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While on Kauai, Hailey and I took a 90-minute helicopter tour of the island with Jack Harter Helicopters. The tour was billed as a photographer’s tour because it went slower and took its time with each section of the trip. Because of this alone, I highly recommend it. Kauai’s interior and much of its coastline is inaccessible (to most of us) and seeing it by air is really the only way to truly get a sense for the island as a whole.
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So remember how a few posts ago, I said that I wasn’t much of a beach person?
Well, I’m back from Kauai, and you can consider me converted: I love beaches … if by “beaches” you mean the stunning, drop-yer-jaw, how-could-God-design-such-a-perfect-thing beaches that seem to be nestled into every corner of the Garden Isle. In fact, after visiting Kauai for eight days, it may be safe to say I’m forever spoiled. The bar will be high for any future strips of sand I encounter (sorry, Chatfield Reservoir).
We are in Kauai right now, and it … is … awesome. So far, I’ve photographed sunrise from ‘Anini Beach, lunch at Hanalei Juice & Taro Company, Haena Beach Park, the Kilauea Farmer’s Market (where I ran into a college friend who is now a farmer on this island), and this morning, sunrise on Kalihiwai Bay and morning over the magnificent taro fields of Hanalei.
I’ve always touted that I am not a beach person (as if its something that distinguishes me), and so far, that is only holding up true in one sense, and that’s my favorite two places on this island (at least in the first 48 hours). One, is a bend in the highway between Princeville and Kilauea, where massive, ornate, flat-branched trees rise up over a curve in the highway, and transport the driver to a whole different place, like Japan, China, Taiwan, or the end of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. It is startling and devastatingly beautiful.
