September 20

Day 7

This is our replacement Napali boat trip. Actually this one is leaving from a small boat harbor closer to where we are staying than the original company I had booked so maybe that's a good omen.
I took motion sickness meds last night before bed and again this morning and plan to skip breakfast because why poke the bear?

I know the ride back is going to be rough and if I am not the driver I do tend to be prone to motion sickness.

We get to the boat harbor just before the Capt. Andy's team is dropping the boat into the water.

Capt. Tony then had to check out the boat to make sure everything was working

 The boat has a capacity for 14 people but we only have 8 passengers plus the crew of two. The boat has four seats in the back but the best action is sitting up front on the pontoons.  After introductions Capt. Tony & First mate Scottie we take off our shoes and get in for the trip.
They offer you gloves as there is a rope for you to hang on with and a foot rope so you can use multiple anchor points. Take the gloves. I only used one and that hand was fine. I was not really holding on to the rope with my other hand very much but there was a lot of abrasion on that hand so I should have worn two gloves.

We head west as as we are passing the Barking Sands Missile range we are joined by a group of spinner Dolphins.

The Spinner Dolphins are smaller than the Atlantic Bottlenose Dolphins I'm more familiar with and seem to enjoy hanging out with us for a bit, they jump from the water and spin around, thus the name. They ride the bow wave of the boat for a while as well. We stop for a time and watch their antics. They put on a little show for us before getting bored and moving on.
We pass the westernmost beach and start cruising towards the Napali cliffs.

Right now we've got smooth water but the further we go the more you can feel the wind pick up and you know it's going to get choppy.
Capt. Tony heads for the sea caves before things get dicey.
We first went inside an open top cave, so it's more of a whole that a cave!

This was pretty cool. We then headed further up to go into some smaller caves.

Some of these caves we backed into. The boat is pretty powerful and Tony's knowledge of the wave cycles was impressive. He expertly guided us in and out of the caves with no problem.
At this point the weather was starting to cause some rougher seas so Capt. Tony decided to buzz to the Northern most point on our trip fast and then work our way back down the coast.

   We stopped for about 20 minutes or so for some snorkeling where we did see a couple of turtles. They look smaller in the Ocean than they do on the rocks by our cove in Poipu. The photo I have is kind of blurry

It seems like the snorkel stop is over in the blink of an eye and we need to get ready for the roughest part of our journey home. Scottie handed out some drinks and snacks. I had a drink but saw no reason to eat anything just yet. Ordinarily you would switch sides on the raft at this point to give your anchor arm a break but in our case if we had done this we would have stolen the Napali view in both directions so we stayed where we were so the folks on the other side could get the stunning view going home.

On the final leg home we hit hard a few times, like kidney jarring hard but it's all part of the fun in my opinion. I never felt unsafe at all. These boats are built to take that kind of pounding. In no time we are back at the harbor and we are unloading the boat.
This was an awesome excursion. Both Tony and Scottie gave us great history along the way and handled the boat expertly.

We head back home to get cleaned up and decide that we are going to hit the Feral Pig for lunch to try the Feral Burger.

As we were told by the tour guides the Feral Burger is not on the menu but as soon as we begin to bring up the subject with our waitress she exclaims "Feral Burger"!
Yes two please!
When they arrive they look pretty good and they are tasty as well.

I do need to point out that while this maybe house smoked bacon on these burgers it falls short of being true pork belly. Pork belly is much thicker than bacon and if these burgers were truly topped with pork belly the experience would have been a religious one.
Fully fueled up we went for a walk along Kalapaki bay and the Marriott. I've attended several conferences here and I wanted Cori to see the pool and grounds as it is very pretty and when you see the hotel from the reception area before you take the down escalator you do not expect to be entering an open courtyard.

We then headed back home as we wanted to go to the Art night in Hanapepe.
We got to Hanapepe a little before 7:00 and walked across the swinging bridge.

We then walked the town. There are some interesting artists here. The book store is really charming. We also had our second encounter with the Right Slice pie lady! She had already sold out of savory pies so darn we had to get something sweet. We got a mango cheesecake and a blueberry. Both were awesome but this had us wondering just how good her savory pies might be to have sold out?
Perhaps we need to investigate further.
There were a few rain showers this evening and we bought some gifts at the spice store before heading towards home.
We stopped in at Pomodoro to get some dinner. The staff here was superfriendly to us and we enjoyed a lot of laughs. The food was pretty good. We had Veal Pizziola and prosciutto with melon.  Just right

Home to sleep. Tomorrow is Stand up paddling. this is something we have never done before so we are excited to try something new.