Breakfast today is the usual great spread plus baked frittata. We try the fresh açaí juice, thick and sweet, full of antioxidants. Other guests are a couple from Germany and a young couple from Anchorage; she is a development officer but we try to avoid talking shop! Today’s adventure is to find hiking opportunities but first on the agenda is to get pie from the small roadside store, The Right Slice. We buy a small mango lillikoi (passion fruit mousse) and stash it in the trunk for later.
We stop briefly at the red rock hills, hiking a short way to the top of a ledge, which appears to be an old quarry. Not spectacular but the striations in the red dirt are pretty.
Today, we are in search of dry trails. and we think the dirt road at the Kokee SP sign might have possibilities. Kokee SP is a 4,345 wilderness park, 3,600 ft in elevation. We walk the down and realize this is the correct trailhead for the Canyon Trail and where we should have started yesterday; it joins the one we tried to hike yesterday but has no stream crossing. With only a few muddy spots, the hike is in ohia and koa forest then runs along the upper edge of the canyon ending at the overlook above Waimea Falls.
We see lots of helicopters in the canyon area and consider whether we should be daring and do this as well. The hike is refreshing and we reward ourselves by digging into the very delicious pie in Kokee campground and proudly eat half the pie and also manage to leave a feast of crumbs for the chickens. Did I mention wild chickens and roosters are everywhere? There is no place that you don’t hear roosters crowing dawn to dusk!
I photograph the falls in the late afternoon light as we head down the canyon road.
We can’t pass by the papaya stand without stopping. This time, a different young man, a cousin of the last, tells me he is from Tientsin and has been in the US for 8 months. We speak in Mandarin and I learn that the orchard is owned by 3 families from China! People told them Kauai would be a good place to invest so they started this huge orchard and sell locally and to produce companies. He said the papayas are not shipped to China or the mainland. The trees are a year old and he says some papayas are picked green, others ripe, depending what customers want. The ones at the stand look like rejects but are wonderfully fresh and sweet. I buy 6; he gives me a bunch of plantains and shows me huge avocados the size of big grapefruits; I have never seen avocadoes so big. These have replaced the huge coconuts of yesterday. What a delightful conversation we have.
In an exploring mood, we drive along the west coast where the land is agricultural before reaching a mesa to the east. The former sugar haul road becomes unpaved as it leads to Polihale SP. We don’t attempt the potholed road. Back to the coast, we watch the sunset and decide we like the chicken cooked in a barrel so much, we repeat the same meal, only they’ve raised their prices by $1 a dish!!