Kauai vacation
April 25th - Kayaking Wailua River
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We rented canoes and paddled up the Wailau River. You can get a guide and join a group, but we decided to go at our own pace, and Secret Falls is not too hard to find - a guide is hardly necessary, and we could pack our own lunch. Canoes are fun - it is a change from hiking. Here is a picture of Melanie in the front of our kayak.
Here are some photos from the canoe. I like the palm tree picture, it seems "tropical".
We paddled up the Wailua River to the channel that leads to the secret falls. The channel doesn't go all that far, it quickly diminishes into a shallow stream, with vegetation pressing in from all sides. Ferns every where - just the kind of landscape that would make Kauai an ideal place to film Jurassic Park.
It is not too hard to figure out where you have to abandon your kayak to begin the hike to the "Secret Falls". There were several guided tour groups ahead of us. To find the trail to the falls, you have to wade across the stream. Just follow everyone else. Who needs a guide!
Here is a photo of the Secret Falls. Although it looks deserted in the photo, there were at least a dozen other people present when we got there. I took the pictures in between the time when one group departed and before the next one arrived. It was a nice tropical spot. We did not go into the water, though other people did.
I was going to splice these two photos together with Photoshop to create one big long waterfall picture, but these two separate photos look nice enough separately. Secret Falls is 125 feet tall. I don't know the origin of the name, it's location doesn't seem a big secret - despite being in dense foliage, it is not hard to find - just follow the water upstream!
This is the dock for the Fern Grotto. To visit the Grotto, you are supposed to pay for a brief boat ride up the Wailua, which drops you here for a visit. I assume it is a nice place to visit, but we did not go there. Instead, we kept paddling up the Wailua, to see how far we could get. Could we get all the way to the base of Wailua Falls? That would be great!
Here are some photos from upstream of the Fern Grotto. The current is very gentle, it is easy to paddle along.
It was not too far inland from the Fern Grotto when the Wailua River suddenly becomes a shallow stream, too small even for a kayak. It is surprising that the river becomes just a trickle, the volume of water that pours over the Wailua Falls looks much more substantial than this!
It wasn't too difficult to paddle down river, back to the start. The whole adventure only took half a day or so. Here are some "victory" photos of Melanie and me by the kayak. We had some lunch and decide to do a hike in the afternoon.
