Roosters Roosters Roosters

You guessed it, we are now in Kaua'i. We left a decent condo in a bad neighborhood to a crappier condo in an okay neighborhood. Let's just say, it's rustic - and cheap. Oh well. We've been doing well enjoying nice lunches out and making good dinners in the evening. We'll continue that here in Kaua'i. We've found so far that people are very nice in Kaua'i and much nicer than those in Maui. Maui is nice but very commercial. Kaua'i is much more rugged and adventurous. This place is truly beautiful and like nothing else I've ever seen. Everything we loved about the risky drives in Maui is all around us in Kaua'i.

After arriving Sunday, we enjoyed a small dinner out at a 2nd level restaurant with a view of the incredible sunset, a pitcher of passion fruit (lilikoi) coladas and amazingly fresh calamari. Today, we ventured up the northeast side of the island after an awesome and authentic Japanese noodle lunch (at a place down a dicey street in a very local area), completed a short but itchy and sweaty hike to a boring little waterfall and enjoyed driving as far as possible on the north side of the island. The views were stunning and the drivers here are pretty decent (much better than those in Maui). Apparently, Andy Iron, a locally famous world champion surfer, who was found dead yesterday at age 32, was from the north part of the island (where we were today). We saw tributes to him all around.

I also confirmed my feelings about hiking. I really love hiking in the southwest states where it's dry but hot, there's little vegetation and NO bugs. The hike today was in very humid conditions in areas with a million ants (I'm not kidding) and lush vegetation jumping out everywhere.

Today we also booked a lua'u, zipline trip and helicopter ride. That helps form out the week. I'm really looking forward to doing everything and hoping to add a horseback ride and boat trip to our list.