kauai, part III

We drove up to the North side of the island another morning. We decided to hike part of the Napali coast trail. We didn't realize how difficult the trail was, though. We weren't really all that prepared, but still had fun. The trails were very muddy and we of course were covered in mud by the end of it. We had views like this for most of the hike, really amazing.

For the most part, the other people on the trail were really friendly. We came up to this older couple that were going pretty slow. The lady had walking poles in both hands and was crawling along. I said, excuse me, can we pass? She said, yes, in the next wide spot. I thought that was pretty rude because there weren't any wide spots in the trail, especially with her taking up the whole trail. So, I just went around her anyway and Corinne and Nathan followed. Corinne kind of kicked her walking stick on accident and they yelled at us as we passed. Whatever, they were the rude ones.

This is the beach we hiked to. It wasn't as great as I thought it was going to be. But luckily we had some tortilla chips to snack on (I told you we didn't come prepared). Corinne and I after our long hike in.After the hike to Hanakapi'ai Beach, we checked out the wet and dry caves. They really weren't anything too exciting, from what I could tell. And you can tell that Nathan was getting sick of me taking pictures of them.We had wanted to snorkel at Ke'e beach, but it started raining, so we decided to head to Princeville. We found this beach when we were driving around trying to find the Queen's Bath.

The Queen's bath was so neat. They had signs all over the place saying that you shouldn't swim. We didn't even consider swimming here and someone that would must not be very smart. It was fun to watch the waves come crashing in on the lava rocks over and over. I took a short video of one spot that was fun to watch.

Another waterfall near the Queen's bath.

We stayed one night in Honolulu on the way home. We spent an afternoon at Hanauma bay snorkeling. Corinne and I saw the coolest fish there. It looked like a bird, with feathered wings on the side. I hadn't ever seen anything like it before. Oh, that reminds me, I also completed 2 dives while we were in Kauai. It was fun and we saw lots of turtles. We did this one dive at Sheraton Coves, which was near some lava tubes. This is where the lava entered the ocean a long time ago and now there are arch-ways remaining. We got to dive in and around this area. There were a lot of turtles sleeping on the ledges of the lava tubes. They were huge, like 3' wide!

This is a picture of Hanauma bay. I miss you warm, sunny Hawaii.

kauai, part II

Corinne and I drove up to the Waimea canyon while Nathan was working on his dive certification (this is located on the west side of the island). It was such a beautiful place. This is Waimea falls. There are spots to hike around here, but we only had time to drive to a few look-out points. So pretty.

We also tried going to the Barking sands beach that is at the end of the road on the west side of the island because I had heard it was really neat. When you walk on the sand, it sounds like it barks. We weren't able to get to it, though because the road is closed in the winter. It was a dirt road, well, a muddy road and completely blocked off.

After we met back up with Nathan, we went to snorkel in Poipu at Spouting Horn. We didn't get a lot of snorkeling in because it was kind of cold this day. But we did have two funny experiences on this beach. The three of us were laying on our stomachs and there was an older guy, probably late 60s sitting directly in front of Corinne. So Corinne and Nathan both had the chance to see a little more of him than they wanted to. Those darn baggy shorts. It was so funny, I was laughing pretty hard, I don't know if he knew they saw his junk or if he knew the reason I was laughing, but he luckily didn't stay around too much longer.

We then were getting ready to leave and a local guy in a big pick-up truck was driving by on the road, which wasn't more than 20' away from the beach. He had really loud music playing. Corinne and I were standing up and I think I gave him a head nod and Corinne waved. I then turned around to talk to Corinne and then heard a huge BANG! The guy in the truck rear-ended a car that had stopped on the road while he was checking us out! So classic. I couldn't believe it and was so embarassed for the guy. When we left, I looked at the car he rear-ended and the damage didn't look too bad, so that was good.

kauai, part I

Ok, I know, another trip? I wasn't really expecting to take this one so early, but Corinne and Nathan have a timeshare in Kauai and this was the week (the last week in January) they were able to get it reserved. And we found really cheap tickets to fly there and my vacation resets in January. Plus, I need to keep up on my tan....by the way, where should I go next?

