Day 13: Mountain tubing, Makauwahi cave, Wailua Falls, Lava Lava Beach Club

Wednesday, June 12

Wednesday was the first morning we woke up to overcast skies! Looking out, it was crazy how we couldn’t even see the mountains – which normally were clear as day.

Oh, well. It was still warm and pleasant outside. Also, if it had to be cloudy on one of our excursion days, then I’d much rather it be Wednesday versus Monday when we had the airplane tour!

The main event on the docket for Wednesday was a Mountain Tubing Tour. According to all the travel pages/ reviews/etc that I had consulted, this was one of the “best” or “must do” activities on the island (especially for kids/teens).

Everyone said it was really fun! One of Asher’s friend’s families did it in March and really enjoyed it, so I booked it. (This is another thing that books up really early- it’s highly popular. I reserved our spot back in April for June, and there were only a few times left already back then!)

Side note- it’s a little tricky planning trips for a wide age span. Our group has people from age 14 up to 73. Also, the boys are…teenagers. Just sitting and reading a book on the beach everyday probably is not going to be their idea of a dream vacation right now, you know? So I do my best to find a variety of activities that will appeal to everyone (while still ideally being do-able for my parents, too!). I also like to look for both different activities that we haven’t done before as well as different ways to really explore and experience the place where we are.

Anyway, the mountain tubing looked fun and unique- you ride in inner tubes through old sugar plantation irrigation ditches! It also apparently would involve dark tunnels. 🙂

Since it was located on the south end, I planned it for 11:45, with the hopes that that would still be early enough to do a little more exploring in the area after. Staying in the north meant it was a bit more complex to cover the sights on the south side, but I didn’t want to completely miss one whole side of the island! I figured we could just do two longer “south” days on Monday and Wednesday, instead of attempting to drive back and forth multiple times.

Kauai Backcountry Adventures Mountain Tubing

We drove the ~1 hour or so to the tubing place and got checked in by 11:15.

They got us fitted with helmets and gloves. We’d also had to plan ahead a bit and pack a bag with dry clothes for after, as well as water shoes, other hiking shoes, etc.

We all just wore swimsuits with shorts/shirts over that could get wet. (I wore my new rash guard tank! 😉

They loaded us onto a big open air truck and we headed to the water. It was a 30 minute drive, more or less. The views along the way were very lush and tropical, and our tour guide, a young man who was born and raised on Kauai, was awesome. Really funny! And he told us some great info about the island.

The drive took us through a huge section of the island that is privately owned and hence completely undeveloped. Really beautiful.

We stopped off at a viewpoint for some photos. It was like we got dropped in the middle of a tropical rainforest postcard or something.

The tour guide snapped pictures for everyone:

This bird came up and flew right alongside the truck for a really long time! It was so funny. I could have reached out to touch it!

Finally to the launch site, we went through a quick safety briefing and explanation.

Check out these big trees!

Pretty soon we were able to get in the tubes. Here go the boys. The water was refreshingly cold, but actually not as bad as I anticipated. (We were warned that we could say the water was “refreshing” but if we said the C word (cold) or F word (freezing), we would get splashed by one of the guides! 😉

Ready to go!

I wasn’t sure that this was going to be my parents’ favorite ever activity… cold water, dark tunnels, potentially spinning tubes? But I read many, many reviews first and it sounded like people of all ages really enjoyed this. One review in particular was from a group of 70-something ladies who were there on a girls trip and they said this was one of their favorite activities! So I felt like, if they can do it, my parents can do it. 🙂

Also, this is not like a “whitewater rafting” type thing. Most of it is more lazy river style, minus a few spots with some little rapids. But definitely not super intense.

I then actually had worried that on the flip side, if it was calm enough for my parents, would it be too calm for the boys?? Like, would it be boring? In the end, I think it was basically just right. I mean, I’m sure the boys would have happily embraced more intensity, but the long, dark tunnels were super cool (we were inside some for up to 10 minutes) and there was enough speed/ rapids to keep it interesting.

