[Hanalei & Kilauea, Kauai, HI, Feb 21, 2024]

No early wake up today! We both naturally woke up between 6:30 and 7 am, and had a small breakfast at our hotel. Ash was nice enough to run to Starbucks for some coffee, too!

After Ash’s failed boat snorkel, he really wanted to try snorkeling from the beach. The Poipu beaches we visited on our first day did not seem that great for the activity. I had heard Tunnels Beach, on Kauai’s North Shore, was one of the best in the area. We passed it yesterday when we were on the shuttle to Haena State Park. It’s less than a mile before that and the parking lot seemed pretty empty when we passed it at 9 am yesterday, which is why we were comfortable with a later start to our day today.

And we were right! The beach was virtually empty and we were on the beach by 10 am! It was a gorgeous beach with lush mountains of the Napali coast to the west of us. We could see the reef, but I think the fish were also taking their sweet time today because there were none to be seen at first.

It didn’t take long for them to arrive though! We saw plenty of convict tangs, Achilles tangs, parrotfish and even Hawai’i’s state fish, Humuhumu Nukunuku Apua’a (Reef Triggerfish). I also spotted some yellow striped and spotted goatfish. I think we also may have seen some surgeonfish and Potter’s angelfish. It was a very good snorkeling day!

After a few hours, we started packing up to leave because we had reservations to see the Kilauea Lighthouse at 3 pm. The drive was supposed to be 45 minutes, but we added in another 15 for traffic and another hour to grab lunch. That meant a 1 pm departure from Tunnels Beach, which we did. And guess what? We needed ALL that time to make it to the lighthouse at 3:01 pm. There was some roadwork going on, and the one-way bridges didn’t help either. However, this was much worse than yesterday, when we did the same drive at about the same time…. so beware! Luckily, we had grabbed coffees in Hanalei and we weren’t too hungry so it was fine to skip lunch, but it was still a stressful experience.

The lighthouse sits on Kilauea Point, the northernmost point of the main Hawaiian island chain. The US Government acquired the Point in 1909 and built a lighthouse in 1913 to guide ships arriving from the Orient. The Lighthouse functioned until the late 1970s. It was then added to the National Register of Historic Places and a national wildlife refugee was also created around it.

This was a much more chill day on the island, but we still did quite a lot! We talked about how much we will miss these gorgeous mountains once we get home – today was our last full day!