Trip recap: Kauai, Hawaii

I got hit with a nasty bug this weekend...strep throat to be exact...which meant cancelling our planned visit to Ottawa, which was a bummer. The only positive thing to come out of it was a LOT of quality time with our new couch, and a bit of time to catch up on my blog reading (although I'm still feeling pretty brutal so not as much time as I would have liked).

I also finally got some time to go through all of my photos from our trip to Kauai. It's a heavenly place, and I'm sure you're going to agree after the eye candy that goes along with this post.

It all started leaving bright and early from Toronto...

And without further ado...beautiful Kauai:







We did a lot of hiking this trip, which was wonderful. This is a gorgeous view litterally 5 minutes into a hike in Waimea Canyon (The Alakai Swamp hike). The only downside? Weather changes really quickly in Hawaii, and by the time we got to the view point of this hike about 4 miles away everything was blocked out by fog. We waited about 30 minutes with another couple who had already been waiting that long and then decided to turn around. We talked to locals who have done this hike many times and never seen the view due to fog, so I didn't feel so bad!

When we weren't hiking, playing tennis, or golfing, we were beaching. Kauai has so many little beaches to pop into all around the island, particularly on the north shore. This one is my new favourite (Hideaways Beach):



And this is how you get there:



Don't you love hidden places??

The Mr's favourite beach is Polihale. It's as far as you can go on the Northwest side of the island, never busy and goes for ages:

One of our biggest highlights of this year's trip was hiking the Kalalau trail to Hanakapi'ai Falls. Good (read: tough) hike, but huge reward:



That's ME! Under the falls :)

And now just some additional pictures for your viewing pleasure (if you made it this far...it's a long post!)

And that's just part of why we love Kauai...this was our fourth trip there - even though it's quite far we just can't stay away :) If you are planning on going or want any information I would be happy to help! Also, we use this guidebook, which also now has an app (that you can use on your phone without using any data - that's what we did this time and it was awesome).