I had my phone in a water bag around the neck, so I attempted to get some photos. It was a little challenging though as I needed to hold on and/or pay attention so I didn’t whack my feet into the side of the tunnels!

Since these were irrigation ditches, it’s not like we were really going through big, sweeping, mountain vistas, so the name “mountain tubing” was maybe slightly deceiving. But we did have tons of tropical foliage all around, birds chirping, etc. Still a very heavy island tropical feel.

The tour guides were awesome. Besides our main guy, we had 4-5 native Hawaiian young women who accompanied us. They were so sweet and took extra good care of checking in on my mom, just to be nice. They would sort of “walk” in their tubes so they could weave in and around everyone to make sure everything went smoothly. (The water is only a few feet deep.)

This section had a little mini “waterfall” we slid down. Very short, really, but it was a fun “wheee” down the slide. 🙂

We kind of got separated sometimes, but I attempted to stay near my family. It’s kind of like bumper boats, but in tubes. lol. In some parts the speed does pick up pretty fast!

Near the end:

Here we were waiting to disembark from our tubes:

From here, they took us just a minute up the road to a picnic area for lunch. The only negative was that we had to eat in our wet clothes…. but it was warm, and we weren’t like, fully submerged at any point. Really just our bottom half was wet.

After a nice picnic style lunch of make-your-own croissant sandwiches, chips and cookies, we drove back the ~30 minutes to the main building. There they had indoor changing rooms etc for us to get all dry and cleaned up.

All in all, a very fun excursion! I would definitely recommend it as something worth doing, especially if looking for something to mix it up a bit for kids. It’s a great way to see another angle of the island besides beaches and hiking. We actually learned a LOT about the island via this tour, which was unexpected. This is the link.

Although I suppose if you had very limited time on the island, you might prioritize other things, too.

After this, I actually felt a little tired! But, like I said, we weren’t planning to return to the south side of Kauai, so I really wanted to rally and at least check out a few other spots. I knew I’d regret it if I didn’t.

I decided we’d do a little loop- down to the popular Poipu Beach and then over to a hiking trail I was really interested in.

Tree Tunnel

On the way to Poipu (20 minutes or so), we drove through the famous “tree tunnel”. Just a cool spot.

Poipu Beach

I programmed the GPS for Poipu Beach, which I’d heard was one of the most popular beaches on Kauai. Many people stay on this south shore, and I think it’s generally a good swimming beach.

It was rather busy, and very nice. Although, after seeing the north shore beaches with the dramatic mountainous backdrops, it was maybe a little underwhelming in comparison!

In hindsight, this stop was maybe a little unnecessary and just kind of out of the way, since we didn’t stay or swim or anything. But at least I now know what Poipu Beach looks like. 🙂

Makauwahi Cave

Next, I had originally thought we’d go to Shipwreck Beach and hike the Maha’ulepu Trail. At the end there is this cool cave and the trail itself hugs the ocean the whole way and is supposed to be beautiful scenery.

But….while an easy trail, I think it’s something like 4 miles roundtrip. Hmm. It was already ~3 pm and I personally didn’t really feel like hiking 4 miles at this point in the day. I was pretty certain no one else did, either.

So, plan B. Quick Google map search told me that it looked like we could just drive to a parking area closer to the cave, and then we’d just have a very short 1/2 mile hike to it! Perfect. Only downfall- the cave “closes” at 4 pm. We had to hustle!

Quick set the GPS again and off we went.

The road to it is pretty bad! Really the only bad road we drove on in all our time in Hawaii. Unpaved and lots of rocks, potholes, etc. But our SUV handled it fine. 🙂

This ended up being the perfect little afternoon filler activity!!! I’m thrilled we squeezed this in.

The views from this trail were AMAZING! It was so beautiful. (And yet short, not difficult, etc. Just right.)

The four of us hiked quickly to ensure we got to the cave before they closed it. (Unfortunately, my parents were lagging a little behind and just missed entrance to the cave! 😦 )

We literally made it just in the nick of time. In actuality they take the last entrance at 3:45, not 4. And we showed up to the entrance at about 3:43. lol!!

