We're not in Kansas anymore!: Kauai, Hawaii....HAHA 2013

Before I talk about our trip to Hawaii, I should take a few moments to talk about Bryan and Brad. Bryan told me shortly after dating that he's always had a lot of friends, but never a "best friend". *Awwwwe, that's sad!* Well, this soon changed. Bryan met Brad at dental school, but didn't really get to know him until shortly after we started dating. And now they have the most ridiculous bromance ever. They set up Skype drinking dates every couple of weeks and they shoot the breeze about anything and everything for awhile. Brad's wife, Jen, has become a great friend of mine now of course. She's hilarious and I think we both roll with their punches pretty darn well. We wanted to spend some time with them while we were back home, so we started planning a get-together. And then somehow it turned into WE'RE GOING TO HAWAII! We have decided that us taking vacations together will become a tradition and the guys named it HAHA: Harris and Hornfeck Awesomeness.

Japan has more coin money than the US. There are 5, 10, 50, 100 and 500 yen coins (right now, a yen is pretty close to a cent). We always had a lot of coins to carry around, but they get heavy! We started saving the coins in Ethel, a piggy bank that Bryan special ordered. We could find a regular piggy bank anywhere, but he wanted one that didn't have a plug in the bottom. He thought that we would constantly be removing money if we could. Bryan threw in a $20 bill and some other bills a few times. I didn't add my 500 yen ($5) coins as often as he did, but somehow we still ended up with over $600! We decided this was our "stupid money" for our trip. We spent it on upgrading to a convertible, snorkeling, and some good meals.

We flew out of Tokyo at 9:00pm on a Thursday. With the crazy time difference, we landed in Honolulu at 9:00am on the same day. Jet lag was a bit rough, but when you're in Hawaii for the first time, you just deal with it. We got a rental car and took off to our first spot Pearl Harbor. Turns out a lot of other people wanted to see the memorials as well and they got tickets in advance. I tried to get tickets over a week before (and for a special active duty military boat tour) but apparently that was too late. We were able to still walk around the grounds and get a feel for it.

The front of the memorial area.

More memorials.

From Pearl Harbor, we went down to check into our hotel at Waikiki Beach. We spent the afternoon at the beach and then had some good fish tacos for dinner. It was nice, for what it was, but I just don't like taking a "relaxing Hawaiian vacation" and be surrounded by the hustle and bustle of shopping malls and a million other people. It was a good place for us to start our trip back home because I think at least half of the tourists were Japanese. There was even a ramen shop on one of the main drags and there was a super long line out the door. So funny to see in the US! There are many other parts of Oahu that I would like to see though.

One of the main streets of Waikiki.

The walkway to the beach was like a surf-boar locker room.


Despite all the people, Waikiki is super photogenic with Diamondhead in the background. Hopefully next time we visit, we can get in a hike.

Early the next morning we packed up and headed to the airport to catch our hopper to the island of Kauai. Brad and Jen had taken a Hawaiian cruise a few years ago and found Kauai to be their favorite island. We didn't doubt their judgement and planned out the rest of our 6 nights there. We looked into hotels, but decided our best option was to rent a condo so that we had a lot of shared common space where we could relax, as well as a kitchen so that we could cook for ourselves. The apartment was super nice and funny enough, it had an Asian theme to it. We enjoyed our private hot tub and the pool in our complex, as well as the nicer pools in the complex next to ours and at the Westin Resort.

Our first afternoon we got some lunch, checked into our condo, hit up a few beaches and then went to a luau. The luau was super commericialized and huge, but the grounds where it was held were still beautiful, the food was delicious and the dancing was fun to watch. The next day we went to the local farmers market, got some smoothies, and visited more beaches.

Reunited!

I like this shot :-)

There were rainbows all of the time. I'm pretty sure it had something to do with the fact that the center of the island is the wettest spot on the planet.

The juice was good, but the coconut water wasn't my favorite.

Just hanging out on the volcanic rocks.

The ocean was really rough at this beach, but it washed up into this area. It was very shallow along the edge but the part towards the rocks was deep enough to jump in to.

We took a short hike down the hill from our condo to check out the sunset.

Pretty nice view!

Kauai is probably most famous for it's Na Pali (Hawaiian for "The Cliffs") Coast. It's a gorgeous 11 mile stretch of the northwest part of the island. It is only accessible by hiking or boating, as there is no road near the area. Hiking the whole trail requires a lot of strength and at least one night of camping. Parts of the trail require you to get down on your hands and knees and crawl while other parts are so narrow you have to side step for awhile. We were not up for that much adventure, so we did the first 2 miles along the coast to a Hanakapiai Beach and then went inland another 2 miles to a beautiful waterfall.

So gorgeous, taken from halfway through the Kalalau Trail.

We kept hiking and hiking, up the hills, down the hills and seeing this beach. After about an hour Jen was losing hope that we'd ever really get to it.

There it is!! Hanakapiai Beach.

The hike from the beach to the waterfall was much shadier and full of bamboo and streams to cross.

Hanakapiai Falls! I didn't get a good shot of the falls from top to bottom (about 500 feet), so I just did a Google search and found this one.

Yes, we actually did get in. And yes, it really did feel like ice water. We all got in and swam across the water, under the falls, and hung out by the rocks for a few minutes before hypothermia could set in.

The next day we enjoyed the Na Pali Coast again, but this time from a boat. We signed up for a snorkeling trip, which took us from one end of the Na Pali Coast to the other. I had never been snorkeling before so I was a bit nervous, but as soon as I got in the water and saw the beautiful fish, I was hooked! I wish I would have had someone taken photos of us actually snorkeling, but I just got too excited and forgot.

This is what our boat looked like.

There are several caves that were big enough for our boat to go into to explore. This was an open air cave, as the top collapsed in. I felt like I was in a James Bond movie! You can see a piece of the roof directly behind my head. You can also see a man kayaking behind us too. I hope to be as cool as him someday.

This is why we did NOT hike this part of the trail.

So many caves and waterfalls along the coast.

We stayed in the Princeton area, which is close to Hanalei Bay. It's a very calm area with some great backdrops.

It's just so pretty.

On our last full day, we did some shopping and then headed down to Queen's Bath, which is known for being the home of huge sea turtles, especially at low tide. We got there between tides, sadly closer to high tide, but we still saw several of them. They were a bit out in the water, so hard to capture. There were a couple of places where you could jump in the water or even take a "bath" as the name suggests.