The mall
As we ate our French toast, we saw on the t.v. that Bush was less than 12 hours from declaring war on Iraq.
At 9:00 am we went and rented the mountain bikes for 24 hours and set off along the highway to get to the Kalalau trail head. The first few miles were easy and flat, but then we hit what seemed like a never-ending hill. I was in terrible shape and had to keep stopping to catch my breath. After some encouragement from Hans, I was able to keep going and then we hit a nice long downward hill. There were two more rough hills later, with one lane bridges and blind corners, but after 7 miles we made it to the Na Pali Coast trailhead.
One of the beaches seen from the road
Hans and I looked at our watches and saw that it was a little after 10 am. In order to make sure that we weren't going to miss our bus back to the B&B later, we decided that we'd hike out to the first beach (which was 2 miles in) on the trail and then head back. The trail was amazing. It was very hilly. I think that at some points we were up about 1000 feet, and then we'd hike back down. The trail was along tall cliffs but at some points also went deep into thick jungles. When we made it to our stopping point where a river emptied out into the sea next to the beach, we sat and ate some beef jerky and some of Hans' smoked salmon. On the way back, fatigue began to set in as we sweated continuously and consumed all of our water. When we made it back to the trailhead (which was also where Kee Beach was located) we refilled our water bottles and biked back to Hanalei.
On the Kalalau Trail
Another trailshot
I was not faring well at this point. When we reached the hills and blind corners I began to lose confidence in myself. I was very tired and my legs did not want to go on. Hans was doing fine, so I can imagine why he was a bit impatient with me. When he finally yelled at me to keep going it gave me the last boost that I needed to get to the top of the hill. I was kind of annoyed with myself when I discovered that the way back was actually much easier than the way out because the only really difficult portion of the highway was the big hill I had trouble with. After we got past that, the road was downhill all the way into town.
As we came back, we stopped at a pretty church and took some pictures. As soon as we hit the main strip in Hanalei, we locked up the bikes and got some shaved ice. We returned the bikes and took the last bus of the day back to our B&B.