We spent 7 days in Lihue on the island of Kauai. It was nice to stay in a place that had a full kitchen, so we didn't have to spend lots of money eating out (food is expensive there). We cooked (and by we, I mean Nathan) all our dinners, it was so convenient. We did eat out for lunch each day, since we were out doing activities each day. And we went to Duke's one night for dessert and had their mud pie. Totally worth going to Hawaii just to have this mud pie, they make it with vanilla ice cream, macadamia nuts, chocolate sauce and chocolate crumb crust. So good. I ate a full one by myself and Corinne and Nathan didn't even finish their's.

One weird thing about this island is the abundance of "free-range" chickens and roosters. They are everywhere, I thought it was funny when I saw this one at the first place we ate, but then I saw how many more there were everywhere on the island, so it wasn't as much fun anymore. At least the roosters didn't wake me up in the morning.We spent part of the first day looking at some waterfalls. There's a couple that you can drive to and since we had a pt cruiser to get around in, we were all about driving around. That was actually the most annoying part about the trip, I tried changing the car, but they didn't have anything else available and I didn't want to spend more money. They were even saying it was an upgrade, but I'm sorry, those cars are really awful. Anyway, here are those waterfalls.One of the funnest things we did was an ATV tour at Kipu Ranch. I know, it sounds like it could be a little cheezy, especially if you see their ads in the brochures, but it wasn't at all. We each had our own 4-wheeler and there were 6 other people on the tour with us. They gave us all a refresher course on driving the 4-wheelers before we headed out, they are pretty simple to operate, since they were one-speed. I hadn't been on one since I did something like this in Aruba. We looked pretty awesome with our goggles and helmets.This mountain, Mt. Waiʻaleʻale, is supposedly the wettest spot on earth and gets over 400" of rain a year, but I haven't confirmed this. While we were on our tour, it was actually visible, we didn't see it during the remainder of the trip, since it was covered in clouds.So, you might recognize this spot, watch Jurassic Park, it's in the scene where the guy and the two kids run away from the dinasours and hide behind the log. A lot of movies are filmed on this ranch. It's over 4000 acres and beautiful, so a great place to film things.

I thought this place was really neat. Part of Raiders of the Lost Arc was filmed here. This spot is specifically from the scene where Indiana Jones has been running away from the natives, at the beginning of the movie, and his friend is waiting for him in the float plane. He swings out into the water to get to the plane. This isn't the original rope swing, but I went on it, not in the water because it was too cold. Corinne and Nathan braved it. I know, I'm a wimp.

Another waterfall where we stopped for lunch.The trails we went on were very muddy and had lots of huge puddles. And some parts were really steep, so it was kind of scary, but fun at the same time. And I was able to stay a little clean by lifting my legs when I drove through some of the huge puddles. I tried taking a picture of all our arms, but you can see from Nathan's shirt how muddy we were. I think he was the muddiest, he was trying to get muddy, though and I was trying to avoid puddles.Another thing this island has a lot of is wild pigs, just like in Lost, interesting, huh? (Although Lost is filmed in Oahu.) They can hunt the pigs, but not on the ranch, we saw a lot out here.This waterfall was the last part of the tour and I thought this was going to be a nice place to swim, but the water was so muddy. Only Corinne was brave enough to get in.

seoul layover

I forgot to write about our 9-hour layover in Seoul on the way home from Thailand. I think they intentionally make long layovers there, so people visit Seoul. We (Lance and I--Jared and Jane stayed in Thailand an additional day) took a 6-hour tour of the city. If you're ever stuck with this long of a layover, it was really easy to do. We found the tour desk near the exit doors and booked it there, it was really cheap, maybe $20 and included lunch. I'm pretty sure the government is running it to get more people to visit there again. We had 7 or 8 other people on it with us. Hae Suk was our guide. She was nice and tried to teach us some Korean on our 1-hr ride into the city (the airport isn't actually in Seoul, it's on an island outside of town). She taught us how to say a few Korean expressions. The best one (if you're an Arrested Development fan) was annyeong haseyo, which means hello. I had to laugh each time she said it, though because of the show (you should watch it, it's hilarious).

