2009.11.25 Tough camping in Hanalei, Kauai, Hi

Kauai is a very small island, driving around the island would take two hours, but it's really incredible how can this tiny island have so much different climates. It is racing with one Indian village to be the wettest place in the world having dry canyons with endemic flora, including cactuses.

Mission - Push your limits.

Our preparation for the island was not the best, we had only two small backpacks with a tent, including two blankets, one sleeping bag sheet and no sleeping bags and matrace. Having these things we decided to go for two day hiking in Hanalei with overnighting there with couple of banana, four bagels and some energy bars.

Kalalau trail is counted as one of the hardest trails in the US, and it takes five days to do the whole trail. But we decided to do the first part of it, which was about 3miles and then to go to Hanakapai waterfalls. On the way to the waterfalls we had to cross Hanakapai river several times and on one of them I fell into the river, the stones were too slipery. Luckily I had my jogging shorts, which made me pretty delicious or onolicius for all kind of flies and moscitoes, so at the end of our hiking I looked terrible.

Anyway while getting to the waterfalls, we already knew that we are not gonna make it back, so on the first nice place we set up our tent and fire to make dry all my staff.

In Hawaii and in Cuba the sun sets very quick, about 5:30pm the sun is still high above the horizont, but at 6:00pm it is already dark outside. So after a while of sitting near our camp fire and having nothing else to do, we went to sleep at 7:00pm, and soon it started to rain.

At 1:00am Daniel woke me up asking me shutdown my cellphone. For a while we watched how storm was lightening all above us and then listened how it was crashing everything. Except the time then storm was crashing we could listen how wind was playing with leaves, but it always seemed us like there was someone walking around our tent. And since it was still raining we had no chance to look out in that absolute darkness.

At 3:00am we woke up because of cold. There was huge amount of water floating under our tent and taking all our body heat away. There was no way to lay down anymore, at least for me. So I got up and sitted on our backpack, the only place where I could still keep warm, and with passion waited three more hours until the sunrise, still sitting and almost falling asleep. These three hours seemed to me endless.

Quiete nice experience was for us to watch sunrise in the mountain between trees. At first I could see only black leaves on white sky background. Slowly I could differ green color of leaves from black and white background. Then I could see the color of my red top and then all other colors including blue, which was the last one.

As soon as it was light enough we started our 8mile hiking back to Keena beach.

Later on we've learnt that Hanalei was cut off from the rest of the island that night because of storm; the bridge which connects it to the rest of island was under the water.

Egi
25NOV2009
Finished on the airplane from Honolulu to Seoul