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i am going on my first big trip!!!
i will be using this webpage to document my trip with pictures and stories and other things that i see fit. thank u for joining me!!! closest post to top is newest idk really how to make a website 🙂
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FRIDAY THRU MONDAY DAYS 8-11
desert time !!!!!
on my way back from Kaua’i i stopped in Arizona to go camping with Austin in the Superstition Mountains along the Salt River on Apache, Pima, and Yavapai land.
spoila alert!!! it was so cool!!!
Austin picked me up from the scariest YMCA i’ve ever been in and we ate beautiful mole and huevos rancheros then hit the freaking ROAD. Austin did 100% of the driving on this trip and thank god because the roads in the canyon are all on the edge of cliffs with the tiniest lil guardrails and lots of tight corners. i was scared!!! i was pretending i was not!!!
we camped on the bank of the Salt River the first night, made our freaky little sandwiches and watched the fish jump out of the water and flop about. the mountains turned orange at sunset and once it was dark we could see one million stars.
Austin also did all of the cooking and all of the planning and 100% of the moral and literal physical support in getting me to do kind of scary (to me) things on our hikes/walkabouts like scaling cliff walls and chunking my body over big boulders etc. i said it’s because he’s taller than me but in reality it is because i am a bit of a weenie :+) and that’s ok!
hot dogs or legs the next morning we woke up to a really weird bird sound that was sooooo cute and kind of sounded like a baby laughing. i was too sleepy to identify it and now i wonder if i dreamt it. hmmm
we tried to go swimming in the morning but both weenied out (too cold!!!) so we took our dam ass time then packed up and went driving around Looking for things to Look at.
we had spotted this cave the day before so decided to go back and try to get in there.
after going basically mountain goat razor foot mode down into the canyon we found a beautiful little stream to poke around. lots and lots of birds and cool big rocks to touch. well….. i did not touch the birds. ok!
we got up in the dam cave and saw?? stunning vistas!!
it was getting late and we prob should have camped inside the cave but instead, unbeKNOWNST!!!! to US!!!!! made our way to Drunk Man’s Peak.
basically okay. we set up camp in a new spot, we’re drinking our little wine we’re chitting our little chat and suddenly, out of the darkness, comes an SUV blasting devil music rock and roll and parks right near our tent. this person plays the same 3 songs over and over again, windows down, BARKING!!! HE WAS BARKING AND YELPING OVER THE MUSIC SOMETIMES!!! so we were sure we were going to get Mandy’d. after a lot of shared brainstorming about how this person might kill us, Austin yells ARE YOU OKAY at the devil. the devil falls out of his car, ankles rolling stumbling crazy, and it is simply a Very Drunk Man with a knee brace over his jeans trying to hide from his family back at the resort. ok fine. we have a laugh, and it is time for bed. OR SO WE THINK!!!!!
the drunk man leaves and the 70mph winds arrive. it’s whipping into the sides of the tent so hard and making such crazy and LOUD sounds that neither of us can sleep. we make many attempts to improve our situation, but ultimately decide we must sleep in the back of the SUV. it is so very slanted, so we have to sleep on our stomachs so we can hold our bodies up with our toes. this makes me drool crazy style (for some reason??) and i sleep maybe 2 hours. it is fun and funny and okay anyway!!!
pic of two survivors of the incident
after taking a sponge bath in the ghost town saloon’s bathroom it was time for a cutie little hike in Lost Dutchman state park. Weaver’s Needle – the peak in the pic above (that Austin took and i am using for my own personal gain) – is supposed to cast a shadow that, when viewed at the correct date and time, points to the location of a bunch of buried treasure from the gold rush times. lots of people have gone looking for it but many have been MURDERED or DIED of desert causes or DISAPPEARED in mysterious ways so that’s part of why they call them the Superstition Mountains.
i learned many desert facts from Austin. he taught me that saguaro cactuses (the ones you’re lookin at here) take between 50-100 YEARS to grow their first arm. that means these puppies are old as shit!!!! very cool. i learned about a lot of plants, lizards (Austin is a lizard freak he used to go out into the Mojave as a child and catch them with his hands and make them his pets), birds, rocks, and other Arizona residents.
