Day 10: Beach adventures in Kauai

Sunday, June 9

Sunday was our first full day on Kauai.

When planning the trip, I had organized two paid, scheduled “excursions” for our week in Kauai, which I strategically placed on Monday and Wednesday. (Both located on the south side of the island, which is an hour+ drive away.)

I figured after our travel day Saturday we’d want a low key day on Sunday to just settle in, explore, etc. Plus ideally no other long drives right away.

So that was what we did! No one moved too fast on Sunday morning. In fact, we’ve started every single morning here with coffee/tea on our main patio.

We ate breakfast in the condo, hung out on the patio, etc for several hours. Very relaxing.

By about 10:30 or so we packed up beach gear and food for lunch. This condo is super stocked with every single thing we could need, including coolers, cooling bags, snorkel gear, beach towels, beach chairs, mats, boogie boards and more. So thankful for this!

There are lots of different beaches along the north shore, though some are more accessible than others. Generally speaking, parking is a fairly big issue up here. Some beaches have like, 5 parking spots. And nowhere else to park!

I had some lesser known beaches starred to check out that looked interesting. First up, Lumaha’i Beach.

Lumaha’i Beach

From above, it looked… empty! Huh! Weird.

Well, when we got down there we found that the ocean side was really windy. Like unpleasantly windy, sand pelting you, etc. Also, the waves seemed intense and not good for swimming.

However, I was actually drawn to this beach for the adjoining river. I had read there were rope swings! Figured the boys would like that.

The river:

Asher swam out first to try the rope swing. A little tricky since it was hard to grab the rope and still get out to swing. Eventually Ethan swam out and sort of swung it to Asher on the shore.

They each took turns doing this several times and seemed to have fun!

Next they wanted to try bridge jumping.

I was a little leery at first, but we saw some other people doing this. Being the nervous, cautious mom that I am (and should be….), I went over and asked a tourist dad that was jumping with his kids how deep it was. There was also a group of local young adults jumping, and I checked with them too about the depth and any rocks etc. They said it was deep enough and just a sandy bottom.

After watching a bunch of them successfully jump unscathed, I agreed to let the boys head up.

Asher the Valiente up first again….

Cowabunga, here he goes! Wheeeee. 😉

Ethan gave it a try next:

They apparently liked it as they repeated it over and over, lol!

Culminating in an attempt at a coordinated jump:

A very fun “teen boy” spot!

The rest of us mostly just sat on a log of driftwood and supervised and enjoyed the sunshine, and I took pictures. 🙂

Checking out where the ocean meets the river…. Supposedly a spot with very dangerous currents. I warned the boys repeatedly to stay away from here. Some local people were out there, however.

This river/ocean combo is really a beautiful spot! So lush and green with the rolling mountains as a backdrop:

Due to the wind, this didn’t seem like a good spot for the picnic lunch we had packed. I consulted my notes and decided we’d try for Anini Beach, which looked more calm and protected (and hopefully less windy).

(In general, seems like in Hawaii you really have to read the weather and conditions and be willing to pivot as needed to chase the best spots on any given day! It can be quite variable. Though we have had amazing weather in Kauai and this was really our only windy day here.)

On the way, I snagged a pic of this beautiful church:

Anini Beach

After parking and a little searching, we found a great picnic spot nestled under this tree.

The water and beach here are beautiful!!! I sort of thought the boys would want to snorkel again (this place was on my list of “places with good snorkeling”). But they said they preferred to move on after lunch and look for a beach with some waves.

This was an awesome picnic spot though! Really enjoyed this. We had turkey sandwiches, PBJs, cheese and Triscuits, chips, grapes, etc.

Kalihiwai Beach

Moving on again… just up the road, to Kalihiwai Beach. My research said this beach might be better for waves- but also had possibility of being too good for waves (ie unsafe currents).

Fortunately, those reviews must have been from wintertime, because we found just a nice, not-too-busy beach, with mostly locals and just-right waves.

This beach is sort of nestled in a little cove, so it doesn’t have the big sweeping mountain views like Hanalei Bay, but it’s still very pretty.

Tree lined beach. I tried not to think about the fact that it kind of looks like Lake Superior in the U.P. of Michigan, within driving distance of my house. 😜

This is another fantastic spot though! So much so that the boys have deemed it their favorite beach and have asked for repeat visits to this one.

We propped up beach umbrellas and I read for a long while. We spent the afternoon just relaxing here and the boys body surfed for hours. (For some reason they preferred body surfing here vs boogie boarding.)

We stayed until closer to sundown, and then headed back to the condo.

After quick showers and cleaning up, we went into nearby Hanalei for dinner.

There are not really that many restaurant options, and most don’t take reservations. So we put our name on the waiting list at Kalypso, a fun-looking islandy place with tiki torches outside on the main drag. It seemed very popular.

The wait wasn’t too bad. I think they said 45-50 minutes but I think we maybe waited 30-35? While we waited Ivan and I kind of strolled around and poked around the town just a little. The boys waited on a bench outside the restaurant with my mom and played on their phones.

We got seated in a nice back corner and had a good meal, minus kind of… iffy service (nice waitress but seemed very overwhelmed/kind of flakey) and the restaurant being out of a bunch of things we wanted to order. Oh well!

We ended up with good food and had a nice time.

And that was our day! Really a very relaxing day, mostly just lounging on the various beaches, yet I still felt like we did some good exploring (by checking out various spots).

I think back at the condo we didn’t even hit the hot tub or anything and mostly just called it a night. We had big plans the next morning on the south shore, so needed to get some sleep!