Nawiliwili Harbor on the island of Kauai was our last port on the cruise before heading back to Honolulu, and it was an overnight stay, so we wanted to make the most of it. We had pre-organised two tours for this port, one for each day, allowing a bit of time to also look around the island before leaving.
First up was a Mountain Tubing Adventure. What is Mountain Tubing I hear you ask? Well while it’s not white water rafting the idea is the same, though on a much smaller scale, and it was certainly a lot of fun. Historically Kauai was renown for its sugar plantations, all of which needed a lot of water, and so an extensive irrigation system of ditches and tunnels were hand dug to direct water across the island’s plantations. Kauai Backcountry Adventures has exclusive access to the irrigation system of the former Lihue Plantation, which includes five tunnels and miles of channels.
The tour starts with a safety briefing and everyone gets handed their safety gear, a hard hat with headlamp (for the tunnels) and a pair of thick gloves. You also have to wear water proof shoes with straps. The main reason for the safety gear is that a number of the tunnels were dug out of rock, and some of the channels are lined with rocks and you need to be able to push yourself out from the edge if necessary. It’s also possible that you’ll get shoved a bit as you move along, by the other tubes (rubbing is racing or so they say), hence the hard hat just in case. Unfortunately we didn’t get a photo of ourselves decked out in our gear.
After everyone was loaded into the tour van our fantastic guides made everyone feel welcome, and told us a lot about the history of the places we drove through on the way to the tubing site.
Because our camera is not waterproof we left it on the tour van and didn’t get any photos of the tubing but I’ve included some images from their website so you get the idea http://www.kauaibackcountry.com/
Everyone on the tour had a great time, especially with the tunnels. We did the last tunnel with all the headlamps turned off. All the guides were amazing (thanks guys!) and made it lots of fun, especially their instructions on removing certain words from our vocabulary and replacing them with more appropriate alternatives. For example, the water is not “freezing” or “icy” or “bum numbing”. No we were encouraged to use the more appropriate descriptions of “refreshing” and “exhilarating”. Also given the length and structure of the irrigation system saying sorry every time you bump into someone gets extremely repetitive. We were advised that the most appropriate alternatives were “bring it on”, “take that” and “coming through”. Finally following instructions to go left and right can be a little tricky if you speeding backwards or spinning round and round in circles, but we all made it to the end in one piece.
After the tubing was finished the tour guides drove us to a beautiful, secluded picnic area where they served us lunch and gave us the opportunity to go for a refreshing swim. Anyone that knows me well will know that I was one of the first in the water and one of the last to get out. There was a cute little waterfall that fell into the swimming hole, and it was warm. Nice!
This was also a very special day for us because it was the day of our actual wedding anniversary. So to celebrate we went to dinner in one of the speciality restaurants, Little Italy, where you pay a small cover charge ($10/head). The meals were great and the staff were lovely and even presented us with a celebratory cake for dessert.
One the second day we had a fairly early pick up for our helicopter tour. This was probably our most expensive tour for the trip but it was certainly good value for money and well worth it for what we were able to see of the island during the 75 minute flight. We had chosen this specific tour as it sets down at a place called Jurassic Falls (the main waterfall used in the movie Jurassic Park), where we had the chance to walk around to look at the falls up close, before flying away again. We had to wear little shoe covers for the ride to the falls as it was really muddy there and it was the best way of keeping the chopper clean.
Jurassic Falls
The falls were around 400 feet high and were definitely the most spectacular we’d seen on the trip. You couldn’t take photos up close because the air was full of spray. After the falls we did a wide circle back to the airfield where we saw the Waimea Canyon, Mt Waialeale Crater and the NaPali Coastline, a 15 mile stretch of the island’s most rugged coastline where the cliffs drop thousands of feet straight into the ocean.
I would highly recommend this flight to anyone that has time to spare on Kauai. It is the best way to see the whole island and the pilot flies really close to the ground, so you can see so much detail, which is great until the ground suddenly drops away from you a couple of hundred feet into a valley. Most helicopter flights I’ve been on haven’t been this long, and with the wind buffeting us around so much flying in and out of the canyons and valleys I was definitely feeling a little off towards the end and was glad to get my feet back on the ground.
The rest of the day was uneventful as the ship had an early departure (2 pm instead of the usual 6 pm). This gave us plenty of time to grab some of our favourite foods from both the Cadillac Diner and the Aloha Cafe and take them back to our room to sit on the balcony and watch the beautiful NaPali Coast sail past followed by some whales and another glorious sunset. Was a fantastic way to end the cruise.
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