on the left is a normal pic of a stranger who i don’t know, and the right is a bee!
we found a spring with frogs fuckin in it that looked like a fairy village and (filtered, then) drank some water from it and didn’t get giardia at all.
here’s us at a lake that had a lot of beautiful green goo to touch and u guessed it, stunning vistas.
we spent the next night in the big city of Phoenix but not before stopping at a reptile store that made me say “wow”.
i want to describe what a desert Reptile Guy looks like. there were four of them in this small store – some employees, some customers, so i don’t believe this to be a uniform. they wear:
•black leather cowboy hat
•long hair, one guy had dreads (white)
•wraparound black sunglasses
•goatee
•tshirt with black leather vest over top
•black leather pants
•snakeskin cowboy boots
needless to say, i was pitching a tent.
i’m worried you might not be picturing the right kind of guy. we’ll go to Repticon this year i’ll point one out.
the rest is just for me! thus concludes Darcy’s Trip of a Lifetime. i look back at the pictures and still cannot believe i got to do this!!! i do think it changed my brain in a lot of ways for the better. i think i finally am starting to internalize how to slow the F down and enjoy what i’m doing and who i’m doing it with, and i did many confidence building activities that have me feeling more physically able to do things that usually would be Too Scary for me (heights make me wanna cry but i got over it many times on this trip to great success and reward!!)! basically god is real, love is real, i love my friends i love my life i love planet earth, i am excited to plan my next trip!!!!!!!!! SMOOCHES THANK YOU FOR READING!!!!!!!
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THURSDAY DAY 7
last day in Kaua’i 😢
said bye bye to the beach today. this pic is freaky! freaky legs.
me and my friend’s mom were saying what our favorite parts of the trip were and it was just kind of the whole thing. i planned almost every part of this trip besides two activities so i am proud that it all worked out so well!!
we got vegan breakfast (LOTS of vegan food on the island) and my fake bacon looked like spongebob food but was really really good?? there are two cats who live in the restaurant and go wherever they want.
there were also some violent killer lizards having a huge argument that turned deadly while we were having breakfast. the victim did his thing where he dropped his tail and that tail was wagging all about in the green lizard’s mouth. yum yum!
our big plan of the day was going to the Kaua’i Museum. it was nice to go in with a lot of context already because there was a LOT of information, and the history (of course) is very complicated!! i am def gonna read a book about Kamehameha I now.
i of course feel compelled to recount every single thing i learned at the museum (which was maybe 5% of it), but instead i will just post some pictures i took and give brief explanations where necessary.
there were so many amazing carved stone tools and objects in the museum. this was one of my favorites – a special poi pounder designed for women and people with smaller hands who had trouble using the huge heavy rocks usually used to pound poi. on the other Hawai’ian islands only men were allowed to work with the poi, but on Kaua’i women did it too and got their own tool! neat.
this is a bell stone, used for high ceremonies, birth announcements, and emergencies. the sound from a stone like this can be heard from miles away. many of these bell stones were destroyed in the 1820s when Kamehameha’s queen consort forced the destruction of all symbols of the ancient Hawai’ian religion. i need to read a book about Kamehameha because he was seemingly really celebrated in this museum but it sounds like…… him and his House…… did some really bad things…….. so i need a lot more information.
there were a lot of plaques in the museum explaining how the ancient Hawai’ian religion was “abolished” after Captain Cook and the Christian missionaries/”businessmen” came to Kaua’i, but that most people just ignored that and continued practicing, especially in rural communities. hula was technically outlawed but most people were like “okay?????” and kept dancing hula anyway because it’s extremely important!!!
hula, as you probably already know, is used for storytelling. a different form of hula, called hula ki’i, used puppets to tell stories.
the two pictures above this are capes made entirely of feathers. the feathers are TINY and were gathered from wild birds in the mountains that people trapped and plucked.
