Day 1- the aerial tour of Kauai

Flights went fine, although it was a very long day—18 hours of traveling. We got the jeep, and headed to the hotel. Chickens and roosters everywhere! We must have seen 60 between the airport and the hotel. The hotel gave us leis upon arrival--Aloha! We got ready to go to dinner. We are certainly milking the “getting married” thing. We got a two level room upgrade, a complimentary bottle of champagne delivered to our room, and a free dessert at dinner (hula pie--macadamia nut ice burg floating on a plate of fudge with macadamia nuts sprinkled on it--coated with chocolate and more macadamia nuts and whipped cream!) on the first day! Our first meal was wonderful fresh local fish, and big, fruity drinks! The weather is absolutely gorgeous! It is strange to be on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean…

Day 1: We got up, went to breakfast and did the air tour via teeny tiny plane, which turned out to be fabulous for Nick. I, however, was nauseated the entire time, and once we hit turbulence over some mountains, it was all over.

So much for the pressure point bands provided to me by Kat, another tourist, and the ginger candy provided by the pilot… I filled up the little sickness bag with my entire stomach contents. Maybe finishing off that champagne before we left for breakfast was not such a good idea after all. However, the view was great! Make sure you find the waterfall in the below pic. Our hotel is in the one with the buildings--green tops with tan sides. The pic to the right is the Napali coast--which you will see in a later post via catamaran.

After that, we went back to the hotel and lounged around, recovering from the event and from traveling the day before.

We enjoyed the hotel grounds, and went to Poipu beach where there were Monk Seals right on the beach! That was the best part of the day—I just wanted to go into the roped off barrier area and rub their whiskers and give them belly rubs! But, I would have been arrested (they are an endangered species--only 35 or so around the islands, 1200 in the world) and that would have sucked...so, I didn’t.

We met up with Jammie and Erica for dinner. It was great to see them! We had drinks and sushi.

Below are some brief videos of the seals sleeping (one scratches his/her chin), chickens on the beach, and the air tour.