Our first adventure in The Hills, was downward. We visited a friend of Leopoldo's, Gay and Lucky, who were absolutely flawless hosts. They drove us down into Waipi'o Valley in a 4x4 and I assure you, we needed all four wheels to make this treacherous descent. Every time I looked around and actually (foolishly) felt complacent enough to have risked bringing a rental car down here, Lucky or Gay pointed to wreckage above our heads in the trees -- invariably some poor fool who didn't have the wise counsel we did. Shabby little rental cars had slipped down the steep switchback trails and jammed up against trees. I can't imagine how the renters made those calls to the agencies.
We arrived, finally, at the bottom of the valley, where we were immediately pummelled by strong winds and whipping spray from the ocean. It was great! Gay took this picture. She took three, but this one really is the one I liked the best. In the others, you can see my True Form (I wasn't paying attention, sorry), and that just will not do.
At the end of the island straddling highway in Kauai, you pass by a number of interesting formations. One of them (picture coming soon as I can find it) is the Dry Cave, a deep pocket into a cliff. The weird thing about being in the cave is that you never know if you're stepping into a shadow or a pit that will send you straight to Hell.
Also at the end is the head of the trail up into the Na Pali cliffs. The Cliffs are some fairly rugged terrain, but this trail actually makes them pretty passable. Here's Katrina as we begin our climb, making sure her boots are securely fastened and her tray table is in the upright, locked position. The first quarter mile or so of this path is really steep and filled with rocks. Most are small, but a few are couch-sized. In those cases, you have to scramble over them.
Watch out for slick spots! In lots of places, water trickles down the face of the cliffs (Kauai is a very wet place) and where it's been running across the rocks, it's left a very slick spot. You hit one of these babies and you're going down. And I don't mean stumbling, either. I mean tumbling down the edge of the cliff to the sharp, hungry rocks below.
Note that the growth around here is incredibly lush and strong. It's just amazing. You're bombarded by the smell of fresh, extremely rich dirt and wriggling growing things. Just taking this hike can be a remarkable thing, reminding you that, no matter how bad Jurassic Park was, it's absolutely true that "Life finds a way". And how!
I tried to get this in the picture, but it didn't quite come out the way I wanted it to.
At this point, the trail is about ten to twelve inches wide. The growth on either side is really dense and, although there are occasional pockets, if you pass someone on the trail, it's such a tight squeeze you have to be sure you're wearing a condom. In some cases, you're threading between large rocks, which are even less yielding than bush.
You can really see how much more lush the greenery is in this picture than the previous one. I want every room in my house to be like this!
Another fun part was hitting patches of well-trampled mud. This stuff is just a bootsucker, man. Minimum six inches of mud, twenty-inch wide trail, and nowhere to go on either side. You really hone your which-patch-is-really-solid instincts, I can tell you!
The postcard shot. A requirement on every trip.
The cliffs form fingers into the ocean and the path weaves in and out of these fingers. Half the time, you hike in a thick and steamy tropical forest. The other half of the time, you're in the open air, with that bad-ass sun blasting your brain right out of your skull. But it's great right at the outer transition points, too. At each one, you get whipped by the winds that zoom through the place. This really cools you off and provides a great spot to rest, as they're usually more open than the rest of the path and there are lots of big soft rocks to sit on.
You might notice that, even though the wave splash is far away, it's big. Well, those waves smash into these cliffs pretty hard, that's all I can tell you. I've been down in it, too. The waters at the base of the cliffs are very treacherous. At some beaches, they put up signs that warn "Strong swimmers have died here!" Here, they don't bother. If you can't figure it out by watching a wave rip sideways across the beach, then, well, maybe it's time you took a little gene-cleansing swim. For all our sakes.
These are so cool! In a weird little open patch, I looked up and saw this tree filled with spider webs. The sun caught the webs just right, and I was able to get most of them in frame. There are some webs that are almost inline with the camera, so they seem a bit more chaotic. You'll have to take it on faith that this is way cooler than in the picture.
Of course, all those spiders are dead now, but they may have left instructions to the next batch of critters, so if you go on this hike, do try to look for this tree. And if you put a picture of it online, let me know and I'll link to it from here!
The first three-mile section of the path ends at the mouth of a river. I've temporarily lost those photos, much to my dismay. More couch-sized rocks interrupt the tumbling stream and the sparse, sandy beach only contains the more hardy travellers. The water has a decidedly nasty rip to it. As I mentioned before, it's quite obvious. We would go out on one end of the beach, splash around a bit and get back in just before being swept out to the hungry, hungry ocean.
To either side of this protected cove are more straight-up black cliffs, with waves constantly smashing and chewing at the base. This is definitely the only place to swim around there and even so, not a particularly smart place to swim.