some shell work….. this was wild to see in person!!! the shells are TINY and very delicate. there was a shell necklace made with the tiny “rice shells” in the gift shop that cost $25,000 if that gives u a sense of how much work goes into making these.
this is cool as hell
here is a fucked up statue that made me say “wow.” it is a Japanese badger which is a symbol of good luck and friendship. it just HAPPENS to have a penis and perhaps a gigantic ballsack.
after the museum we went to the pineapple store where a lamb named Princess Matilda was making smoothies and eating plastic. i love Princess Matilda.
we did a quick lighthouse stop in the afternoon and saw more Stunning Vistas, giant blue waves crashing against rocks, whales spouting, birds flying, the usual suspects!!!!
i learned a lot about what life is like for native Hawai’ians over the past ~50 years, and how devastating the housing crisis has been. i had a nice convo with a woman who owned a nonprofit thrift store and donates 2% to a project called PAL which i will link!! they create long term affordable rental housing for native Hawai’ians and offer a bunch of other social services and seem to generally rock. i actually saved money on this trip compared to my usual weekly budget?? because my friend’s parents paid for everything for us 😭😭😭 so i donated the rest of my usual budget to PAL & set up a lil monthly donation. and now me and the thrift store lady are texting about whales?? loving it.
my next transmissions may not be for several days as i am absconding to the desert………. see u on the other side
……… mālama pono!!!!!!
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WEDNESDAY DAY 6
day of wild animal encounters
this is the rooster that owns the apartment we’re staying in. we accidentally left the back door open for a second so he went in the house today. he needed to monitor me while i ate my breakfast so that’s what we’re doing here.
today we also got malasadas again but from a diff bakery and they were???? u guessed it, good as hell. i am also now addicted to iced coconut latte.
today we drove up to the north shore of the island for the first time, to Kīlauea Point National Wildlife Refuge. it is a conservation area that protects migratory seabirds and some marine species, and is also unbelievably beautiful just like freaking everywhere we have been on this island!!!!! this place was very special though because it’s on a cliff so the GIGANTÉ birds who live there fly right overhead and nest in the surrounding cliff sides.
it’s hard to see because i took this pic from really far away but every little white dot in the pic above is a red footed booby (or ‘a in ‘Ōlelo Kanaka)!! there were THOUSANDS of them, and this wildlife preserve is home to one of the largest colonies of red footed boobies in the world!!
at the end of the point there’s a lighthouse from 1913 and cwaaaaazy views of the cliff sides. the reserve lends out really nice binoculars for free so i could even see birds’ little faces while they were flying!!! a face i was NOT expecting to see so close up was little Mr. Albatross (one shown flying in pic above!!)………
this is a juvenile albatross (or mōlī), about 3-4 years old, who accidentally got lost from his nest (on a different cliff side he’d have to fly over the ocean to get to) so little man was grounded by the lighthouse and we got to celebrate him up close!! this is a very rare experience! he will be okay though – the rangers said they would be bringing him home to his nest area tonight.
a refuge volunteer very kindly answered my 6000 questions and i learned that the oldest living albatross is almost 76 years old!!!!! the ones we saw today migrate here all the way from Alaska.
their wingspans are up to 6.5-7 feet in adulthood, and a lot of them are raised by lesbian mothers.
pictured above are frigatebirds, or ‘iwa meaning “thief” ! they are bad girls! they have 7 foot wingspans (😭) and scare other birds into dropping their prey, then swoop down underneath them and steal it before it falls back into the ocean. they have a cool forked tail so they’re easy to spot. i love that they are bad!!!
the last girl i must talk about is the rarest goose in the world – the Nēnē or Hawai’ian goose! they are beautiful and make tiny sounds like when a cat barks gently to get your attention. next time i see you i’ll do an impression. they were really cute and acted a little like puppies but i think i’m projecting.
i also think it would be smart for you to look up red tailed tropicbirds or koa’e, they also live on the refuge and look really cool.
haven’t gotten enough bird?? here’s some suggested reading.
on the way to lunchie we stopped at a Scenic Overlook™️ and saw this gorgeous agricultural valley. they are growing taro! the north side of the island is the rainiest so taro loves to grow there.
at this overlook i was made aware of the word Menehune. i looked this word up. i am so excited about the Menehune and i can hardly wait to tell you who and what they are.
according to wikipedia (thank you):
. . . . “[according to legend] the Menehune were 6 inch to two-feet-high pygmy people who fed from forest plants and lived in caves. They were builders and craftsmen. They eventually moved out of the Lanihuli valley to avoid breeding with other human groups.
