My Weekend

On Saturday I worked all day and then, feeling fidgety and restless, took a walk in the rain late afternoon.  It’s about a twenty-minute walk from my (employer’s) house to Lookout Point, so I grabbed my camera and set off down the road.  I turned back three times, once because I realized there was no memory card in my camera, and once to put shorts on (I’d been wearing pants in the house for the first time since moving here.  It seems like the people who live in Kauai are very sensitive to slight weather changes… I’m usually cold all the times, but there are days when I’ll be sitting in my office in a tank top and shorts, sweating even with the windows and the screen door open, and my employer will walk in wearing sweatpants and a long-sleeved fleece shirt.)    

Anyway, I walked to Lookout Point, taking some photographs and doing lots of philosophical, life-meaning thinking on the way.  I only spend a few minutes sitting on the hill and watching the ocean once I got to Lookout Point, then I walked home and got back to work.  The overhead clouds either spat rain or heavily sprinkled during the hour that I was out, and it made for a perfectly refreshing walk.  Here are a few pictures I snapped.

One of the chiseled bricks in the driveway:

The view of the mountains behind our gated community:

Colorful berries on some of the palms that line the dirt road leading back to the driveway.  They’re not typical palms—I’ll have to find out what they’re called.  You can see their structure (kind of) in the second picture… from the roots to the berries, the trunk is circled with dark rings of bark.  In the middle of the trunk is a horizontal wreath of green and red berries, and from there up the trunk is stripped, smooth, and white.   

Yesterday, Sunday, I decided to be a tourist and visit all of the attractions on the south side of the island.  I got in my car after church and drove the hour and a half to Waimea State Park to see the Waimea Canyon.  After driving many miles on a long, windy, dirt road, I came to a series of lookout points (complete with parking lots, guard rails, and information posts—so touristy) that provided beautiful views of the canyon.  The first stopping point reminded me very much of a small-scale Grand Canyon.  The south side of the island in general reminded me of Arizona—because the south side is so much dryer than the north side, there’s an abundance of rock and red dirt.  Here are a few shots of Waimea Canyon.  

The second stopping point was at a significantly higher elevation, and the view of the eye-level clouds was almost as breathtaking as the mountains and ocean below.

With the zoom, you can just make out a three-tiered waterfall on the side of the mountain—which must be pretty big for me to have been able to see it from such a distance.    

The treacherously potholed road crept further up the mountain and dead-ended at the last stopping point.  The raw beauty of the view almost took away my desire to photograph it.  If I didn’t have other places to go and other things to see, I would have spent the entire day on that mountaintop, perched on a rock overlooking the bay, pen and paper in my lap, alternating between writing and completely zoning out.  Up here, the red dirt was cool and damp, packed down hard.  I hiked a short ways down the trail (the trail goes miles into the mountains—definitely something I’ll be doing when I return in January) without shoes.  I can’t describe the pure bliss of the cool, hard dirt under my feet, the breeze whipping all around me, and triangular peaks and valleys spread out far below me.  Here are pictures. 

After the canyon, I intended to go shopping in Poipu, but instead I followed signs to Spouting Horn, another enjoyable tourist attraction.  I got a few good shots of the geyser in action—I’m sure it’s even more impressive when the waves are bigger.  

After photographing the geyser, I turned around to see the sun beginning to set on the ocean, which painted beautiful contrasting lights and darks on the rocks. 

I then went to Poipu Shopping Village, which is a classy outdoor shopping mall a bit like Legacy Village (in Ohio.)  There were several small art galleries that I ambled through, but I didn't spend much time there.  On my way home, I stopped at Trees Lounge in Kapaa, which I thought was going to be an upscale restaurant, but was more of a bar.  It was still a fun atmosphere—cozy armchairs, low coffee tables, and live music.  The menu was Hawaiian/Jamaican Fusion food served Pupu style (“pupus” are appetizers) on ceramic, triangle-shaped plates.  I had jerk chicken, and for dessert, New Orleans bread pudding.  I snapped a couple of artistic shots, watched the band (a jazzy, Carribbean style), and chatted with an island visitor named Alex, who informed me that the lead singer/guitarist of the band was a pro surfer. 

Aloha! :)