got to see whales again!
And they were closer to the ship and more numerous than they were on the aforementioned whalewatching cruise.Dinner was at a restaurant called Alizar's. I don't think it really had a theme, and there was nothing really memorable about it. But the food was free, and I always enjoy that fact. We made sure to visit the gift shop this evening as well, since during the trip we had assumulated little gift vouchers. We picked up some junky stuff like notepads and this random christmas tree decoration thing. I picked out the christmas tree thing thinking it was supposed to be filled with water kind of like a snow globe, but no.
Entertainment for the night consisted of more cocktails, and packing our stuff together for our departure the following day. Awww =(
By Adrian.
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