. . . . “the Menehune appear only during the night hours to build masterpieces [like ponds, temples, irrigation ditches], and if they fail to complete their work in the length of the night, they will leave it incomplete.
. . . . “Their favorite foods are bananas and fish. They love dancing and archery. One story says they will shoot a magic arrow into the heart of an angry person to make them feel love.”
to me? they sound kind of like much more benevolent gnomes. i think it is so beautiful that different cultures around the world have witnessed gnome-like creatures and acknowledge that they are real. if everyone knew about the gnomes before they were able to talk to each other about it….. to me that means they are real.
also separately we got lunch at this place that has been open since 1963 that has famous mai tais so we got the famous mai tai and it was really good 🙂
now this next part…… WAS VERY SPECIAL TO ME!!!!!!! we went snorkeling again (my strange addiction…..) but this time at Anini beach which is rather secluded, very shallow for a long time until there is a steep drop-off in the ocean, and?? home to many honu (sea turtles).
i actually remembered to bring my camera this time, and let’s just say good freaking thing i did.
after lots of flopping about, i received advice from a fellow snorkeler to “swim out further than you think you should, then three times further than that.” so i did!! and it was kind of scary!! but as i was passing over a huge trench leading out to the drop-off, a sea turtle 😭😭😭 came out and swam with me 😭😭😭😭😭😭
i have many pictures and a video of this event, but they are on my little digicam so i have to wait till i’m home to upload them. pics won’t really show you how special though 🥲 i also saw many fish and attempted to photograph them too!!
then me and Abbott cracked a coconut open and now it is time for bed. tomorrow is last day here….. Sad! i love it here!!! see you tomorrow xoxo
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TUESDAY DAY 5
BLOOD MOON CLIFF DAY
we woke up at 1am to go down to the beach and look at the total lunar eclipse. it was cool!!
we did so much today!! started off at a little coffee hut that was covered in flowers and singing birds and ate the most SCRUMPTIOUS açaí bowl. the fruit here……. in a word?…..divine…….
then it was time for snorkeling in the bay at Po’ipū beach!! our last snorkeling trip in the ~open ocean~ was really really cool of COURSE, but this time was FREAKIN AMAZIN!! the second we plopped belly down into the bay we were all seeing TONS of fish!! and so many different freaky special kinds!!!! breeds…… breeds of fish…….. species.
much to my dismay, my underwater camera was not working, so i didn’t get any pictures BUT. i remembered the fish i saw and will post some pictures from the internet of them here so you can know just how FREAKAYYYY and beautiful the coral reef creatures are.
this is a bluespine unicornfish. what this pic fails to SHOW is that there are two neon!!!!!! like, fluorescent, ummmmm luminescent SPIKES sticking off of either side of his tail. i saw this fish and gasped!!!
i put dots by all the fish i saw, but there were more not featured here….. my favorite were the pa’awela or ornate wrasse fish. they were this really fruit loopy kind of neon pastel??? pink green blue stripey gorgeous… every time i saw a pretty fish i followed her around and watched her eat and play 🙂
i also saw many creatures……. sea urchins….. something look like perhaps ummm crawled out of primordial soup mm?? fish with legs……
Abbott saw a ZEBRA MORAY EEL!!!! fighting a triggerfish!!! that is so loco.
basically it was so awesome i cannot believe our luck!!!!!! and then as i was unknowingly getting burnt beyond recognition me and Ab delighted in some more shave ice!!!!!! here is an influencer pic i took of mine
on the way back from Po’ipū we made two stops. first was Spouting Horn, which is a special coastal lava cave where huge waves from the ocean spout out through a hole in the top of the cave like a geyser. it’s so cool!!!!! here look
if you want to see some videos just text me i will send, idk how to do that on here…….
