Up at 7am, out the door at 8:20am - not a bad effort with two kids reluctant to get moving!

We drove non-stop from Princeville to 'the other side', i.e. Waimea on the West Side of Kauai, a ridiculously long trip of... 2 hours. Hey, we live in Australia, after 2 hours driving we're just getting started! The plan was to check out Waimea Canyon and the view at the top, then take our time visiting all the little stops all the way back to Princeville, doing the scenic touristy stuff. Waimea Canyon is known as 'The Grand Canyon of the South Pacific' - obviously for its strong resemblence to the actual Grand Canyon.

We turned up Waimea Canyon Drive and started the 4000ft climb to the top - we got some A-MA-ZING photos! The colours are so vibrant, with contrasts between red earth, green foliage and oh-so-blue skies (just a few white puffy things in the sky as a distant memory of yesterday). The only signficant wildlife we've seen so far was a deer on the side of the road, which bounced along for a few metres before disappearing into the bushes.

We reached Kalalau Lookout at 11am to see... nothing! Total wipeout with the cloud cover! HOWEVER... thanks to all the internet surfing over the past few months (as opposed to real surfing which is way more awesome even for a total novice like me!) we knew that if we waited around for a bit it would clear - and it did. About 10min after we arrived the cloud swirled around a bit and suddenly there was the glorious view that we had seen earlier in the week from the helicopter. It didn't clear completely, rather it gave us a teaser glimpse every few minutes, which made us even happier that we'd taken the helicopter tour to see it up close. We could hear helicopters buzzing around below the mist, and we spotted a few goats, a butterfly and lots of dragonflies.

We drove a few minutes further to the end of the road at Puu O Kila Lookout. We were able to walk quite a long way down the ridge past the lookout but didn't go to the end - the drop over the edge without guard rails can be quite unnerving!

Back down the road a bit further to Waimea Canyon Lookout, then all the way back down to the coast again - the temperature got noticeably hotter as we descended, it felt (and looked) like a desert by comparison to the lush green and cooler temps of the mountain areas.

A quick lunch at Waimea next to the Captain Cook Memorial (who both boys have been learning about at school recently). We visited the Russian Fort Elizabeth ruins, an interesting place to imagine living back in the early 1800's in such a desolate looking environment. Its just rock walls and foundations now, 200 years on.

Back to modern times and a stop at the Kauai Coffee Co, the largest coffee farm in the USA with four million coffee trees (can you tell I read the guidebook?? The rest of the spiel is "our coffee is grown in rich volcanic soil, touched by abundant mountain rain, warmed by the Pacific sun and cooled by the gentle Hawaiian trade winds." Sounds awesome!) They have a huge range of free samples on offer, our favourite was Hawaiian Hazelnut, one pack of that to go, thanks very much We picked up a couple of souvenirs, had a yummy coffee ice cream, learnt about coffee, then hit the road again.

A detour off the highway to Poipu to visit Spouting Horn was next on the agenda. Poipu is a lovely area on the South Coast, lots of resorts and would be a great spot to sepnd a few days (if we weren't already staying on the awesome North Coast of course!) Spouting Horn is a blowhole formed from the waves flowing through natural lava tubes, with a horn-like sound effect to complete the attraction. There is of course a Hawaiian legend that goes with it, to do with a giant lizard being trapped in the lava tube, roaring and spraying water in anger.

We travelled back to the highway via Maluhia Road and the 'Tree Tunnel', a double row of eucalyptus trees planted by the McBryde family in the early 1900s, pretty cool.

We arrived back in Princeville just on sunset and enjoyed a dip in the pool after our long day out (we even got Cody in, yay!), had a 'fridge clean out' of everything we had left for dinner, and once we had tidied up and packed everything for our departure tomorrow, spent the rest of the evening watching a movie while uploading the nearly 400 photos we took through the day!