Cruisin' on the Coast

Our last day was pretty full of excitment. We took a 7 and a 1/2 hour boat tour of the Napali coast. The ride out to the coast took about an hour and a half and I was cold so we sat inside the boat. Breakfast was included and Landry took full advantage of the food. They had bagels, banana bread, coffee cake and fruit. I am pretty sure Landry went back four times to get more food. He has no shame.

The port we left out of was "Port Allen" how fitting!

The giant mountains falling into the blue water was so beautiful. We made our way to the front of the boat to get as many pictures as possible. One thing that really pulled us into doing the tour was the sea caves. They are exactly what the name sounds like, caves cut into the mountain filled with ocean water. Our boat went inside two and we saw some people kayaking in one of them.

The Forbidden Island of Niihau is the other reason we wanted to do a boat tour. It is an Island that can be accessed by boat or helicopter. The Holo Holo Charter that we were on is one of the few boats with permission to go to the island. Our captain said there is around 60 people that live there. They have no electricity or running water and they have a boat that comes out once a month with supplies for them.

The water around the island is so clear and great for scuba diving and snorkeling. We stopped for an hour to snorkel.

 I came around the corner and I was about 5 feet away from this Hawaiian Monk Seal. I have seen them on the beach, but never in the water. I got Landry's attention and while he was taking some pictures I turned my head and saw my first ever shark!! I tried to be calm and not yell shark to Landry because I did not want to scare everyone in the water. Here's a video Landry got. We think he was a grey reef shark around 6-7 feet long. He was 20 or 30 feet below us, but we could see him pretty clearly because the clarity of the water was so good.

After snorkeling we had lunch...sandwhiches, veggies and pasta salad. Everything always taste so good after being in the salty water for a while. Then we headed back in and the captain warned us that it was going to be a pretty rough ride and he was not joking. We sat on the outside on the very back row of seats. I had one hand holding under my seat and a foot on the seat in front of me. Every wave my whole body was coming up off the seat. It was really bumpy and 3 or 4 people started throwing up. Luckily we took some medicine the night before and on our way to prevent sea sickness.
We were tired and sunburned when we made it back to shore.We took a nap in our car and then washed off in one of the beach showers. Our flight out was at 9pm and we were home by ten and back to work the next morning.
Our first island hop was a success!