Kalalau Kayak Trip

Here is the story of a boy and a girl who did an adventure they've been dying to try since they day they moved to Kauai.

It is not a picture book. Why? The camera they brought broke. The camera the other couple brought also broke. It was discovered 5 minutes after getting in the water, but 15 minutes too late to do anything about it.

Instead, you will have to imagine enormous sea caves, sparkling waterfalls, sheer cliffs, occasional rough seas and just as often, seas as calm as a lake (but bright blue and beautiful). You are also free to imagine dolphins, whales, and mermaids, but none of those were present during our trip.

Ryan and Karen came to visit (!), rounding out the last of the Edwards clan to make it out here. They were excellent and helpful guests, playing with our kids and helping out--but more on that later. Halfway through their vacation, they watched Zachary and Kate so we could do this trip.

This gig had a lot to live up to--we've already hiked in (2 years ago) and loved it, and we haven't done anything really adventurous since Kate was born. We went with our friends Chad and Mary, who both went solo in their kayaks, while we pushed along in our double. Chad has been on the coast quite a few times, so he was our official guide.

The first day was gorgeous. The ocean was calm enough that we were able to go into sea cave after sea cave. After we got over our irritation of having no camera, it was actually kind of nice to not worry about picture-taking and just breathe it all in. We could not believe the deep blue of the water and the green of the coastline.

Besides getting completely wasted with seasickness, the kayaking was really easy and we got into Kalalau in about 2 hours. We spent the afternoon on the beach, setting up camp (trying out hammocks for the first time), and hiking into the valley's famous waterfall. You can actually slide down the waterfall into the water, but it is not as cool as it sounds (especially when you are are a wimp about the rocks and only go from the halfway point). We ate plenty of guavas, fresh oranges, and passion fruit--yummy. We saw at least a dozen nudists, and may have joined them for a round of skinny dipping that night. We'll let you decide. We were wanna-be hippies for the weekend, and loved it.

The next morning, we swam over to our favorite beach on the island--Ho'opu. You can't dock a kayak there and you can't reach it by foot so it is arguably the most remote beach on the island. Fabulous. We had it mostly to ourselves, plus a topless woman wearing a child's floatie. It also has a waterfall you can swim in, but not quite so quaint because the water almost takes your head off when you dare to try it.

Lunchtime came, and we were all pretty nervous. We'd seen kayak after kayak get flipped heading out of Kalalau. The swell was up and the conditions were more than a little choppy. Shore-breakers were coming in hard every few minutes, and we knew we couldn't hack it if we got caught up in one of those. We made a game-plan, and retrospectively, it wasn't the best "Plan A" ever thought up by 4 naive kayakers. The boys pushed Mary out first, and she seemed to be out safely. Next, they pushed me--alone at the front of the kayak--and went to push Chad in. Brady planned to swim right out after Chad got in safely. The plan went wrong when Mary was taken by a current and smashed hard into shore. The boys went running down the coast to help her. In the meantime, the current took me for a fast ride along the 1 mile beach, and there was no keeping myself in place. Because I was in front, I was in no position to steer. I also just could not fight that current. The boys got Mary back out, and then Brady got Chad in. By the time Chad was out the water, he didn't realize that Brady was swimming behind him, and he left to make sure we were okay. Brady started getting nervous because he was in open water with no life jacket or flippers, and clearly this current was powerful. He was pretty sure there was no way he could get himself back to shore. He yelled out to Chad, who had to work hard to get back to him. Chad towed Brady to me, and everything was okay minus the fact that the boys were pretty anxious about the ordeal and exhausted from the effort of towing/swimming (and in Brady's case, very nearly losing his swim trunks).

For the record, we did have a "Plan B" and even after all that, Brady still didn't put his life jacket on. I was the only one dorking out with my jacket the entire trip. When Brady first related this story to people, I felt like he was exaggerating the danger of the situation. I will state now that I have been corrected and told horror story after horror story about ocean currents (and the difficulty of finding swimmers in the open ocean), and I now realize that we were lucky nothing else went wrong.

The best part of the day came when we were facing huge swells. Brady yelled "RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT" and we paddled our hearts out. It was slightly nerve-wrecking, pretty intense, and overall just awesome. I'm glad we didn't flip. We couldn't go into the famous "Eye of God" sea cave (see my post from a couple weeks ago showing kayakers entering this cave) because the swells were too high. It was wild, though. We turned a corner to head into Polihale, and the seas were calm. The rest of the journey was easy and beautiful. We even ran into a buddy of Chad's who was manning a zodiac, and he threw us some ice cold drinks. We made it into Polihale without crashing, which was impressive considering the big shore-breakers there, too.

People keep asking me which I prefer: kayaking or hiking. There are obviously benefits to both, but I will have to go with hiking. It's more hard-core, gritty, and exhausting. I loved it when we hiked into Kalalau so tired we could hardly walk any more. We weren't really tired at any point of this adventure (except the boys after towing/swimming). I would say hiking is at least 3 times harder than kayaking. However, if you only have 2 days, kayaking is the way to go.

Also for the record: everyone says that Dramamine doesn't work if you take it when you are already sick. I was pretty darn seasick on day 2, and took another pill about an hour into our journey. Within about 30 min, I was good! (That could be another reason I prefer the hiking...)

Who wants to go with us for round 2? Our only requirements are you have to wear a life jacket, and your camera has to work.