KAUA'I SOUTH, EAST AND WEST SHORE

The first part of the trip was spent in the south shore resort area called Po'ipu. We stayed in a cottage that was in the middle of the development and only a 5 minute walk to the beach. Po'ipu has a National Tropical Botanical Garden and Sharon paid a morning visit there while Chris got his fins wet doing some snorkeling. Below are a couple of the other sites we saw in Po'ipu
An old lava tube and crashing surf creates a big blowhole called Spouting Horn. The water shoots up about 30-40 ft when the big waves roll in.	Maha'ulepu Beach has some nice cliffs to explore. Here we saw the biggest waves of the trip.
We spent a day exploring Waimea Canyon and the cliff tops of the impressive Na Pali coast.
Waimea Canyon looks remarkably similar to the Grand Canyon. It is 3600ft deep and 10 miles long. This place seemed really strange to us since the ocean was only 15 miles away.	The road past Waimea Canyon eventually leads out to the tip top of the Na Pali coast. We went on a scenic 11 mile loop hike to several overlooks 3000ft above the ocean.
There are a lot of wild goats who roam the Na Pali cliffs and drop rocks on unsuspecting hikers.	Looking down, WAY down to the ocean!
The east side of the island is where most of the 50,000 Kauaians live. Although we didn't spend much time here, there are some interesting sites.
One of those sites is the impressive Wailua Falls.	In 1992, hurricane Iniki devastated the island. But this was a great jailbreak for island chickens whose coups were destroyed by the wind. Now they are EVERYWHERE and crow at all hours!!!!
We went to the Smiths Tropical Paradise Luau in Wailua Town on the east shore. The excellent show celebrates all the ethnic groups that settled the islands along with the Polynesians. Kaua'i immigrants are divided among Japanese, Chinese, Filipinos and Caucasians all which came in the 1700s and 1800s to work the plantations or do missionary work. Here are some Tahitian dancers.	This guy did some serious torch spinning!