Seven Days of Christmas on Kauai

Day One: Finding food to eat on Christmas Day.

We stopped at roadside farm stands for eggs, tangerines picked off the branch for a quarter each, bags of lettuce, papayas, smoothies, grapefruits, and avocados the size of melons. The juice bar was open for business, and a friendly praying mantis wished us happy holidays. When the North Coast’s notorious deluge let up, we stopped at Kealia Beach for a picnic lunch.

Juice and smoothie bar.

The praying mantis climbed up Dad's neck, then turned to face the camera. (Who knew they had swivelly necks?!)

Kealia Beach.

Day Two: Kiluea National Wildlife Refuge and Lighthouse.

This park has a short paved trail with views of a red-footed booby colony, a flock of nenes (endemic Hawaiian geese) with the unfortunate habit of charging moving cars, soaring white-tailed tropicbirds, the occasional pair of Laysan albatross, and a great frigatebird waiting to pirate the poor boobies’ catch of fish.

Mom and nene. 

Red-footed booby.

Mom and Lisa and, behind them, Kiluea Lighthouse.

Rain clouds came in fast.

Many male house finches on Kauai have amazing orange and yellow coloration instead of red.

Grazing nene.

 

White-tailed tropicbird.

Day Three: Waimea Canyon and the Kalalau Valley.

The dry west side of Kauai is graced with a magnificent red-dirt canyon, Waimea, that rivals the desert beauty of the Southwest. Lisa and I frolicked on Mars and hiked an hour down the muddy trail to view another deep gouge in the land, Kalalau Valley, coated in ferns and culminating in a remote white-sand beach far below us. Native ohi’a-lehua trees were pollinated by endemic red ‘apapane honeycreepers.

Red dirt.

Seastars.

Alright, we'll stop making goofy faces.

Breath-taking Kalalau Valley.

Fiddlehead fern.

I'm so frond of my family.
Pun credit to Sienna ;)

Day Four: Exploring Hanalei.

“Puff the magic dragon lived by the sea, and frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Hanalei…” If any town is populated by magic dragons, this one is it. Surf shops, hippies, vegan organic shave ice, waterfowl in estuarine ponds, ancient sea caves exposed by low sea levels, unswimmable surf, traditional taro ponds, and infamous Puka Dogs can be found here.

Taro fields in the Hanalei National Wildlife Refuge.

Hawaiian subspecies of common moorhen.

Endemic Hawaiian coot.

Mom and Dad and a big old cliff.

Hanalei Beach.

Koloa, the endemic Hawaiian duck.

Hawaiian race of black-necked stilt in taro.

Day Five: Hiking the Na Pali Coast.

OMG this was the best day ever. Mom, Lisa, and I scrambled along the rocky cliff-side trail for two miles to reach Hanakapi’ai beach. A hand-carved wooden sign implored us not to swim with 83 tick marks and the warning: “Unseen currents have killed 83+ here.” Then we turned inland to climb another two miles of pure mud and reach Hanakapi’ai Falls, where cold jungle rainwater drops over 300 feet of volcanic rock. We crossed Hanakapi’ai River eight times, sometimes hopping across boulders, sometimes wading knee deep, sometimes clinging to a rope. We swam with endemic freshwater gobies (their pelvic fins are modified into suckers that let them climb waterfalls!) in a calm pool and finally reached the beach again. To make the last two miles go quickly, I created an interval game of running to Lisa (who was walking faster ahead), then waiting for Mom (who was walking slower behind), then sprinting back to Lisa, then waiting for Mom, again and again. I ended up running the whole trail in spurts and making friends with all the accommodating hikers I passed many times.

The green misty jagged cliffs of Na Pali.

Fearless hikers!

I couldn't fit Mom and Lisa and the top half of Hanakapi'ai Falls in one frame. 

Tree fern!!!!!

We... made... it... WHEW!

Day Six: Scuba Diving at Koloa Landing.

I was lucky to see dozens of new marine fish and invertebrate species today on a two-tank dive off the South Shore. Spinner dolphins and humpack whales poked up their dorsal fins while I suited up, and a couple lazy green sea turtles grazed underwater. My dive master, Elora, found me a bright purple, silky soft Velvet Star (Leiaster leachi) to admire!

Three spinner dolphins surfacing in synchrony.

Ready!