our next last min stop was at a lava rock arch and guys. spoila alert. this was one of the most incredible places me and my sunburn have ever been. god is real!
the pics really don’t show how HUGE, STEEP, THUNDERING, POWERFUL, SHARP, DANGEROUS, and BEAUTIFUL this place is. when i was sitting on the arch, a huge wave came and splashed me while i was trying to take a picture, and i was p certain that was going to be my last moment on earth.
but i lived!!! and scrambled across to the other cliffs overlooking a spot where sea turtles float about when the surf is calmer. the waves were going FREAKO while we were there though!!
i haven’t edited any of the pictures on this website btw!!! all the blues of the ocean and greens of the rainforest are just what they look like!!! they are actually way more vibrant IRL TBH!!!!
perhaps the most beautiful place we went today, though, was what some may call a bar and grill but what Abbott and i call heaven on earth. i can’t remember the name of it but it was like if a man and a woman had a baby
we set out on the biggest night of the week (Tuesday) to have a friend we’ll never remember with a friend we’ll never forget.
they gave us coconut cup they gave us pineapple cup they let us sit where we weren’t meant to be sat we looked at the koi fish we looked at the indoor fake waterfalls we looked at the beautiful fake rocks we rocked out WITH? our cocks out
anyway i laughed so hard I choked and wheezed ~40 times during this experience ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ loved having death with dignity at Rainforest Cafe/Cabela’s Hawai’i
goodnight!!!!!!!
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MONDAY DAY 4
boat time!!!!!
today rocked AND rolled. we went on a catamaran that took us all the way to the Na Pali coast and saw wonders untold. UNTOLD!!!!!!
our captain, named Kaua’i (his actual name is a lot longer but i cannot remember all of it!) taught us SO much about the coast, Hawai’ian creation stories, dolphins and whales, and Hawai’ian history. he was also really hot and kept making Austin Powers jokes. the perfect man!
one of the most exciting things he told us about dolphins was that they sometimes form MEGA PODS of THOUSANDS!!!!!! of dolphins!!
the pod pictured above swimming with our boat was a nursing pod so it was small, mostly just mommies and babies. they swim at the front of the boat because the bow stream lets them go zooooom and also it’s fun for them!! they like to laugh and play.
dolphin babies live with their mommies for sometimes up to their first 7 years of life!! 25% of babies don’t make it past one year old, so they nurse until ~2 or 3 years old then stay with mommy until they have finished learning how to hunt and protect themselves. they can live up to 60 years old!!
i had some fast casual seasickness and barfed over the STARBOARD side of the boat twice really quietly and quickly and nobody saw. 😎 but Abbott went and told this gay guy FIRST MATE and the gay guy brought me a bucket and some ice chips and a cookie 🙂 i love gay guys!!
on the above right is a pic Abbott took of himself that looks really very much like he is 60 and going on his first bachelor trip since the divorce. he told me not to post it but it’s so funny :/
we also went snorkeling which i have NO PICTURES of but it was my first time and it was so freaking awesome. i dove down really close to the coral and got to see many freaky tropical fish. AND got to see a monk fish swimming MAYBE 15 feet from me?? did not swim any closer because #respect and also they will attack u if they feel threatened of course!! this boat trip was one of my favorite things i have done in this life!!
tomorrow is more fish time!!! see you then!!!!!
