Kauai Honeymooners

This is going to be super long so bear with me! I want to include all of our stories and adventures of our honeymoon to Kauai. 

I posted this picture of Tyler first because our trip did not start out the greatest :) This is at the airport in California where we were delayed from our flight from Utah and missed our connecting flight to Maui which would then take us to Kauai. Weather in Utah was HORRIBLE and so our planes couldn't take off, resulting in us being stuck in California for quite some time. When we landed in California, the help desk was not very much help at all quite sadly. They got us a connecting flight to Maui which was nice, but didn't realize that our end result was Kauai even though we had asked her if there were any flights going straight to Kauai. We weren't the happiest of campers. Luckily, we just happened to look at the screen that shows all the flights and their destinations and saw one that was going straight to Kauai! You can imagine our excitement! We went to a different help desk this time and the lady was so nice and got us on the flight!! She told us that if we had flown to Maui we probably would have been on stand by to Kauai over night since the lady at the first help desk didn't realize that is where we were going. We were super glad we went to this very nice lady. She also called somebody to have them moved our checked bag onto that flight as well. Or so we thought, we ended up not getting our baggage until the second night of being there but we had packed most of our clothing in our carry-ons (note to self: always be prepared with an extra pair of clothes in carry-on).

 Despite the rough start, we had an incredible time! This is our sweet jeep we got to rent to drive us around the island in. I'm a little mad at myself that I didn't take pictures of our hotel but it was GORGEOUS and there were tons of fun pools to swim around in and a very yummy, fancy restaurant.

 Our first day there we went Snuba Diving!!! My favorite part of the whole trip! We did this while our checked bag was missing so we didn't have our water proof camera to take pictures under water but I will do my best to describe how incredible it was. Believe it or not, the white van behind us is the actual snuba diving business... the only one on the island. We called the owner to find out where his business was and he gave us an address to a restaurant and said his van would be just down the street, we wouldn't miss it. Not going to lie, it sounded a little ghetto and we were pretty skeptical! Sure enough, we found the white van and it had all the gear we needed in the back. I was so nervous to be doing this but I kept telling myself I can do it (and there were kids all younger than 10 doing it so I had to be brave!). We got all of our gear on and the instructor gave us some instructions. Basically, snuba diving is where you can go under water with your mouth piece to breath but, unlike scuba diving where you carry your air tank with you, your air is in the raft that is floating above the water and you have a rope attached to you that pulls the raft wherever you go. He had us practice breathing in our mouthpiece and then we went out to the water. I was going to have a heart attack!! But I easily got over it and was able to go down to the ocean floor and see all the fish. The only thing I refused to do was feed the fish, the instructor warned us they would bite our fingers... no thank you! Tyler, of course, was the little daredevil and fed the fish and was exploring everywhere he could get. Under water we were able to hold a sea urchin and a sea cucumber. Time flew and we didn't even realize we were coming back to shore til our tummies hit the sand. It was a blast!! Our cool instructor here in the picture with us happened to be from Orem, Utah! Small world!

 Driving around, we found this water spout thing... can't remember what it was called

 BECAUSE we were more distracted by these two turtles in the water who were swimming around close by. You can only kind of see them here but it was the coolest thing to watch them!

 Our next adventure was kayaking up Wailua River to a hike leading up to the Secret Falls. When we got to our kayak rental bright and early, the owner gave us this map.... hand drawn and made no sense at all. Apparently we were supposed to be able to find our way all the way to the Secret Falls with this... great! He also told us that some tourists would be walking down to the falls a different way and would probably arrive at the same time as us. We were supposed to take their same trail home? He gave us our kayaks, told us to remember the numbers on them, and said, "If you can't swim wear a life jacket, if you can't, don't worry about it." and sent us on our way! No training or rules or anything, so off we went to find the Secret Falls. We were the only ones on the river that early in the morning and it was beautiful! We made all the right turns up the river and were supposed to dock our boats at the start of the hike. With no signs, we managed to guess where our boats were supposed to be docked since we were the only two kayaks there and started up on our hike.

 This beautiful waterfall was somewhere along the hike, not the Secret Falls yet.

