1-7-2014 National Botanical Garden, Waimea Canyon and Return Home

I've been meaning to do a post about our last day in Kauai but have been so busy after we got back that I didn't have time until now.

On our last day we first went to the National Botanical Gardens on the north side of the road across from Spouting Horn Park.  They have two gardens there; the McBryde garden, which is larger but only self-guided, and the Allerton Garden, for which they give guided tours.  We chose the Allerton Garden because it was smaller and we wanted to have plenty of time for other activities.  Our guide was very entertaining and knowledgeable, having worked there since about 1990.    The Allerton Garden was developed by Robert Allerton, the son and heir of the founder of the First National Bank of Chicago who moved to Kauai in the 1930's, and his adopted son, John Gregg.  Apparently they were gay lovers and Allerton adopted Gregg as an adult so he could pass on his estate to him.  After they died the garden and estate were placed in trust with the National Botanical Gardens.

On the way from the parking lot to where you start the tours were some nice orchids.

There were also a lot of geckos catching the sun on the leaves but they scampered away whenever I tried to get close enough to get a good picture.

To get to the entrance of the Allerton Gardens you take a 3 mile van ride from the visitor center and the last stretch of it is down a road that was once a narrow railroad track for a sugar plantation where you pass by a gorgeous beach and ocean view.

Parts of the grounds were used for the filming of Jurassic Park.  For example, the massive roots of these Moreton Fig trees were used in the scene where the velociraptor eggs are found.

There are lots of fountains throughout the garden.

We had lunch at the Beach House Restaurant, just a short distance east from the National Botanical Gardens.  The restaurant has fantastic views of the ocean and beach on two sides and the food and service were excellent as well.

After lunch we drove to the west side of the island to drive up Waimea Canyon.  Locals say that it was dubbed the Grand Canyon of the Pacific by Mark Twain but apparently that is a myth.  See http://hawaii-aloha.com/blog/2011/08/09/busting-a-hawaiian-myth/.  It is not nearly as big as the Grand Canyon since it is only 13 miles long and 2 1/2 miles wide with a depth of 2,500 feet; whereas the Grand Canyon is over 270 miles long, 10 miles across and over a mile in depth.  However Waimea Canyon is still very striking with green foliage set off against reddish and cream colored rock formations and many waterfalls.

This waterfall we saw on our earlier helicopter ride.

 


It was in one of the early scenes of  the movie Jurassic Park and is now referred to by the helicopter pilots as Jurassic Falls.

For most of the drive up Waimea Canyon Road you look east and inland at the canyon but at the end of the road there is a nice view to the north and west of the Napali coast.

When we took our helicopter ride a couple of days earlier we came over the crest of the ridge to the east (right side of this picture) and then dove down into the valley until we were only about 100 feet over the ocean and then turned north to go along the coast.

We had dinner back at the Grand Hyatt's Tidepool restaurant because we wanted to use the hospitality room they make available for guests after they check out to shower and change clothes before we headed to the airport.  Our flight left Kauai for Los Angeles at about 10 p.m. and arrived at LAX at about 5:30 a.m..  Then at about 7:30 we flew from LAX to Minneapolis.

1-6-2014 The Grand Hyatt, a failed 4 WD beach drive and cruising theNapali coast

I've got to make a pitch for the Grand Hyatt hotel in Kauai.  It is huge (which I usually do not like), pricey ( what isn't on Kauai?) but it is spread over 50 acres so it doesn't seem jammed with people.  This is an aerial view from the helicopter ride we took yesterday.

The rooms are really nice, the ocean views, beach and surf sound are fantastic and the staff is very friendly and helpful.  Plus their pools are really well done.  They have an adults only pool at the highest level of the grounds which flows down into a family pool area, which then flows down to a salt water lagoon down by the beach.  I would like to have a family vacation here someday but it is really a long way from both the US and and from Malaysia. Here are some pictures I took this morning of the hotel grounds.