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SUNDAY DAY 3
rainforest time :)))
i am updating late because we’ve been having so much fun!!!!!!! that i get tired at night.
this morning we went in a freaking single engine 7 person airplane and flew over the whole island close-style. pics will NOT!!!!!! do it justice, it is so lush and green and GIGANTIC and you simply can’t capture that on cam!! but here are some.
bottom left is Mānāwaiopuna Falls in Hanapepe, which u may recognize from Jurassic Park……… And Hanapepe is where Lilo and Stitch live………….
some of what you are seeing in these pics is Waimea Canyon, which is the largest canyon in the Pacific!! it is 10 miles long and 3000 feet deep. it was formed by the collapse of the volcano that created Kaua’i!! people lived in the canyon for hundreds of years because there was so much fresh water and the valleys were so well suited for growing taro and other food plants. then European colonizers came, eventually industrialized sugarcane production, and that rerouted much of the canyon’s rainwater and forced the native people out of Waimea canyon. BOOOO!!!!! now, the canyon is a protected state park.
while the flight was very beautiful and i am so grateful i got to see so much of the island!!!! me and Abbott got REALLY nauseous in the air and felt like we were gonna die so we were really happy to land. 🙂
i’m eating a purple lilikoi as i type this so my hands are slippery
later in the afternoon we went on a hike at Kuilau Ridge which overlooks the Makaleha mountains, Mount Wai’ale’ale, and lots and lots of rainforest. while i was typing this i had to look up diff between rainforest and jungle – rainforest is when a lot of stuff is happening in the canopy, jungle is when a lot is happening on the ground 👍👍👍👍
there are a ton of these gigantic invasive trees from Africa called Molucca Albizia. they are beautiful and look crazy from above, but are displacing native forest 😔
our hike was so unbelievably beautiful?????? we heard and saw lots of new birds, plants, and evidence of wild boars!! the bird song we all loved the most was the white-rumped shama, but we also heard rose-ringed parakeets, red-crested cardinals and some bird whose call sounded like if you were slapping cracked bamboo onto a tree trunk???
there was a little waterfall at the top of the ridge that i did a scary rock scramble to get to. it looked like a fairy village.
we were SWEATY when we got back from the hike so i went in the ocean and found some coral. here it is!
i’m going to put back all of my ocean finds before i leave because i want to respect the island!! but they’re fun to look at for a little while :+)
enough for today…….. tomorrow??? the open ocean………
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SATURDAY DAY 2
day of many treats!!!
i got my freaking coconut!!!!!!! have been dreaming about this for a very long time. we went to the Kaua’i community market which ROCKED. bought so many beautiful tropical fruits i have never heard of before from small farmers on the island.
we bought tiny Thai ice cream bananas, cream apples, Kona oranges, purple lilikoi (passion fruit), durian!!!!, banana flowers, pomelos, special….. beans……???? yes. i loved it there.
we also went to Kaua’i Bakery and got 10 million gorgeous malasadas which are Portuguese donuts that are really popular in Hawai’i. other pic is one Abbot just sent of me eating the sweet hot dog yesterday. i did not know that i look like this while eating 🙂 i look like i am about to bite my own fingers.
lata i snuck off by myself to get pupu and poke from Hononiki Seafoods. when i got there there was a line of locals out the door. i made friends in line who recommended the hokkigai clams (top left) which BOPPED!!!!! i love eating.
then….. i don’t have any pic evidence of this but we spent many hours swimming and snorkeling in the ocean. i saw a big ass school of fish and they let me swim down in between all of them and they didn’t run away! this was huge for me because I’m actually really scared of fish. it’s nice that you can still scream while you have the snorkel mask on.
ok THEN EVEN LATAAAA we got shave ice which i had never had before!!!! and didn’t know!!! that there’s ice cream in the bottom! yay!!!!! i got honeydew lychee and pineapple flava with haupia on top. it seems as though i simply love fruit.
perhaps the greatest treat of all though……… was that actually before any of this, i woke up at 3:30AM and hung out alone on the beach for hours in the pitch black darkness looking at the stars and getting scared by different driftwood logs until sunrise. sunrise made me go “wow” and “no way” and “are you freaking serious” today. because i was sitting my ass in the cold wet sand and flopping about on logs and running and rolling etc etc, once i got in the water at sunrise (shark feeding time oopsie!!!!!) it felt soooo warm and nice.
here i am interacting and celebrating. lmk if the sky in these pictures makes you hungry because i know i am!!!!!
it is 9:30pm for me now which means I’ve been awake for 18 hours on 4 hours of sleep so pardon if this post is kind of um whateva. i love you ty for reading.
