Day 7
Hana Lei
Last updated: 05/01/01 10:26 PM
Maui has the road to Hana, Kaui has Hana Lei and the trail from hell at the end of the road.
First stop for scenery on the way was populated with the usual Roosters. This was different in that there appeared to be a full family of them. First there is Mr.Rooster.
Then mama rooster (hen?).
And all the baby chicks are with her. Here's one:
They all approached me as soon as I stepped out of the car in pursuit of food. At this point I didn't have any so they were out of luck. Here's the view from Roosterville.
After taking a few pics, I'm back in the car and Sheri's in the trunk looking for something. All of a sudden I hear the Sher cry for help. "Kevin, hhhhheeeelllllpppppp". This is a shout I know well, it usually comes with a bee or wasp and she freaks and screams for me to come to here rescue. So I slowly amble out to be of assistance only to find that this guy.
has taken a liking to Sheri and is after her. He's already pecked her leg and she is backpedalling scared for her life. I bark at him and off he goes off the other direction like the little chicken that he is. Turns out that Sheri was getting the Rold Gold pretzel bag out of the trunk and Mr. Rooster knows all the snack bags too well. What he wanted was the pretzels not Sher. I considered snatching the pretzels and leaving her to fend for herself but being the kindler, gentler vacationing Kevin, I continue to keep him at bay while she and her pretzels get in the car. So as we are backing out I toss about a 1/4 of one pretzel just to see how it would go. One hen picked it up and ran with it, the rest followed in hot pursuit. So I think little of it and Sheri waits to merge into traffic. As we are waiting, the whole crew from Roosterville starts to hover around my window of the car. I start to stick my head out the window to look to be sure none of them get hit and one of them proceeds to decide to join me in the front seat and see if he can't forcefully take the pretzel bag from us. I back off and he lands right on the windowsill and I shout more in fright than towards him. He backs off and I tell Sheri to step on it. I pitch the remainder of one pretzel as far from the car as possible and we make a run for it. Some of the other tourists are standing watching in terror as the rooster attacks us. They missed the pretzel so they are thinking these are killer roosters. They swiftly run to their car and shout to ask me if I'm alright. Alright ? of course, but a little shook from the sneak window attack.
So from here on out we stay away from the Roosters and definitely are never seen eating snacks in their presence again.
Back to Hana Lei touristing. More one lane bridges except many fewer than in Maui. So we get to the end of the road and fight for a parking spot. This is the end of the road, from here there is only a path to hike which is 11 miles long. The first stop along the way is a beach and its 2 miles from the start. The travel book says its a "treacherous" hike. They weren't kidding. Kevin was not too excited about this one but pushed on in protest. As we are starting its not only 2 miles but it looks like its all uphill. This is rock climbing like Maui at the beginning with much littler rocks and its raining on and off. The trip looking up looks like this.
Here it appears dry but it was one of the few dry places. It was all wet slick rocks. Sheri was loving it.
Kevin wasn't but hung in there for awhile. Most of the people coming back down were wet, muddy, had hiking boots on, some even had ski poles to help them. . If you didn't have a ski pole you atleast had a stick to use in a similar fashion. Kevin had his run of the mill gym shoes and was getting really grumpy. I keep asking why are we doing this ? what's on the other end ? I keep hearing about the wonderful views, its the journey not the destination. Ughhhhh.
We pass the 1/2 mile marker and its starts to rain. I have a camera and a fanny pack and the camera doesn't like the rain. I end up sticking it inside my shirt which is already wet from the sweat of a 1/2 mile rock climb. Kevin makes it to about 3/4 of a mile when a stop to catch my breath turned into the end of the road. I have seen a couple nice sights which I will share below but at some point I just stopped and quietly waited for Sher to figure out I wasn't behind her. She eventually got the idea and we headed back. One of the more talkative guys we encountered who passed us up as we sllllllooooowwwwllllly make our way down the wet and rocky trail filled us in that we had already seen the best view and that the hike just gets harder as you get farther.
A couple good shots below.
So we get back down and start the road back from Hana Lei. Some caves we saw on the way in are the next stop.
Not as kool when you are there as the looked when you went passed. Dark, damp and can't see much. Doesn't look inviting for a swim. This confirms the wise decision not to swim.
Doesn't this just sound special.
So we push on, it rains a little and we are basically headed back to our home away from home when Sheri comes upon the road to "secret" beach as the travel book calls it. So we head off down this dirt road in search of secret beach. We follow the dirt roads and eventually to the path down to the beach. We travel along the barbed wire fence.
Looks inviting doesn't it ? It starts out as a nice path so Kevin agrees to go for it. Kevin is happy to be anywhere but on that last path reading that .5 mile sign knowing that I had to go back a half mile to get back to civilization.
So it gets steeper and I now have flip flops on which makes this all the more fun but atleast it wasn't wet as it didn't appear to have rained here at all. So after a 10 minute trek down some more rocks and tree roots and a lot of red dirt, we arrived at "secret" beach.
This is the most sand we've seen anywhere on Kuai and is beatiful and almost abandoned. We wandered around her for quite awhile. We saw some naked people (2 of the male species) and considering the people count was about 6-7 the ratio of naked people was pretty high. It was cold at this point late in the afternoon, no one in their right mind would be skinny dipping and the sun was nowhere to be found but these two clowns were out laying naked on the beach, go figure. One did have a wife with him but she was smart enough to keep herself covered, not sure if she was just cold or not with the program.
Rest of our time here was clicking lots of water shots as the waves were really big (10-15 foot ?).
Wish we'd found this one early in the day when the sun was out cause this would be the place to be.