After taking these pictures this morning we decided to drive our 4 wheel drive jeep down to a beach not too far from the Grand Hyatt.  We didn't make it there.  Although the vehicle seemed to be handling the torturous bumpy road quite well, we weren't having any fun so after about a mile and half I decided to bag it and turn around.  We had seen the beach from the helicopter yesterday and it looked like it would be a fun place to go, but not enough to endure the ride we were having.

In the afternoon we drove to Port Allen for a 5 hour boat ride and dinner along the Napali coast.  We left at 2 p.m. and got back to shore at about 7 p.m.  Port Allen is on the south side of Kauai and the Napali coast is on the northwest side so it was a fair distance to get there on the catamaran.  We were bucking 8 foot swells on the way there with a stout headwind so it was a pretty bumpy ride going out.  On the way back we had the wind and the swells at our back and it was a lot smoother.  We flew over the Napali coast yesterday in the helicopter and it was also nice seeing it from the ocean level. Plus, on this boat ride we saw about a dozen whales, spinner dolphins (they spin in the air when they jump out of the water) and a school of flying fish.

No pictures of the wildlife with the Fuji X100s.  Its great for landscapes, people, street photography, general photography and even macro, but the 23 mm fixed lens doesn't do well for wildlife or sports shots where you really need a telephoto lens.

Tomorrow we are going to the Royal Botanical gardens in the morning and then driving up through Waimea canyon in the afternoon.  By then we will have flown over, boated around and/or driven through every part of Kauai.

Our flight home tomorrow is at 9:50 p.m.  Our original rationale for stopping in Kauai for 3 nights/4 days was to break up the long flight from Australia and rest up.  However, we've done so many things in Kauai, the "rest" part kind of got lost.  But we've had a lot of fun on this beautiful island!

1-5-2014 First Full Day in Kauai - Waterfalls, a Helicopter Ride and a Luau

After our long day yesterday we were pretty tired when we went to bed last night.  We opened the sliding door, turned the AC off and went to sleep and woke up with the sound of the surf outside.  Delightful!!

We had breakfast this morning on the terrace overlooking the ocean.

By the way, this Blogger app does a pretty poor job of showing the sharpness and resolution of the photos.  When I get back home and have time to edit the photos I'll be posting a link where you can see the photos on Picasa and see much better images.

After breakfast we drove to the east side of the island to look at two waterfalls and then drove into Wailua for lunch and a little shopping for Carol.  Then we drove back to Lihue and checked in with Jack Harter Helicopters for our afternoon doors-off helicopter ride.  They did a very nice job of it.  Both Carol and I were a little nervous since neither of us have ridden on a helicoptor before and the idea of a doors-off ride was both exciting and a little scary.  However, we both loved the experience and didn't feel nervous after we took off.  I took well over a hundred photos and quite a few of them turned out really well.  I'm only going to show a few here though and remember that the resolution shown in these photos is not nearly as good as I'll have available later.

We lucked out with great weather all day and then when we pulled into the parking lot at our hotel it started to rain and we got pretty wet.   We rushed back to our room to change clothes and go to  a  Luau at our hotel.   When we made our reservations for it this morning before leaving the hotel the lady at the concierge desk said, "Its cheesy, but also fun."  She was right, it was pretty cheesy but fun and since Carol was disappointed that we weren't able to go to a Luau the last time we were in Hawaii, I'm glad we went to this one.

1-4-2014 From Sydney to Lihue, Kauai

"Today", January 4,  we spent a full day in Sydney, flew out at 9:40 p.m., flew for 10 hours east and arrived in Hawaii at 10 a.m. on January 4.  The time zone and international date line changes are confusing.

Knowing we were going to have such a long day, we slept in a bit and then went down to Darling Harbor in Sydney for the kids to play in Tumbalong park before we had lunch at Stacks.  They had an interesting item on the menu; "Lightly fried white  bait":

I asked the waiter what it was.  He said it was fried little fish and I decided to pass.