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FRIDAY DAY 1
today we saw many waterfalls and did many things! i am so tired big day!
this morning i woke up at 6 and watched the sun rise over the ocean and cried about god. the colors and the way the sky tasted (???) was so intense that it made me nauseous and dizzy. i was trying to drink the sky i was trying to open my retinas up like port holes on hinges and suck the air in so i could feel the light on the humidity particles brush across the lobes of my wet brain. well yes you could say i liked what i saw.
hot dogs or legs the volcanic rock is SO cool covered in barnacles got to see lots of skittering crabs. we’re staying in a little apartment very close to the water, it is unbelievable to wake up and look at the ocean RIGHT THERE. i learned that there are chickens EVERYWHERE!!!!! ON KAUA’I!!!!! because of two hurricanes that happened in the late 80s and early 90s. a lot of coops got destroyed so loose domesticated chickens bred with wild red junglefowl and now their population has exploded because they don’t have any real predators. a lot of people see them as a nuisance but i think they are fun. they get really close to you and are not scared of anything and they walk all about with their babies. a sad part is that the stray cats are afraid of the chickens!!!!
the ocean water is really warm and clear and very pleasant to the touch. i cannot wait to swim in it tomorrow i hope!!
Abbot finally got here this afternoon and it has been fun as hell to CHOP IT UP together. we were college roommates and he is one of my oldest friends!! he is fun to be a goddamn idiot with. we ate vegan SWEET HAWAIIAN HOT DOGS from Puka Dog and they were so FUCKED up good. mine had star fruit relish and sweet Hawaiian mustard on it and it’s still all i can think about. the sweet hot dog made me tired but it is my favorite thing i’ve eaten on this trip so far. extremely wet and the bun is closed off at the bottom so all the slop can gather there for your last bite. no muss no fuss!
there are a lot of waterfalls here. they are all so pretty and make me feel like im gonna fall over. today we saw ‘Opaeka’a falls and Wailua falls. it’s really weird to just like drive up to them and look and say “okay :)” then drive away. they are these extremely powerful ancient gigantic thundering forces and fr*aking Linda from Utah or whatever is standing next to me saying “once you’ve seen one of these you’ve seen them all” mama you’re about to see something brand new when i push you off this cliff.
i’m having a lot of strong negative feelings about the powerfully evil vibe of tourism here and everywhere (while I’m actively doing it!!!!! smdh!!!!)! i will not go into my many sadnesses around this because they are (hopefully!!!! damn!) obvious but i will just say that i am very grateful to get to experience this place, AND will probably never do anything like this again, AND i want to k*ll m*rk z*ck*rb*rg.
anyway. i have very much enjoyed the plants i’ve gotten to meet so far and the conversations with locals i’ve had about these plants! someone i met this morning told me that there are two kinds of naupaka (the plant with the little flowers above on the right) – coastal and mountain. they each have flowers whose petals are in a half circle, just on opposite sides of the stem. he said there’s a Hawai’ian legend that Naupaka (a princess who lived in the mountains) had a forbidden romance with a poor fisherman (named Kaui). they were forced apart because of a big storm, so they tore a flower in half to represent their eternal forbidden love!! and that’s why the plants are like that.
speaking of forbidden love, here are two kinds of animals we saw today that i wanted to kiss on the head sooooo bad. we went to Po’ipū beach and saw freaking wild monk seals (ʻīlio holo i ka uaua, which translates to “dog that runs in rough water”) and sea turtles (honu). sea turtles are believed by many native Hawai’ians (Kānāka) to be guardian spirits, called aumakua, who are mediators between the physical and spiritual worlds. i believe that!!!!! we got to see them sleeping on the beach and they looked so warm and calm and like they know everything there is to know. the monk seal we saw up close looked like a freaking puppy and was snoring so loud we could hear the honking from the many respectful feet away we were. we later learned there are only 48 left who live on Kaua’i!!!! they are incredibly endangered so seeing one is very special!!! when lil diva rolled onto his belly we gasped in delight.
more tomorrow xoxoxo