Kauai 2015 Days 10 and 11

I was feeling too lazy yesterday to write so combined Friday and Saturday into one post. Once again in the wee early morning hours on Friday our friendly neighbourhood roosters had a crowing contest right below our window 😒 The good thing about it was I got some gorgeous moon shots. 

We have some very cheeky birds at this resort. As soon as we sat down with food this guy came calling.

He figured Kelly should be sharing.

We didn't feed him and kept shooing him away until he got the message, but I think he's been fed from the table before.

We thought today we'd check out the snorkelling at Pu'u Poa beach. It actually wasn't bad. I didn't get really good pictures because my camera doesn't work as well in shallow sunny water. Unless I'm right over top of the fish I get lots of bubbles or sun spots. It's most likely the operator lol. Here's a couple that didn't turn out too bad. 

There was actually lots of fish to see and this would be a great place to take young kids or beginners who want to try snorkelling for the first time. If you go close to high tide you can get over the reef without touching it. Just as we were going in we saw this guy. I didn't get the greatest picture of him but wanted to post it anyway. I think it's possibly a small barracuda? He was very interested in a small dead fish floating in the water.

After we were done snorkelling and got cleaned up, we thought we'd take a drive to the end of the road and check out Tunnels and Ke'e beaches. The problem was that it was a gorgeous sunny holiday Friday and the rest of the island was doing the same thing. Absolutely no where to park. A lot of people were going to have nasty surprises when they got back to their cars. The KPD were ticketing any parked cars that had tires on the road. We got some pretty pictures along the way.

We stopped and walked out on the pier at Hanalei Bay. Lots of people there enjoying themselves.

By this time we were hot tired and thirsty so we headed back to HBR. We had to get wristbands today for the pool. I guess they've been having some trouble with pool crashers. So far that's the only time we've needed them. We were too lazy to cook so we headed into Hanalei for dinner. Everything looked super busy so we went to Bouchons. It was very very good. We had an awesome server and the food and drinks were great.

 We started with the calamari appetizer. This was steak style calamari and the breading was amazing.

We then had some sushi which was superb.

For our entrees we had the seafood brochettes, scallop, shrimp, and ono skewers served over red potatoes and grilled veggies.

Th drinks were great too. Here's my lava flow.

That was our Good Friday. No sunset pictures because we were at dinner, but I did get to watch ch Hawaii 5-O while in Hawaii 😄

Saturday we woke up feeling extremely lazy. We watched the tennis clinic from our deck and almost decided we might give it a shot but decided on golf again. We got a tee time at Makai and headed over. The good news is I had a much better game. I took 9 strokes off my score from Thursday. It was very enjoyable, and we got off the course just as it started to rain. We got a rainbow shot from our lanai.

We enjoyed some grilled chicken while watching the sun set. 

It was another great vacation day. 

Today's plans include Pu'u Poa again and just hanging out at HBR.

Kauai 2015 Day 9

Was rainy and cloudy in the wee hours of the morning but that burnt off by the time we finished our coffee leaving us a pretty rainbow over Bali Hai.

We decided to walk down and check out Pu'u Poa beach in front of the St Regis. It was very calm and quite pretty. 

We're going to take our snorkel gear down this morning and check out the reef. After our trek back up the hill (you won't gain weight staying here, everywhere you go on these grounds requires some kind of steep walk lol) we rested by the pool for a second. HBR has this neat Adopt an Orchid program where you purchase an orchid then the gardeners help you plant it exactly where you want. There's some very pretty ones.

We had a tee time scheduled at 1:09 at the Makai course. As guests at HBR we were able to golf for 119 each after 1:00 because we had two golfers in our party. We went early to have some lunch and were actually able to get out early too because they weren't busy. Here's some of the better photos of the gorgeous course.

It was an enjoyable round (except for my putting on the back 9) and I'd recommend the course. If you are a non golfer they have a sunset golf cart tour you can take to enjoy the views. We got back and after a dip in the pool, we did up some Kauai shrimp with pasta salad and enjoyed another spectacular north shore sunset from our lanai.

So ends another day. Not sure of our plans today. Snorkel at Pu'u Poa and maybe check out some other beaches.

Kauai 2015 Day 8

Well a couple of very chatty roosters have deemed it unnecessary for me to sleep anymore. Someone should introduce them to the owners of Chicken in a Barrel lol. Oh well, I just got to see a beautiful full moon over the water. My camera wouldn't focus though, too dark. Yesterday was our transition day from Poipu to Princeville. We were up early getting packed and organized and were out the door shortly after nine. We had a bit of shopping to do. We stopped in Koloa to get our son a ukulele at Larrys and some shirts from Crazy Shirts. We had a quick stop at Costco again then off North we headed. We couldn't check in to HBR until 2 so we took our time stopping at Kilauea Lighthouse. Beautiful spot.

We also stopped at two different overlooks after the lighthouse.

We found our way to Hanalei Bay Resort, got checked in, found our room, opened the blinds and there was this amazing view. 

Its beautiful and we couldn't be happier with our room choice.  We got unpacked and explored a bit then went for a quick swim to cool down. We grilled some steaks, then settled on our lanai to watch the sunset. We're lucky with the location of our room. It's prime viewing for sunset. There was even someone playing the ukulele at the fire pit below us :) Here's our first sunset from HBR.

I'm going to try to figure out the interval shooting on my camera and do a time lapse video of the sunset.  Today's plans include a morning by the pool followed by golf at the Makai Course. We get discounted rates as guests at HBR.