You have to crawl through the entrance, shown below.

The cave itself is really cool, but you really only access a little bit of it. It’s not some grand cave tour like other places we’ve been. That was fine- I mostly just thought the hike looked pretty and the cave was a fun point of interest.

It’s a really cool area. I’d 100% recommend this place, too! If I’d had more time, I would have been down to do the full hike starting at Shipwreck Beach. But if you just want a shorter hike and/or have younger kids that don’t want to do 4+ miles, this is a great option.

A couple bonuses nearby: First, there is a turtle sanctuary right across from the caves!

And second, if you take a little offshoot from the main trail, it brings you to this basically deserted beach:

There is a nearby horse ranch with riding tours, so the only other people we saw were these girls with horses. Seemed they were training a couple new horses by the water.

This is an awesome, secluded spot. I said if I had been alone and had a book, I absolutely would have camped out here for a while. We sat in the shade on these rocks for quite a while while the boys waded around in the water.

Time to go… we hiked back out. This time I paused for a couple more pics along the trail. (On the way in I was mostly focused on getting to the cave before 4 pm! haha)

When making the plans for Wednesday, I had figured maybe we’d try to get something to eat on the south or eastern side while we were in the area, just to branch out and try something different.

But first… I had just one more stop. Wailua Falls is very near where we were, and I really wanted to check it out. (The only time we’d be nearby again would be Saturday on our way to the airport, but the weather was good now, and I didn’t want to accidentally miss this!)

However, I think the boys were hungry by this point and just wanted to go to a restaurant. They complained a little, but I promised this would be a quick and worth-it stop.

Wailua Falls is a rare waterfall that you don’t hike to! Just hop out at a parking area and there it is. Easy peasy. But it’s very beautiful and very impressive.

Wailua Falls

Okay, it ended up being at least a 20 minute round trip drive down the long road to the falls, but isn’t it pretty?!

Lava Lava Beach Club

Okay, NOW time for food. I had flagged Lava Lava Beach Club as a possible dinner spot, and it bumped up my list even higher after our local tour guide at tubing recommended it, too.

He had warned us that if you get there after 6 it can get tricky to get a good table, though.

Fortunately, we arrived right around 6:00, and while we couldn’t get a table outside on the patio, we got one “inside” but right on the edge. Honestly, it was a little breezy outside anyway, so I preferred this spot!

They had live music and it was a fun beachfront vibe.

On my way to the restroom, saw these cute signs:

Of course, I loved this one:

Dinner was good. I feel like the food was not necessarily anything spectacular to write home about, but tasty and solid and I liked it. The views and ambience and music were likely the main draw for most people here, anyway….

For dessert we shared coconut ice cream, served in a coconut. 🙂

On the way out…

Ivan was tired of driving so I drove on the way back to the condo. There’s no “difficult” driving on the island (they’re all just 2 lane roads), but yikes it is DARK in between Kapa’a and Princeville!! Also the roads are narrow, and there was surprisingly a lot of traffic (i.e. bright headlights in my eyes the whole way and/or headlights glaring in my rearview mirror).

After a ~45 minute drive, I was very happy to pull into the garage at our condo!

It was only maybe 8:30 or 9:00 at this point, so we decided to make some popcorn, stretch out on the couch and watch the end half of Jurassic Park (we had maybe 45 minutes left).

This was probably a longer/fuller day than what some people might prefer, but remember we didn’t even start our tubing tour until almost noon. Some people might say we wasted half the day! lol. Also, it just made sense to squeeze a bit more in given the whole south vs north location thing.

And just like that, now we’re down to just two days left….

The plan for the rest of the week was to keep things pretty relaxed. All of our planned excursions were complete. I didn’t want to do any other longer drives to the south shore. We still had a few spots on our list for the north shore that we wanted to check out, but nothing crucial or particularly time consuming.

I was looking forward to just soaking up our last couple days of Kauai!!! Hard to believe 2 weeks were almost coming to a close.