Day Seven: Stand-Up (and Lie-Down) Paddle Boarding on the Hanalei River.

After five minutes, “stand-up paddle boarding” turned into swimming, pulling Lisa while she laid back and sunbathed, paddling myself along on my belly using my hands, startling red-eared slider turtles, and witnessing a colony of black-crowned night herons angrily clacking at each other. By the end of our float back downriver, I was pulling both Mom and Lisa with our ankle straps connecting us. Nothing beats lazy river exploration at a frog’s-eye level.

White-rumped shama.

Pacific golden plovers winter in Hawaii on their own personal patches of grass. This one had a lovely territory outside our condo. 

This Laysan albatross sat beneath her tree on the Princeville golf course day in and day out. We had to creep very close to even make her turn her head so we knew she wasn't a statue. Maybe she was on a nest!

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Happy Birthday Tree Ferns

It's May 2nd 2014, the day I turn two decades old! What present do I give myself?

Tree ferns.

The plant in which pterodactyls like to hide.

But let me back up. Last night, the day after finishing my Salkantay Trek to Machu Picchu, after not nearly enough rest and relaxation in Cusco, I flew back to Ecuador. It was an evening flight to Lima and then to Quito, where I landed at 12:15 in the morning.

"Happy birthday," I told myself quietly as the Ecuadorian customs officer checked my suitcase.

It wasn't until an hour later that I arrived at my hostel's lobby. There, in the middle of the night, I pulled my extra luggage out of storage and rearranged my belongings. I wanted to leave all my wool garments, alpaca-themed gifts, and winter clothes in Quito. In the Amazon I would be needing quick-drying pants, long-sleeved shirts and plenty of socks -- plus my Birds of Ecuador book, of course!

Without showering or brushing my teeth, I stumbled into my assigned bunk bed in the eight-person dorm room. It was with great sorrow that I yanked myself from bed a mere three hours later. Juan Carlos, the driver from my next destination (a research station in the Amazon called Estación Científica Yasuní) was scheduled to pick me up at 6:30am.

I sat on the curb eating a grand birthday breakfast of peach yogurt, the kind which comes with a little plastic cap full of powdery frosted flakes and a two-piece miniature plastic spoon. Just the thing to ring in my second decade of life.

Juan Carlos showed up an hour late due to traffic, or because of the thermos of coffee he had brewed, or maybe just because that's still "on time" in Ecuador. I got the backseat because another volunteer was in the front.

During our twelve hour drive to the research station, I got to know the two friends who would keep me company for the next twenty days: the jovial Ecuadorian man, Juan Carlos, and the sarcastic Dutch girl, Renate. We played loud music, stopped for bathroom breaks, and ate a delicious lunch of fish grilled in leaves and jungle green tea in the Amazonian city of Coca.

Arriving at the RepSol oil company checkpoint reminded me of last September, when I first visited Yasuní National Park with my study abroad program. This journey was much the same.

Even the friendly mama dog was still there, begging for love as usual.

Juan Carlos, Renate and I wandered around the barely-existant settlement of Pompeya while we waited for the RepSol canoe and barge to take us and our truck across the Napo River. We attempted to deliver a box of medical supplies to a house of nuns, but nobody was home.

The RepSol motorized canoe docked at Pompeya.

As we arrived to the other side of the river, I noticed the gorgeous wall of tree-ferns you saw at the beginning of this post. I wasn't with family or even people I knew on my birthday, and I wouldn't be unwrapping any presents, but I soaked in those elegant tree ferns and gave them to myself as a gift.

We bumped along the gravel road for a couple hours. Juan Carlos stopped the car to cheerfully greet every Huaorani by name, reaching out to touch the children and clasping hands with the adults. He speaks fluent Huao-terero.

Finally we arrived at the research station, just in time for dinner and desert of grape jello. It sure wasn't my grandma's famous chocolate birthday cake, but it was a fabulous end to my twentieth May 2nd on Earth. What better way to celebrate a birthday than to enter the lungs of the planet, the largest jungle in the world, the home of jaguars and river dolphins, the Amazon Rainforest?

The five buildings of Estación Científica Yasuní, as seen from the back.

Estación Científica Yasuní seen from an overlooking cabin.

I hope we humans manage to curb our tendency toward destruction so this place will be around for many more birthdays to come.

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