Day 7: Cliff walking

We really wanted to hike at least part of the Na Pali coast this trip, but alas, the weather conspired to keep us away once again. Torrents of rain last night made the trail too muddy and the streams too fast to ford. So off to the sunny south of Kauai - the Poipu Beach area. It's an hour and 10 minutes drive from the North Shore where we are staying. Our aim is to hike along the coast from shipwreck beach to Mahaulepu beach - 4 miles RT. There are lava flow cliffs between the beaches. Mary and I had last been to Poipu area in 1987, five years before the most devastating hurricane in Hawaii's recorded history, Hurricane Iniki.
Getting to shipwreck proved to be unsolvable by us, so we opted for starting at the other end of the trail, Mahaulepu - 2 miles over a rough dirt road to a clearing 50 yards from the beach. We ate our picnic lunch on the beach. After an hour we headed out, taking off our shoes and socks to ford a stream at the far end of the beach. Shoes back on, we headed up a path through thick brush. At a clearing we looked down on a scene that looked like a set for the TV series, "Lost". Lava caves! There was a clearing with a fire pit and ringed on 3 sides with cliffs and caves. We left the "scene" and walked out into a flat open area above the pounding surf. We noticed a nearby spot marked with white cardboard formed in a 10'x10' cross. It had to be a helicopter landing spot to move the "Lost" characters to and from the set! However, this is pure speculation on my part.
We hiked a couple of miles along the cliffs and then went back the way we'd come.
At the end of the hike at the beach picnic site, there was a comical scene of us trying to rinse our feet in the surf and then hop on one foot while drying the other then putting the dry shoe back on. I'm sure you can imagine that we didn't return to the parking area with dry feet and shoes!

The PT cruiser didn't fare too well in the muddy parking area either. It was coated in mud from other vehicles spraying it with spinning wheels in the mud puddles. And chickens. They are EVERYWHERE in Kauai. They are feral and have no natural predators and there is plenty for them to eat. The roosters are descended from escaped Philippine fighting cocks that were brought to the island illegally. They have beautiful plumage and long, sharp spurs. They're not particularly afraid of humans. We left in the silver and brown streaked PT and drove to highly developed Poipu Beach area. Nearly every foot of beach area now has condos and hotel resorts built up to it. It was not recognizable as the same place we had stayed for 10 days back 1987. Two miles away is the famed "spouting horn," a lava tube formation on the coast that spouts a geyser of water and foam with each surge of the surf. The rush of water in the lava tubes forces a rush of air out that sounds like moaning.




Our hour plus drive back to Princeville included a tropical downpour which washed off most of our festoons of mud.