Once we arrived into the city, we went to lunch at a Korean restaraunt. I had a beef soup dish, which was tasty. I'm not much of a fan of kimchi, though. We took our shoes off to eat at our table, which was ok because they had heated floors. We then drove to the Deoksugung Palace (they normally tour a different palace, but it was closed the day Lance and I were there). As we were parking, we passed a group of protestors (around 20-30 people) with signs that were just standing on a sidewalk repeating everything a man was shouting. It seemed very calm. Our guide told us they were protesting because they had lost their jobs. We parked and then walked into the palace and in front of it was a large group of riot police, here's a few of them. They were getting ready, in case anything got out of control. It seemed like overkill to me because the people protesting were barely doing anything and they had at least 40 riot police on hand.I really liked the design of all the buildings in the palace. They were so simple and used natural colors, a huge difference compared to the palace in Bangkok. One neat thing we learned about their living quarters was that underneath each of the buildings was a huge fireplace. This provided the heating for the home and since no one wears shoes inside thier homes, they needed heated floors. The chimneys for the underground fireplaces were piped 20-30 feet away from the building itself.We caught our flight out of Bangkok at 2am and arrived into Seoul at 6am--Korean time, we slept a couple of hours and didn't have showers, so we look pretty awesome here. This day was the longest day I've ever had, after spending a full day in Seoul, we flew 9 hours to Seattle and then were home at 10am the same day. We also went to this river that runs through the city for about 4 miles. It's called the Cheonggyecheon Stream. It had a really nice walk-way, it would be a good place for a run. Oh, do you notice the jackets we're wearing? We were lucky to borrow some from the tour company. Mine fit perfectly, but Lance is wearing a woman's jacket, he has it pushed off his shoulders, otherwise, the arms would be 5" too short. I only laughed at him for a few minutes. At least we were able to stay warm, it was around 40 degrees here, compared to the 80 degrees we had in Thailand.

This picture makes me miss Lance. :( He's in Reno working at a ski resort and I haven't seen him since we got back. Maybe Lance is ok with that, but I miss him, it was fun sharing a room with him for a couple of weeks.

The last place the tour took us was Insadong, which is a shopping street. I actually found a neat wall hanging from a local artist, so I was glad we had this stop, too.

puerto vallarta

My Christmas present to myself was a little weekend get-away to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico on New Year's weekend. It was a nice treat, plus, I needed some warm sun after the crazy snow we had for so long in Seattle. I really didn't do much while I was in Puerto Vallarta, just read, relaxed, sat out on the beach. It was perfect. 80 degrees and a nice beach. I do have one funny story, sorry if you've already heard it.

While I was sitting on the beach, reading a magazine, this older mexican guy sat down next to me and started talking to me (he appeared to be in his late 40s or early 50s). I thought, oh this guy must just want to practice his english with me, so I'll talk to him for a few minutes. He asked me where I was from and I told him Seattle, but then he made the comment that I looked Canadian. I'm not really sure how different Canadians look from Americans, but I was like, ok. And then a few minutes later, he said, no, you look Mexican because of my skin. This is when I wanted him to go away and leave me alone. He didn't leave, just kept talking about how he had been at the bars the night before dancing with all the ladies, but not drinking because he likes to exercise, play soccer, run.... So then he asked me how old I was and I told him 32 (fyi, now I'm 33 because I had my b-day on the 13th) and he tells me he's 34. I laughed because it was so ridiculous. There was no way he was younger than 48. And then he asked me what color my eyes were and asked me to take off my sunglasses, I wouldn't do it and by this point was back to reading my magazine, hoping he would just get the hint. I had to finally say, well, nice to meet you and then he left. So, I went back to reading and then after a while, I hear someone running on the sand and as they pass me, they let out a big breath of air. This happens a few times and then I look up to see who is breathing so hard as they're running. It's the creepy guy! He's running back and forth every few minutes and breathing out every time he passes by. Yep, creepy. I get ready to go after one of the times he runs by, hoping I can get out of there before he comes back, but without any luck. He runs up to me, all sweaty and old. Oh, it was nice meeting you, look out for all the mexican men. He then wanted to shake my hand, I said no thanks you're too sweaty and walked away. Nice, huh?

The rest of the trip was good and relaxing. I really like Puerto Vallarta. It's built up against the ocean and there are mountains behind it, so it doesn't go too far inland. The main part of the old town has old cobblestone roads. All the high rise hotels are out of town, so the town has an nice feel to it. They also have a really nice boardwalk and lots of neat scupltures along the way. There were lots of people there this weekend, from the US and Mexico on vacation. I stayed at the Hotel Rio.