Hawai'i - Day 2 -- 29 June 2012

What an amazing place Hawai'i is!!!  We woke up to a perfect breeze (not too warm, but not cold) and sunshine.  

 View of the water from the condo!!

Since we're now two hours behind Alaska, we were up pretty early and decided to head out for a run.  What a beautiful morning it was!  Everyone here is so friendly, too.

We came back and spent a relaxing morning just hanging out and enjoying some of the delicious greek yogurt parfaits Lauren whipped up, yum!!  We then decided to hit the pool and hot tub for a bit.  By mid-morning, we planned on heading out for a hike to see a waterfall!  We found a fellow blogspot blogger's post about the Wai'oma'o Stream that was supposed to be gorgeous and seemed to be not too difficult.   

Random pagodas on the way to the trail head?

Car parked and gear packed, Lauren, Rob and Eric ready to go.  We met a couple in the parking lot that had pretty muddied feet that told us where to go but they did say they were not able to find the waterfall....hmf! We'll find the waterfalls, no problem, we all said to ourselves!  

If the entrance was any indicator of what the hike would be like.... :)  We started down a pretty steep set of rocks, but luckily accompanied by a handy rope to help ease the way down.  

The next sets of photos are not even the tip of the iceberg of how absolutely gorgeous this hike was... we were literally in the jungle!  Such lush grounds, fresh air and remarkable scenery...just perfect!  

More of Lauren and Rob heading down.  Note: Lauren representin' ASD Dragons :)

Canopy

 We found these all over the trail

Vines

Classic ERP

SUCH beauty!!!

Can you spot the house along the trail? 

This is the first swimming hole we found with a baby waterfall.  

Rob couldn't resist

I loved all these trees!!

Eric, in motion :)

A little hut along the trail.  By this point, the trail had definitely become a bit more difficult...only because it was extremely muddy and narrow.  As long as we went slowly, we were okay, but we did fall quite a bit.. more muddy pics to follow :)   

At one point, we thought we were lost, but our trusty blogspot blogger had our back.    

At one point, Rob screamed, THE HATCH!!  (Lost (TV show) reference:) ) For those of you who watched Lost, you would have felt like us, like we were literally in the show, which was filmed in Hawai'i, the entire hike.  The entire time, we were making all sorts of Lost references, too funny!   Pretty soon after this, we ran into a group of other hikers that told us we weren't too far to the first waterfall!  Good thing, at this point, we'd been hiking for about 2.5 hours!! 

We finally made it to the first waterfall!!! So worth the hard work it took to get there!

Rob and Lauren

Can you spot the heart in the mud?  Can you spot my filthy foot? 

Really cool branch

So once we'd found the waterfall, we were more than satisfied with ourselves!  We'd worked hard to get there!!!  We then ventured up to the top of the fall to have a little snack.  This part was pretty tough because there were a lot of rocks, but luckily there was a rope to help support us.  

Eric on his way up 

Lauren on her way up

We stopped at the top of the falls to eat a little something.  I was too chicken to get near the edge, but thankfully Rob took this shot for us....the falls looking down. 

At this point, the clouds looked a little dubious and we figured it was time to head back.  The next two waterfalls were not as big and too far to go.  

A few more shots of the falls before we headed back

The way down seemed to be even more muddy and we've got some pics to prove it...by this time we both had to put our hats backwards because of some unfortunate encounters with trees (due to our brims blocking our view)...oops :) 

Can you see the mud!?  Sign of a good time! 

Almost back to the car

The really cool thing about this hike was the water.  It was so beautiful to hike along the stream and while at times we weren't right on it, we could still hear the water which was so calming.  

At this point, we're nearly back to the car, and I think we're all relieved that we made it through, with no more than a few bug bites.  

I headed up the rope first...can you spot Lauren, Rob and Eric following? 

What a fantastic way to start off our trip!  We certainly got our exercise for the day!  We were rewarded on the way home with shaved ice...Lauren had been thinking of shaved ice the entire hike.  We headed back to the condo, and each used about a bar of soap to get all the mud off of our legs!  It really was an awesome day! 

Quick pic of us out to dinner at Kona...great beer, live music and fantastic company!  We had such fun and laughed until we cried.  So happy to be back together!