Mike in the Wild

I was more excited about snorkeling at Ke'e Beach than anywhere else on my recent visit to Kauai.  Of the renowned sites on the Hawaiian island's north shore, it was the only one I'd not managed to visit on my two previous trips starting in 2020.  I might have only ever snorkeled there once before, thirty years ago on my very first trip to anywhere in Hawaii, and I remembered almost nothing about it.    Luckily two weeks before my latest arrival, I secured a mandatory reservation for entrance to the site, part of Ha'ena State Park, along with a remote parking spot and a shuttle between the sites, all for forty dollars.  However I was surprised to learn that the other travelers on my shuttle weren't going to the park's famous beach, Ke'e, but instead were setting out for a completely different adventure: a hike along the Kalalau Trail.   The trail hugs Kauai's remote and spectacular Napali coastline, a remote palisade of volcanic cliffs that tower over ...

As my week-long visit to Kauai reached its last day,  I had seen very few turtles .  In fact, I encountered only three.  One was sunning itself in Poipu along with two monk seals on a beach crowded with tourists.  Another floated by my tour boat as it sailed along the Napali Coast.  Finally I swam with one on the reef off of Tunnels Beach while I snorkeled from that same tour boat.  My visits to the Hawaiian Islands typically include numerous sighting of green sea turtles: usually too many to count.  So I was desperate to recapture some of that good fortune when I set out snorkeling at Anini Beach on that last day in Hawaii. Encountering green sea turtles is becoming easier and easier thanks to decades of conservation efforts.  The species was protected in 1978 under the Endangered Species Act and the results are  noticeable today.  On my previous trip to Hawaii, to the island of Maui, I never entered the water - which I did multipl...