okay so i went to kauai a month ago and i'm just now getting around to writing about it. sorry!! but it's worth the wait! kauai is definitely the most beautiful place i've ever been. maui's amazing but kauai is at least 5x's as green and doesn't have half of it taken over by sugar cane fields. plus, up in the wailua forest reserve (where i happened to go hiking on one of my days there) it is actually the rainiest place on earth, logging over 400 inches of rain a year!! i wish i would have known that BEFORE i got there.

so the first day i came in, laura met me at the airport and i got to meet her family for the first time, which is sad because she's been one of my best friends for a couple of years now. they are all very cool and lots of fun to hang out with. we set up camp on a beach and hung out all day snorkeling and beaching it up. that night was my first night camping out, which is also very sad, my parents failed me in that aspect. ;] as a highlight of the night, we had a cute friend join us in our tent. she was a beach cat which i named mahana and she was the sweetest thing. kind of like basil when we first found her; always purring and wanting to be pet. i really wish i had thought to take a picture of her that night, but unfortunately that was not to be. camping out went great, though, until it started pouring rain and somehow it began to leak into the front of our tent. this was only the beginning of a rain filled weekend!

the next day was our fateful trip into the "swamp." it just so happened that the kauai forest bird recovery project was in the field with 11 of MY juvenile puaiohi that i've been raising for the last three months. These birds were in the process of being acclimated to their surroundings before being released. so, i thought it would be a fabulous idea for laura and i to go hike out to their camp and see my babies one last time before they were set free. the hike up to the alakai swamp in wailua was one of the most beautiful hikes i can even imagine. there were waterfalls, flowers, moss and best of all, native birds! never mind the fact it rained the entire eight hours we were out there, i was given the wrong trail directions to the kfbrp camp and we never found it, and that we happened to not bring rain gear and nearly froze to death, it was still the best hike i have ever possibly been on! the pictures provided give you a glimpse of the splendor we saw and the one of me holding a little leopard frog sort of shows just how incredibly soaked we both were. i didn't take as many pictures as i would have liked due to the fear that stopping would make the hike colder and also since my fingers were having a little difficulty moving properly, but honestly, i don't really mean to complain. we got to see one of the cutest little birds ever, the kauai elepaio ("L"-eh-pie-oh). these are such curious little birds and they followed us down the path with their tails in the air flitting back and forth across the trail watching us curiously. we were also lucky enough to see an apapane (ah-pah-pah-ne) flitting around on an ohia tree feeding on it's nectar. they are beautiful bright red birds with striking black wings and tail. seeing these guys was the highlight of my day! as we hiked back down the 8 mile trail to meet up with our ride home we stopped at a lookout overlooking the wailua mountains which are known as "hawaii's grand canyon." looking at the picture i've included you can see why! as a side note, although we didn't see any nene that day, we did find their droppings at the overlook, hehe.

after surviving our soaked and freezing but amazingly gorgeous hike, we were up for something a little more sunny the next day, which also just so happened to be laura's birthday! we hung out at the beach all day and soaked up the sun. we also got to see tons of sea turtles down on the shore eating red seaweed. Plus, we saw several humpback whales breaching and spouting out in the ocean. i never expected to see so much wildlife in kauai! it was spectacular.

saturday was my last day in kauai, but it was just as full of fun things to do and see. we stopped by at kauai's lighthouse in the kilauea point national wildlife refuge in hopes of seeing some seabirds. we were not disappointed. dozens of red-footed boobies were flying around in the thermals and others were roosting on the side of the cliff. i have always wanted to see a boobie and i was thrilled to see so many at once. and to top it all off, we also saw about a dozen nene that were hanging out near the lighthouse and were flying out to their daytime grazing grounds. it's great to see the hard work i put into taking care of these endangered species back at the facility paying off with wild ones flying free like they should. later we went to the beach and just happened to come while a monk seal was lounging on the beach. it was pretty funny because the nearby hotel had put up signs warning tourists not to try to pet the seal with caution tape all around the part of the beach the seal was on. it's nice to see some concern being shown for the native wildlife. after that we stopped by spouting horn to see the geyser of water that blows up out of a natural hole in some rocks on the side of the ocean. it wasn't going too strongly that day, but it was still pretty great to see.

so all in all, the trip was one of the best i've ever been on and it was so great to see laura for a few days. i've included a pic of some waves coming in on baldwin beach i took during my descent into maui (so sorry about the graininess, the plane window wasn't all too clean). i am so glad i got to go visit another of hawaii's amazing islands and even happier that i got to do it with laura.