Coffee, Fish and the North side of the Island

Hello again! (you see this, I am trying to get out of the "Aloha" habit)

We have had some lovely days exploring Kauai - so many beaches and things to see!

We started on Saturday with the Kauai Coffee plantation - the largest in the US!




A few fun facts - they have 4 million coffee trees, the white blooms (above) come before the "fruit" (coffee), harvest is in the late fall / early winter, they use only hydroelectricity and they water the crops with over 28 million gallons of water (all sustainably captured).

Next stop was  Poipu Beach.  We hung out on the beach, snorkeled, ate our lunch and then hit the water again to snorkel (this time with our phone/camera).

this Green Turtle was snoozing on the beach
around the corner Monk Seals were equally lazy ....
I could tell you the name of the fish but really, who cares?

WHAT A CATCH!!!!!

some coral
the black spikey thing (bottom left) is a sea urchin

Back to our place - another early night - we are tired at the end of the day - so much sun!

Sunrise off our balcony (at 6:37am)

 
the reason we are up at 6:37 am

there are chickens, and therefore roosters all over the island.  apparently about 1,000,000 of them (there are only 75,000 people living on this island).  they are loud and they are protected!
supposedly a couple of them got loose during a hurricane, went feral and mated with other similar species to become these glorious roosters
 

Anini Beach - this was such a lovely beach -we snorkeled and were able to observe a green turtle casually hanging out in the surf.


One of the top things to do is to have a "Shaved Ice".  Carsten was quite skeptical - he thought it was just a snow cone.  I insisted that we give it a try and y'all - this thing was super delicious!  It had ice cream in the bottom, shaved ice with flavor syrup and like a cream topping!  This was a small and it was enough for two!

more helpful signage ...

This is near Tunnels Beach on the North side of the Island.  We took a walk along here.  The surf was too high to get in the water.  There was a lifeguard there to make sure no one went into the water.


We finally saw Nene!  These were some Canadian Geese (way long, long ago) that decided to stay in Hawai'i.  They bred with other local birds, changing their coloring along the way and are the official bird of Hawai'i.

Kilauea Lighthouse - constructed in 1913 and deactivated in 2013. This lighthouse was seen briefly in Lilo & Stitch. Sadly, it was closed on Sunday.  It is the northern most point of Hawai'i.  This is the best view we could get.


Kauai is amazing - final blog tomorrow, headed home on Wednesday.

See you soon!

Sheri & Carsten









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