Our final port of call was Kauai, which was also an
overnight port. I have to say I really
liked cursing that has stops with overnight ports. While you were allowed to get on/off the ship
at anytime of the day or night, we didn’t.
I liked not feeling rushed to “see it all” in a few hours like most
single day port stops require. In the
case of our overnight stop in Kauai, it rained the whole time. I didn’t feel it was as pressing of a matter
to explore the port with the remainder of our afternoon on the first day since
we had another partial day to explore.
Since we were interested in booking two tours through
Roberts Hawaii, the company offered a deal on a third or fourth booking. For another $15 per person, we were able to
add a third tour. There wasn’t anything
really on our must-see list in Kauai so we went ahead and added a third
tour. Waimea Canyon is the “Grand Canyon
of Hawaii” so we booked the Journey to Waimea Canyon tour.
I actually thought Kauai was the prettiest of the islands
and since it is also the least developed that is often where several movies are
filmed. Since it is not very developed
you also have to backtrack on similar roads and our tour driver tried to change
up our scenery as best as he could. This
meant we also had a surprise visit (well surprise to me as I didn’t know this
was happening) to Kauai Coffee Company.
I had really wanted to go to the coffee plantation in Kona
but we weren’t 100% sure on navigating the city bus to get there. I was sort of sad as I have never seen how
coffee is grown. Our bus driver pulled
into the coffee company parking lot giving us just 20 minutes. He also said there were at least 35 kinds of
coffee to try!
Kenyon and I found the “walking tour” signs and decided to
take a quick walk through the coffee growing area. It was really neat to see the different
colors of coffee beans being grown.
I fell in love with Hawaiian coffee. It is really delicious. I failed to notice though the price for the
amount of coffee in the bag. We pay $10
for a bag of our favorite coffee in Boise.
It was also $10 for a bag of yummy Hawaiian coffee. But the Hawaiian coffee is only a 7oz
bag. Oops! I didn’t notice this until I had already purchased
some coffee. Oh well. It is tasty!
We also stopped to see a “blow hole” formed in the edge of a
cliff. The driver explained there is a
lave tube below the surface and the water flowed into that blowing out the “blow
hole” on top. It was a really neat
experience to see.
We also saw a chicken with eight legs. Apparently that is popular in Hawaii.
Okay, maybe not really eight legs. I couldn’t figure out what everybody was
looking at. It is JUST a chicken. Then somebody said “babies.” Oh…okay, that is pretty cute. There are chickens all over Hawaii. We were told one of the last large hurricanes
that hit landfall separated all the pet chickens from their owners. Now they just run wild all over the
place. He told us it is illegal to kill
a chicken just to get rid of it. But
killing a chicken to eat is okay.
Unfortunately Mother Nature was not on our side for some of
our tip. Just like we missed the last
moment of sunset in Maui, the fog was completely socked in at Waimea Canyon and
you couldn’t see a thing. It was also
pouring rain! The driver pulled in,
parked, and told us we had 20 minutes for “anybody that wanted to get off the
bus.” We were drenched. I didn’t even take my camera out of the bus. It was a huge bummer but I am glad we only
spent $30 on this part of the trip!
Our second day in Kauai was also a bit overcast. We decided to venture out on foot after
breakfast. This port, as well as Kona,
were the only two that were pretty walk able from the ship. However, there still wasn’t much to do. We looked around the shops and walked over to
the Hilton Resort. There is also a beach
right there along the resort.
We spent the afternoon just hanging out on the ship. I actually camped out on the deck by the pool
in the shade. I read magazines, people
watched, and chatted with other cruise passengers. It was nice to have some downtime. We set sail out of Kauai at 2pm so we could
make a trip along the Na Pali Coastline. It doesn’t photograph as beautiful as it is
in person. We also had some low lying
clouds.
And with that…our cruise came to an end! However, the fun did not come to an end. We still had two days in Oahu to squeeze in
just a little more vacation. More to
come.
You can read more of my Hawaii travel:
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