Day 2

On day 2, we backtracked to the west side of the island again to see a couple sites we were too exhausted to see on our first day. We stopped at the Spouting Horn which was this cool blow hole in the rock sorta like a mini old faithful I guess (which I've never seen so can't verify). It was really quite spectacular but my photography skills did not allow me to capture one of it's bigger bursts of water.

Next we headed to the Kauai Coffee Company which I believe is the biggest coffee plantation in the US. Have you ever seen what coffee beans look like when they are live on the plant? It was neat to see how it all starts out before it becomes a hot cup of joe.

The plantation had tons of samples for us to try. We even purchased these delicious sugar covered doughnuts that we agreed was the best doughnut we'd ever had (and I don't even like them usually!) Graham was in heaven with his morning treat.These trees were scattered randomly throughout the island and they were definitely my favorite. They just look so fake....I thought they were cute.

The one downside to driving a jeep is that you can't really safely leave anything in the car. Thankfully, the glove box had a lock on it that we assumed was somewhat secure so that's where our camera lived a lot of the time while we were on the beaches snorkling and playing in the water. Hence the lack of pictures on the rest of day 2. We proceeded to explore Poipu Beach (the actual Poipu Beach was about 1 mile from our hotel) and had a great time snorkling. The water was SO CLEAR and you only had to go in a couple of feet and you could see dozens of colorful fish swarming near your ankles. This was by far my favorite snorkling beach--we even saw a monk seal (endangered species) and a sea turtle. I've always been a reluctant snorkler as I'd much rather NOT know what is under the water but I actually really enjoyed my experience at this beach. It probably helped that Graham stayed with me and held my hand and let me hide behind him if anything too big started swimming towards me....

We enjoyed a picnic lunch of leftovers from our odd Italian meal the night before and then headed to our hotel pool for a later afternoon dip. We decided to use part of our meal voucher gift at our hotel restaurant "Shells" that evening. We got the 3 course special to share which included amazing crab cakes, a beef tenderloin pasta with asparagus in a creamy sauce and a chocolate lava cake with homemade vanilla ice cream and strawberries. Graham also had a chi-chi (tropical coconut drink)--why they call it that, we'll never know!