Two Hikers In Search Of A Trail

View from our cottage yard at Barking Sands.  On the horizon is visible the island of Ni’ihau, 17 miles from Kauai. Ni’ihau is called The Forbidden Island because no one may visit there, as the 200 Hawaiians who live there, last descendants of the islands’ original Polynesians, value their privacy.

   On Tuesday, our last day on Kauai, we decided to drive back up to Waimea Canyon  for one last hike.  I wanted to try the trail through the Alaka'i  Swamp, which is the highest swamp in the world and is supposed to offer breath-taking scenes unlike anywhere else on the planet.

We stopped for breakfast in Waimea  at a very inexpensive little place called J’s,

…run by a friendly lady whose auntie opened the restaurant many years ago.

    
   

Tom had an omlette with rice and I had eggs with rice, and we split an order of pancakes.

Then we headed back up the 18-mile road to the very top of the Waimea Canyon to a point almost a mile high called Wai’ale’ale  which is one of the wettest spots on earth.

    Of course it was raining there.
    Wai’ale’ale is the entry point for the Alaka'i Swamp trail.
     So we started walking.

    About 250 feet into the trail I threw in the towel when faced with the steepest, most slippery and treacherous patch of rock work I’d ever run into.  The guidebook had called this part of the trail “moderately strenuous”, with  a “strenuous”  stretch to follow. 
    Right.
    So we turned around and I accepted that the glorious sights of the Alaka'i  Swamp would never be seen by me.
    We drove around the top of the canyon consulting our hiking map until we found a promising-looking forest trail rated “easy”.
Which it mostly was.   

     This trail was a garden of beautiful tropical flora and fauna:

    There were even a few gingerbread-looking houses in the middle of the forest.

    After our forest hike we stopped for some lunch at a table  at one of the picnic areas. 

    Which we of course shared with the usual crowd:

  Our usual lunch on the trail.

    After lunch we drove back up to Wai’ale’ale to see if it had stopped raining, and it had, so we ascended Kalalau Lookout, the highest point of Wai’ale’ale, to look at the vista beyond:

     Then we headed back down the Waimea Canyon and on our way down caught sight of the point where the Waimea River meets the sea. 

    From there we drove west to the beach at Poliholi State Park, which is where the western beach of Kauai ends and the cliffs of the Na’Pali Coast begin.

We had a clear view of Ni’ihau off in the distance.

Then we returned to the missile range at Barking Sands and swung by Shenanigans for dinner just in time to see the sunset from the terrace ,

... and another lovely view of Ni’ihau. 

   Wednesday morning we said good-bye to our cottage and our beach at the U.S. Naval base at Barking Sands Missile Range Facility.

    We headed east towards the airport at Lihue, stopping along the way at the Kalaheo Café and Coffee Company,

    ...where we had breakfast and a  cinnamon roll to share:

    Tom once again opted for the local custom of rice with his eggs instead of hash browns. Everything was as good as it looks.

    And then on to our final stop at Lihue Airport.

    Aloha, Kauai.