After lunch we went to a Circus Oz performance for a couple of hours and then took our final harbor cruise.  We noticed that the water level was particularly high with the deck of the wharf actually being several inches under water.

This is called a King Tide which happens twice a year when the earth, sun and the moon are all lined up in just the right (or wrong) way and the tides are at their highest for a couple of days.  The same thing happened in other coastal cities around the world.  Sights like this (and much worse) will be common with continued global warning.

Check in at the Sydney airport in the evening took a long time (especially for a Saturday evening) and then went even longer when we discovered that we had to go through Australian customs on the way out of the country.  I didn't see the point and have not encountered that before elsewhere.  We grabbed a hurried meal at McDonalds, sadly said goodbye to Amy, Justin and the G-Kids and then hustled down to our gate.  We were running so late that before we got to the gate they made an announcement over the loudspeaker that "David and Carol Suggs need to proceed to the Gate 61 immediately".

Our flights from Sydney to Honolulu and then on to Lihue went well.  By the time we got to our hotel in Lihue, the Grand Hyatt, it was about 3 and we decided to just hang out before going to dinner.  The Grand Hyatt in Lihue is huge but very nice and spread out over 50 acres so it doesn't seem too densely packed with people.  

This is the view from our ground floor balcony:

This is a view of the lobby part of the hotel from the beach:

And this is the beach:

Tomorrow, if the weather cooperates, we're going to take a helicopter flight, doors off, in the afternoon and drive to some waterfalls in the morning.

1-3-2014 Luna Park

Today we went to Luna Park, an amusement park across the bay from Sydney and we went there -- you guessed it -- by ferry.  It opened in 1935 and while they have had numerous renovations and upgrades they have tried to keep the look and feel of the place, and especially the artwork, consistent with what it was when it opened almost 80 years ago.

This is the entrance:

This is one of the arcade games:

This is another one:

It had a real Monty Python/Penny Lane feel to it.

The girls probably had the most fun at the Coney Island building where they had old-fashioned slides using burlap sacks to slide down in.  I lost count of how many times they went down the slides.  It was too dark for me to take a picture of them doing the slides in the building but this is the cut-out in front with the characteristic 1930's arty appearance:

They had lots of other rides for kids as well.

No outing in Sydney would be complete without pictures of the High Bridge and Opera House and at Luna Park I got them both in one picture!

If you could be in this spot on New Year's Eve you would be at the most awesome spot for seeing the fireworks because they shoot them off of that bridge.

They had guys on stilts, ladies on stilts and dancers too:

When we got back to Circular Quay we saw a guy playing a didgeridoo.

1-2-2014 A Day at the Beach in Watson Bay

We had a huge dinner at a Brazilian steakhouse called Braza's last night, which I heartily recommend, and we decided to sleep in a bit and get a later start this morning before taking a ferry to Watson Bay, an eastern suburb of Sydney with several nice beaches that one of Justin's friends recommended.

If you are in Sydney you really want and need to take ferries whenever and wherever you can because they are such an enjoyable way to go.  On the way over to Weston Bay, which was only about 20 minutes, we again had great views of the High Bridge and the Opera House with the Sydney skyline.

Within a couple of hundred yards from where the ferry landed there was a little park with a playground where the kids wanted to play before we walked around the town and went to the beach.

From there we walked up the hill to an overlook with a dramatic cliff and view of the Pacific where during World War II there had been a radar school and naval battery.

Apparently a fair number of people have commited suicide at these cliffs, enough so that there are several signs telling people to remember that they can get help.

We then walked down to a beach called Camper Cove on the other side of the peninsula and played there for a couple of hours.

It was quite hot and the water was pretty cold this early in Sydney's summer season.  So we were very glad for the refreshing dips we took in the water but we didn't stay in too long each time.

We walked back to ferry landing a different way and had a late lunch of take-away fish and chips before we headed back on the ferry at 2:15.

It was clouding up and starting to sprinkle on the ride back on the ferry.  I think we got the best part of the day before we landed at Circular Quay.