Day 6 - Kalalau Trail and the Na Pali Coast

Today we drove to the very end of the road on the north shore to hike along the Na Pali coast. This area is a long set of really big cliffs carved into the island's mountains by wave action eroding underneath and big shelfs of rock falling into the sea. Lots of movies have been filmed with these as the backdrop, so they might look familiar to some.

The trail up begins at a beach called Ke'e. It was pretty packed with people, so we kind of rushed on by the beginning to get away from all the humans. Sadly, the entire trail would be full of day hikers so we couldn't really get away from them at all. This trail is a 2 mile day hike which continues on as an 11 mile hike to a secluded beach that you can camp on (provided you have the permits). Of course,we didn't have the permits or the gear to camp so we did our 2 mile day hike to a very non-secluded beach filled with tourists.



The trail itself was pretty sloppy at times, as it had been raining a bit that morning. Ok, it rains every morning here and basically every day for like 5-10 minutes at a time, so the trail condition was no surprise.



Along the way we saw people doing it in flip flops and even a couple people were barefoot, mainly locals. It was a fairly challenging hike, although it was only a little over an hour each way. Along the way, the trail afforded some gorgeous views of the coast and the ocean.





On the way back I found this tree with its roots wrapped around a boulder and it reminded me of the facehuggers in Alien.




On the way down there was a pretty good view of the reef at the beach below.



The rest of the day we spent at the beach near our house, called Secret Beach, watching the surf roll in. Then we retreated to the hot tub to have a cocktail and watch the sun set over the trees.

Aloha from Kauai!