Snorkeling on the Napali Coast

We’d see the Napali Coast from a helicopter, but we were really excited to get up close with it on a boat tour. Luckily we found a really nice one departing out of Hanalei instead of the south coast.  So on our last full day, we joined a boat full of other tourists & headed South.  We were treated a lovely view of the St. Regis, which always had several dozen surfers out in the water directly in front of the resort.

We got lucky at the start of our journey and ran across a huge pod of spinner dolphins.  These are much smaller than the bottle-nose  but we were able to catch a few of them jumping in the air & spinning.  We were surrounded by several large pods and it was just so incredibly beautiful to watch them swim and frolic in the water around us.

As you approach the Napali coast, you can see it off in the distance and know, even in the rolling clouds, it’s going to be quite amazing.  Soon we were cruising by sheer cliffs with vegetation clinging on just above massive sea caves.

Really, REALLY one of the most magical and marvelous places I’ve ever seen in my life.

As we went further in, the cliffs got higher & the caves got bigger.  Our skilled captain maneuvered the boat precariously close to the cliffs to give us a better appreciation of the ocean disappearing into the darkness of the caverns.

\It’s hard to understand from the photo but the waves are huge & constantly tossing the boat around, so I got pretty nervous when we got super close to the cave walls & I was just hoping the captain knew what the heck he was doing.

All sorts of amazing things were happening along the coast, from cave waterfalls to goats on a nearly vertical cliff face.

The helicopter tour is *THE* thing to do in Kauai, so every single day, hour after hour, there was just a constant stream of these sky birds circling around over head.

The waves crashed on the rocks as we moved further south towards the mountains like spires piercing the eerie clouds.

We zoomed past remote beach and incredible rock formations- supposedly at low tide in the summer people get married on that rock in the middle of the cave.

We finally arrived at our snorkel destination- a love open spot with relatively clam waters.   We could see all the fish circling the boat as we arrived- dozens & dozens of these guys were waiting for us.

Now, I’d been really hoping to see turtles & I was so excited when one came near us!  There were several in the area or laying way down on the ocean floor below us, but this one guy just came swimming right on through.

Honestly, there wasn’t a whole lot of coral in this area near the surface that we could see (it was cloudy out & not very bright under water), so there weren’t a ton of fish to see other than these guys that stormed the boat initially.

Back by all the surfers on the way into shore- this guy was pretty adorable on his paddleboard with his pooch.  It was getting off this boat into the surf that I managed to break my poor finger.

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: Finally getting rolling with the houses, including a Realtor meeting today & I’m excited for a fun filled weekend ahead.