September 23

Day 10

We need to be at Outfitters at 7:15 this morning for the Nui Nu ioa zip line tour.
Breakfast this morning is egg white and avocado wraps. Had to use the leftover egg whites from yesterday's french toast custard!!

We make the now very familiar stroll over to the Outfitters office and met our tour guide Jess. This is a full tour so 14 people are cramming into this van. Thankfully the drive over to Kipu ranch where the zipline course resides is relatively short.
Once at the ranch we pick up our other guide for the day Kea'ha. There is no room for Kea'ha in the van so she just hangs on the outside while we drive in.

We all get fitted into our safety harness equipment and put on our fashionable red helmets. Don't these people know that in Star Trek the person wearing red almost always gets killed. I put that out of my mind. We all look kind of like pack mules.

It is very safe and while we are given instructions we are also told that on at least a couple of the zip lines we will be able to go upside-down. This seems like a cool thing to try when it's actually my turn.
The first couple of zips are short ones.

 The second is kind of a combination of zipping and repelling but the guides are controlling your rate of decent and they are going slow to allow for picture taking

There are brief hikes between zip platforms and from time to time you get really good views of the ranch property.

The next zip has a nice slope to it and this is our first chance to go upside-down.
Cori decides to just do a Peter Pan like flight.

It's a great feeling to let go of the harness with your hands. This is as close to a birds-eye view as we are ever going to get. The zips are fun but they go by so quickly.

 We were told that this is the cave used for the chasing boulder scene in Raiders of the lost Arc.

 This is the highest and fastest zip on the course of eight lines. There's a rooster up here guarding the platform.

I go upside-down here and the view is great but it's over all too quickly. This is a zip where you swing back and forth at the end and they finally roll a ladder over to you for you to climb down. These are fun but they are slow to load so it takes a bit of time for all of us to complete the zip.
They say that this course has 9 zips but in reality I am only giving them 8 as the last zip is the zip line at the same swimming hole we visited when we came on the SUP tour and that one goes about 15 feet.

We have our lunch and take a swim before a short hike back up to the van and the drive back to the Outfitters office.
We take a quick detour into the Kukui'ua store by Outfitters and pick up some local steaks for dinner and we grab something called a chunky monkey at the Aloha Aina Juice bar which is located in the back of the store.
The chunky monkey is a huge yogurt concoction. The vanilla yogurt is blended with blueberries and peanut butter then the container is  filled with fresh strawberries, banana, walnuts, and topped with honey and granola. Super tasty and more than enough for two people to share.

On the trip back to the office the Outfitters guides are often talking about places to eat and we get on the topic of ice cream and Jess recommends Tropical Dreams in Kapaa. Now I have seen the reviews of this place of trip advisor and I actually took it out of my favorites because the reviews often state that the owner is a bit of a jerk regarding samples. This sentiment is mentioned too often for it to be untrue. Jess actually refers to the dude as the Ice cream Nazi! She does say that the ice cream is great so we decide we will try it despite my reservations.

A search of the geocaching web site shows that there are a few within a couple of miles of where we are staying so we load up with water and set out to find the one at Lawai beach. According to the GPS we get within six feet but we cannot find the cache, after about 15 minutes of searching we move on to the next one at the National tropical botanical gardens. This one we find! On to the next one which is located on the hillside west of spouting horn. We are treated to great views as we search for this one and we do find this one as well. We put in our travel bug and hope that we hear from it again!

We continue our geocaching into Kapaa where we find a travel bug cache in the public library. This is a good idea as there is less of a chance of the travel bugs being stolen from the library.

We decide that we will try Tropical Dreams while in town. I find the Ice cream to be good but there is something very very odd about the consistency. It has a rubbery texture that I really don't care for and it is 40% more expensive than the Ice cream at Lapperts and it sure isn't 40% better. We won't be giving the ice cream Nazi an encore.

After we head south we do a little window shopping at the photography studios at Kilohana plantation and then at the Kukui'ula shops. There are some magnificent photos and I always stare in awe at all the works by Tabora. I was going to buy something of his back in 1990 but decided not to. It was probably the right call but man that guy has such a talent for making light shimmer on water.

It's a quiet evening at home tonight. BBQ steaks and Purple sweet potatoes. A nice long soak in the hot tub while we admire how brilliant the stars seem to shine here.

Off to bed now. Tomorrow is another day.