[Kauai TR] Day 6: An Afternoon on Polihale Beach

Check out more pictures of this beautiful beach in my gallery.

After a surprisingly tasty lunch sitting outside at a little burger stand that obviously catered to surfers, Mark and I did a little shopping in Waimea. The town was having a huge festival that day, and traffic was starting to look icky. But every street corner was filled with people selling arts and crafts. It reminded me a bit of any one of the many small-town art fairs I’ve been too, except everything here was made out of teak, taro or types of tea and palm leaves. I met three hilarious ladies who lived in Waimea and were all generally of south pacific descent. I spent a fun-filled half hour hanging out with them, talking about what it’s like to grow up and live on a small, sunny island in the middle of a great big ocean. And I spent a lot of money on their handmade photo-albums, straw hats and shell jewelry.

The drive to the beach was quite a bit rougher than the guy at the lu’au had suggested on the previous night. The paved road around the island ends at the Pacific Missile Range Facility (interesting…) and then it’s five miles on a bumpy dirt road through a huge sugar cane field to get to Polihale State Park. The Mustang was not particularly happy about this road, and we ended up driving very near to 5mph all the way out there. Thus, after almost an hour of bumping and josteling down the road, we parked, and were treated to one of the most beautiful, quiet and pristine beaches I have ever seen.

The beach was beautiful. There were surfers around, a few people fishing near an old wreak of a tank (probably from before WWII), and just a couple families dotting the beach in the distance. The waves, though, were pretty big and intimidating at first. I had wanted to check out a reef in the area for possible snorkeling, but it turns out it was a reef break, and huge 8ft waves were crashing down on the rocks and coral. Not a good place for snorkeling. We had to hike around a bit, until we found a sandier break coming off the southern edge of the reef. This turned out to be the place. Fantastic boogie boarding!!

Mark was able to fight the strong current in the area for longer than I, though. I got out and watched him for a while, and then I had some fun setting up photos of yoga poses on the beach.

In the evening, I brought out the big camera and the long lens, and I started taking rapid-fire shots of surfers enjoying our break. I think these turned out so well, they got their own gallery and will soon get their own blog posting.

We stuck around for the sunset, which was, of course, beautiful. Then, we drove out, all the way back to Poipu, cleaned up quickly, and made it in time for a fantastic late dinner at the local Poipu Broiler. Another wonderful day of vacation!