Nawiliwili Kauai - Whales, Whales and More Whales

This fairly small Hawaiian Island is known as the “Garden Isle”. Kauai is over six million years old. I don’t want to be held accountable for these stats. I am repeating what our tour guides tell us. Our little printed port guide tells us it is five million years old. What’s a million years give or take… anyway, it’s old.  This time we spent more time in the center of the island than on the beaches. It does have some dramatic scenery and interesting little villages. From almost anywhere on the island you can see Mt. Waialeale, a long extinct volcano. The guide tells us that this is the wettest place on earth with a rainfall of over 450 inches annually.  Its wettest year, it rained 700 inches. We stopped at “Spouting Horn”, a blowhole, which shoots a spray into the air - always good for a picture.  The thing the island is most famous for is Waimea Canyon, often referred to as the “Grand Canyon of the Pacific.” It measures about 3,000 feet in depth and 12 miles in length.  I guess it’s no surprise that it rained on us a little when we arrived– but the gods smiled, the rains cleared just in time for picture taking. It is pretty spectacular viewing.  Like the Grand Canyon, a picture doesn’t do it justice.  We also saw lots of coffee bean crops along the way. We were told it takes 3,000- 3500 coffee beans to make a pound of coffee or one tree to produce about one pound of coffee. The tour guide also said they were seeing many more humpback whales than was usual this year. So we had hopes. We did see a couple at breakfast, but of course, I didn’t have my camera with me. The tour continued.  Kauai supposedly is the most isolated inhabited land mass in the world. It is not built up like Waikiki Beach. In fact, when Marriot came in and built a 10 story hotel, they quickly passed a law saying no building on Kauai was allowed to be built taller than a palm tree.  Kauai is where Capitan Cook made his first landing in the Hawaiian Islands at Waimea Beach. He and his crew brought trinkets as well as various illnesses which caused more deaths than any of their past tribal wars.  That was exciting, but on the return to the port we found the port offered a free Kmart shuttle!  Wow, a shopping fix. We hopped right off the tour bus and right on to the shuttle. This is the last stop for easy shopping before we hit more exotic ports.  I was like a shark swimming through seal infested waters! I was madly scanning right, scanning left as I viewed the abundance of goodies at my finger tips. I quickly gathered anything I thought  might be a potential need. We assembled a nice array of treasures.  We returned to the ship. Now Jim always gets frisked, because of his titanium hip. It sets off all alarms. But this time, I also had to “assume the position”. They even made me remove my hat. Now I am here to tell you, that standing spread eagle with “hat hair” is not my best look.  Why would we want to blow up the ship, we need it for three more months. Anyway, while all this is going on, the people behind us, also on the Kmart shuttle, grabbed our bag by mistake. If you can, picture this - I realized what had happened and with hat hair flying I make a mad dash through the ship’s terminal “yohooing” and waving trying to catch the other couple before they board the ship and are forever lost to me. Too late – I am stopped again at the gangplank to check my boarding card. (This time however it was understandable, given they had a wild women running though the terminal waving a Kmart bag.) By the time they cleared Jim and me, both elevator doors were closed and going up.  We had purchased a camera battery and transformer that I really wanted . In their bag I saw Hawaiian shirts and Mumus, making me even more frantic to reclaim our bag.  I looked at their receipt in hopes of some sort of ID – they had spent over $150 so we would have gotten the better end of the deal – if I had wanted Mumus and Hawaiian shirts.  So I took out after one couple on one elevator and Jim chased the other couple on the second elevator. He noticed that the previous elevator on his side had stopped on the 6^th floor. He got off on the 6^th floor just as the “bag nappers” were entering their room. An exchange was made - success! We decided we deserved a glass of wine and balcony time after all that.  At sail away, about dusk, even more excitement - whales, whales and more whales. It was like “there’s one, see it”?  “Wow”!  “There are two over there to the right”. “Hey, look straight out, it’s a pod – there must be 7 or 8”! Then after about 45 minutes of nonstop whale spotting, it was, “there’s one”. “Yeah”. “See those over there”? – “ Un huh”. How quickly you become blasé.  There were sooo many.  Only once the whole time did one actually breached where we saw the tale and all.  Just as I pushed the button to capture this National Geographic “perfect whale picture” - my battery saver mode kicked in and shut off my camera! By the time I had it fired back up the whale was about 2 miles north of us.  I said words I would not have wanted my grandchildren to hear.