 We passed the water tower the man had mentioned on the map and started getting a little lost. Luckily, we happened to stumble upon this beautiful view here... the Secret Falls. Absolutely breathtaking. AND sure enough, just as the rental owner said, several tourist came walking down a different trail right as we were arriving at the waterfall. Smart man... We spent some time here at the falls and ate lunch. Then took the trail back.

 There was a reason he told us to remember the numbers on our kayaks....

 These next two pictures were taken on the North Shore, our most favorite part of the island!

 This is the part of the honeymoon that brought true adventure to my life. Tyler had heard about the Tunnels hike from one of his friends who had done it before. It was the part of the trip he was looking forward to the most. I'll give you a brief history on this hike... people have DIED on it before!! The hike is so full of plants that are super high you can't see the edge, so often hikers will just walk right of the edge and DIE! Locals could not believe that this hike was included in a tour guide book because of how dangerous it is. And this was the hike Tyler wanted to go on... perfect :) The hike was a pretty long hike that leads all the way up to tunnels that were once used to direct water back to the ocean, or something like that. They aren't in use anymore. The first tunnel is about a mile long and leads to another tunnel you can walk through as well.

 We drove up to the start of the hike in our jeep and the trail is a GIANT mud puddle. I remember looking at Tyler like you really want to do this??? Two girls were also there just starting out ahead of us to do the hike as well. I put on my "water shoes" (bad idea) and we started off. Not a minute went by before I was completely covered in mud. Tyler was loving every second of it. To make the long hike of 6 hours short, it consisted of three things: Slipping through the mud and falling on my butt about 20 times, getting my shoes lost in the mud about 30 times, and both of us getting our arms scratched from all the branches around us since the trail was barely even visible. Oh, and one more thing, I almost DIED like all the other hikers by falling off a cliff and merely hanging on by a plant!! (We get a big kick out of that part of the story now:)). Also, those girls who started out before us, ended up turning back about half way through and told us good luck at finding the trail! They were getting completely lost on the way up.

 Remember how I said we hiked for 6 hours? That was just to get to the tunnels! We still had to make our trek back! I was pretty grumpy so I waited at a waterfall while Tyler went the extra 10 minutes to the tunnel and he got this really sweet picture of it. He took lots of pictures for me so I could see what it looked like, what a sweetheart :) Well, I was so anxious to get out of this hike that it literally took us 2 hours to get back to our car. We more than doubled our time getting there!

 This is the only picture I was willing to post of me because most of the other pictures Tyler took of me a have the look of death on my face and this picture shows just really how deep the mud was. My feet were all the way covered with mud up to my mid calf, that is a lot!

 You can't go to Hawaii without doin' a little surfing! Atleast for Tyler, I just laid out on the beach :)

 This is Tyler's Bay Watch picture, what a hunk! And he was super awesome at surfing too!

 This is Tyler's back after a full day of surfing :( Sunscreen instructions: Reapply after being in the water. Good thing to remember!

 Waimea Canyon: The Grand Canyon of the islands. It gets its' name from looking just like the Grand Canyon and it really does!! This is also the wettest place on the EARTH!

 The last big adventure of our trip was not documented by photo because it was not the most legal :) and surprisingly, it was my idea to do it! Kauai's biggest and most luxurious hotel is the Grand Hyatt on the south shore. Before our plane was to take off that night, I thought it would be fun to go to the hotel and try and do some swimming there. We had read about the pools and they had about 20 of them complete with water slide and their own lagoon with sand imported from a country I can't remember, but it was a pretty big deal! It was also pretty easy to sneak into the pools too! We just parked in their parking lot by the beach, walked around the fence, and there we were in the Grand Hyatt's swimming pools! We weren't too worried about being caught, until we noticed people wearing wrist bands. We didn't get asked to leave until right before we were about to leave anyways, which means we got a full 45 minutes of swimming time! The security guard who asked us to leave was very nice and even offered us otter pops as we left, sweet!

And that's our trip in a nut shell. I love traveling with my hubby, never a dull moment! Can't wait to go to the Bahamas on our next adventure in August!