4th Port of Call - Kauai

Kauai actually ended being Oscar and my favorite island out of all the islands we visited. It was just so green and luscious. Everywhere we went was incredibly beautiful. The only problem was that we only had 8 hours to see the whole island, and unfortunately, it's impossible to drive around the whole thing. There are no roads that travel along the island from the south west to the north west ends. Even more unfortunate was that we docked in Lihue, which was dead center between the gorgeous Waimea canyon in the far southwest and the beautiful valleys in the north. But somehow we managed to see pretty much everything we really wanted to see. We drove up to the north as far as the Hanalei valley as well as far into the southwest to see Waimea canyon. It was a long day of driving and we were exhausted at the end, but it was totally worth it for all of these gorgeous pictures. Here we are at our first stop - the Kiluea lighthouse. Oscar especially wanted to go to the Hanalei valley lookout. He'd had a screen saver of it for months and really wanted to see it in person.

Here's an interesting site - King Kong's profile. These mountains look just like him, down to his nose, bald head, and chins. Our next stop took us to the Wailua river. Near the river we also saw these two beautiful twin waterfalls. Next we took a ferry to Fern Grotto. Here we got to be serenaded and watch Hula dancers along our ride.

This was our view of the river from our boat. This was a random wild cat we saw in the area. She was super sweet, she let everyone pet her, and she immediately sat on the lap of one of the tourists sitting on a bench. We don't know how she got there since it's not an area you can get to by foot. And this was some of the beautiful foliage we saw in the Fern Grotto area. Here's Oscar when we first arrived in the area. And here's the pretty grotto itself. Our next stop was the Waimea Canyon. We took a picture for the family of this little girl, but she insisted we also take a picture of her with our camera. So we did. This canyon was just absolutely stunning. We couldn't stop taking pictures. Here we are at the top of the canyon. Fortunately we were able to see it and get a few pictures before the nasty fog came in.

These were some pretty palms we saw during our drive.  

From one spot in Wailua we could look out to the furthest island - Niahau

And our last stop before heading back to the boat was the old Hanapepe bridge.

3rd port of call - Kona, Hawaii

Since Oscar and I had already been to Kona on our previous vacation, we decided to rent a car and drive up north back to our favorite spot - the pololu valley. Here's the barren ash you see as you drive around most of this enormous island. Here I am by the windmills in Hawi. Oscar had to pull over to take this shot. Big Kamehameha statue on the northern side. And here we are back in pololu. We decided to hike into the inner pololu valley a bit more. Oscar and I both really love the black sand beach. Even the inner valley is made up of black sand instead of soil.

Someone made a yin yang in the sand. Here's a nice shot of me with a big fern near the beach. And here are some more shots of this gorgeous valley. I actually think it was prettier this time when it was overcast than it was last time while it was sunny. And, of course, we had to go back to eat at our favorite place in Hawi - The Bamboo Restaurant. Yummy kalua pork and yummy guava, passion fruit, and mango slushes and smoothies.