Yesterday after a little lunch in our condo, Jenny and I got in the car and headed out to the Lihu'e Airport for our helicopter ride around Kaua'i. After going through the formalities and riding across the street to the helicopter pads, we climbed into a sweet little chopper with our fellow passengers, a family from Nevada.

The 'copter sat seven, including the pilot. Three seats up front, four in the back. Jenny and I were in the back right and right-center seats, respectively - seating is determined by the pilot based on weight requirements, but this arrangement suited us just fine as Jenny had the camera.

The blades started rotating, and in no time we were off the ground. This was the first time in a helicopter for both of us, so we didn't really know what to expect. Take off was smooth and vertical. We watched the ground, then the airport, then the shore descend below us and we were airborn.

We circled the island roughly clockwise, flying through the Waimea canyon, along the Na Pali coastline and finally into very heart of the crater of Mount Waialeale.

Words cannot express my exaltation during this experience, nor can they do justice to the immense beauty of this island as seen from above. For a solid hour, my mind was a vessel containing only the input from my eyes, my self obliterated by these breathtaking views. The only previous experience I've had that was comparable to this was scuba diving near the edge of the continental shelf in St. Croix.

In the absence of words, I have provided some of the pictures.

Today's adventure was a little different - we rented a kayak to explore the Wailua River. We had seen the river during our car tour, and thought it would be cool to do some kayaking along it. We had no idea what we were in for.

When we rented, the guy from the kayak shop briefed us and our fellow paddlers on the sites of interest along the river. It turned out that there were two that were accessible to us at this time: the waterfall hike and the swimming hole.

After almost an hour of kayaking up the river, we came to the far side of a little island. We parked the kayak here (next to twenty or thirty others and a few inner tubes) and headed out on a trail into the woods.

The "woods" in Kaua'i are really more jungle than woods. There are regions that would be impenetrable without a machete, others where even a machete would do you no good. But the path was well-trodden, compressed red dirt of the kind that you find all over the island.

The waterfall was about a mile in - about a half hour's walk. It was well worth it - it's like something out of a movie. Water falls down a cliff of maybe 50-100 feet into a chilly little pool. We had been advised not to actually go under the waterfall - apparently things other than water (rocks, logs) came down these falls on occassion, causing some serious injuries. But how can you be in a situation like this and resist the opportunity to stand under a waterfall?? So we both threw caution to the wind. No one was harmed, at least while we were there.

We hiked back to the kayak and headed out to the next destination - the swimming hole. We would have completely missed it except for the rope swing and the sign saying "No Diving" - it could have been any other part of the river. But this particular area drops to depths of 50 feet below that rope swing and the adjacent cliff, making it an ideal site for the forbidden diving referenced by the sign.

I had to try out the rope swing. Jenny and I were the only ones at the site, at first, so I braved the initial chill of the water and swam out to retrieve the rope. I pulled it in to the shore and tried a conservative swing off the bank - dragging myself through the water before dropping.

Some other tourists arrived before long, we had fun passing the rope around and diving from the cliff. During my later swings I was climbing high onto the tree with rungs nailed onto it that was clearly the intended launch spot and sailing high over the water before dropping from the far end of the swing. I tried to get Jenny to jump off the swing or the cliffs, but she was having none of it.

It got to be around quarter-to-four, and we had to return the kayak by five-fifteen, so we headed back. It had been far more fun than we had anticipated. Sadly, we didn't get any pictures.