Jackieinpdx's Blog

This was a fabulous boat tour of the Na Pali coast. We saw a huge pod of Hawaiian Spinner dolphins, many sea turtles, Tara and Kelly snorkeled, the trip included a good deli lunch and the views were awesome. We only went in two sea caves since it was a larger boat than I planned on going on. I booked a smaller boat tour with Kahana Charters but it turns out that they also book under the name of Liko Kauai Cruises . Since they had too many people for the small boat and not enough others for the big boat we all went on the big boat which only takes 34 passengers max. I think there were about 20 people on the boat. Well worth the $140 per person for over 5 hours of fun. This was the 2nd most awesome thing that I have ever done in Hawaii. The first being the Na Pali tour I took two years ago in a much smaller boat.

I had a hard time selecting which photos to post since after editing I ended up with 89 photos from this day.

Tara, Kelly and I sat in the front row seats. As we got quite aways out on the tour we encountered some pretty big waves that were jarring to the back and butt. As Tara said “it was fun until it wasn’t fun anymore”. On the way back into port Mindy told me she saw whitecaps up ahead and said they were going to stop the boat and get the people off the bow and we should move to the back if we didn’t want a really rough ride. No thanks, been there, done that!!! Even in the last row of seats it was rough. But it was more fun than banging up and down and killing my back and butt.

This boat was custom built on Kauai for the Na Pali tours

Fishing boats at the Port Allen marina

Navy ships loading up

Kauai is home of the Pacific Missile Range which encompasses 42,000 sq. miles of sea and air space and has minimal encroachments. The underwater tracking range extends over a 1000 sq. miles areas. PMRF features a state of the art instrumentation suite & communication network.  About 17 miles of prime beach front property is owned here by the US Military. On our boat trip there was a Navy weapons recovery ship stationed out a ways to block traffic for missile launches. We didn’t see any missiles being launched but the boat crew said unless a missile crashed and burned in the water it really was a non spectator event. Also on Kauai high above the beach in the moutains is the NASA tracking station which can be seen from the ocean.

Here is a view of the base's beach

I love the contrast of the funky old fishing boat and the nice cat

Heading out to sea

The sea was a beautiful blue this day

Off in the distance is the island of Niihau

Niihau is the smallest inhabited island in the Hawaiian island chain and it has no roads, no hotels, and no restaurants. It is located about 20 miles west of the island of Kauai. For the most part, access to Niihau is limited to the approximately 300 residents who live there, but a there are a few limited tours available from Kauai.

Polihale Beach, the end of the road

Spinner dolphins

This is when I learned that my Flip Video camera has no low battery warning after I was about 2 minutes into filming the dolphins and my battery died. I hadn’t saved the video so I lost it. This was when I got the “practice what you preach” comment from Kelly because I said to Tara the night before to make sure her camera battery was fully charged.

I could just post a ton of photos of the beauty of the Na Pali coast but I won’t.

More waterfalls would be seen in the winter months

Inside one of the sea caves

Snorkel and lunch stop

Look at the color of that water

I did not need to snorkel to see the fish

Filed under: beaches, Hawaii, Kauai, Travel, vacations | Tagged: beaches, Kauai, vacation photos |