Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Kayaking Adventures

One of our friends out here works for a catamaran/raft company that does tours of the NaPali Coast and so when the boats aren't full, we can get a pretty good kama'aina discount.  One day he let us know there was room on one of the rafts going out the next day, so we were planning on a fun afternoon on a raft.

Unfortunately, just before we were getting ready to leave, we found out that there were not enough people to take the raft out since they have a minimum number of full paying customers requirement that needs to be met in order to go out...and there weren't enough people today :(  Soooo, our raft adventure was out of the picture.  Luckily for us, a friend in the ward has kayaks and he let us borrow one, so we headed up the Wailua River!

It was a little cloudy and we left later in the day, but we still had time to hit up the rope swing (and by 'we', I mean Kai - I wasn't in the mode to get cold and wet).


After the rope swing, we headed up to see the waterfall.  We weren't positive where we were going, but we asked some returning kayakers and they told us which forks to take to get to the waterfall.  

 On our way up the river!!!

We figured we were at the right spot when we saw a bunch of kayaks on the bank, so we pulled the kayak up and started hiking up the trail.  The trail was a little rough in some areas, but we just kept hiking.

 
Stop #1 on the hike

After hiking for a while, I started wondering if we were even going the right way.  We hadn't seen anyone on the trail and after hiking further and further back, I was a little skeptical about being in the forest when it was getting dark, but Kai was still really gung ho about finding the waterfall, so we kept charging on.  Finally, we ran into a tour group that was hiking back and the guide told us that we just needed to take a turn off right before the water tower.  Sounds easy, right?!  Except for by the time we got to the water tower (which didn't look like a normal water tower), we were looking for a trail and couldn't find one.  Instead, we kept following the trail thinking that we could find it on our own.  We basically wandered around trying to figure out where this waterfall was, but after going up a few trails, I was pretty convinced that we weren't going to find the waterfall.  Plus, the facts that we hadn't seen anyone, neither of us brought phones and we had no idea what time it was, didn't make me feel any better.  I finally convinced Kai that we needed to head back and that we would leave earlier and find it another time.  Just as we were heading back, we ran into 3 people who had just come back from the waterfall.  They told us how to get to the falls (which was not the same directions we got from the tour group) and said we were about 10 mins away, BUT, it was 5:45pm so we were really cutting it close for sunlight.  BUT, in the end, we decided to run back and check it out.  It was worth it.  The waterfall was so cool!  

 We seriously were at the waterfall for maybe 5 mins since we had to make sure we made it out before it was dark!  

We basically jogged all the way back out and when we got back to our kayak, we were the only ones left!

When we were paddling up the river, I thought it was going to be easy going back out because we would be going downstream, but what I didn't think about was the wind.  It made paddling out soooo much harder and I was already tired!  It took both of us paddling to get going back out and even then, the wind was blowing hard.  Then it started raining, but of course, we couldn't stop.  It felt like the river was never ending and at one point, Kai suggested that I eat the mango that we had brought with us.  I was hungry, so I happily took a break from paddling to cut it up.  After I cut it up, I passed Kai his pieces and no one was paddling since we were taking our snack break...within a minute, our kayak was turned around and we were floating up river!  The mango gave us just enough energy to start paddling hard again.
 
Here we are, paddling back to civilization :)

As we were paddling out, I was getting irritated because I just wanted to be back at the house, the wind was making it hard to get going anywhere, and I was tired.  I guess I was channeling my feelings into my paddling because Kai started laughing and asked me why I was doing an angry paddle!  I guess it was just a more aggressive stroke and I told him it made us go faster (and it really did).  

Anyhow, we finally made it back to the Allen's house (Fact: Their house is right on the river and it is AMAZING!) and not only were they nice enough to let us use their kayaks, after we put the stuff back, they insisted that we stay for dinner with them.  The food was good, and their family is awesome!  Next time up the river, we are hitting up the Fern Grotto!!!

1 comment:

  1. BAHAHAHAHAHA. angry paddle. and you really only brought ONE mango?? you guys are hilarious hawaii adventurers.

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