After our day paddle out to Kawelikoa Point I let Jamie abandon me at the beach. I would travel up the eastern shore all the way back to Moloaa Bay. I figured in the time remaining today I could paddle the seven kilometers to Hanamaulu City Beach Park, then spend the next day traveling twenty kilometers to the Anahola City Beach Park. Then I would have an easy paddle the last six kilometers to Moloaa Bay and take the rest of that day resting up and drying out my equipment for our Sunday trip to camp on the Na Pali Coast. Do the math: We lost a day in there and thought it was Thursday when it was already Friday. I didn't have time to do the trip that way and get back Saturday. Fortunately we figured this out before we spit up. So I planned on paddling past the second campground on Saturday and getting back too late do some of the planning and packing things that afternoon. Jamie left, and I went over to the local fruit stand to get something nice for my next breakfast. I told my plans to the farmer, and she told me "Oh No! They had a sewer plant leak at Hanamaulu City Beach, and it is closed indefinitely!" This is the second time that guy at the county office sent me somewhere that it turns out I cannot camp!
Kalapaki Beach is well protected inside Nawiliwili Harbor and is manicured by the Merriot Hotel behind it. I walked through this hotel on my Monday afternoon hike. It is incredibly opulent. There are huge swimming pools with fountains shaped like elephants squirting water out over the pools. The people staying here can go swimming, eat dinner, watch TV, sleep in air conditioned rooms. Then a few of them venture all the way out to Kalapaki Beach and probably think they have seen the real Kauai. I think these people are crazy and have missed the whole point. Then I jumped in my kayak and worked up a sweat paddling all day to set up my tent and sleep in salty-damp sheets. Those Merriot people would probably think that I am totally insane.
I paddled a little south into a head wind across the Nawiliwili Harbor and turned north around the lighthouse at the mouth of the harbor. Then I had a tailwind help push me north along the east shore of the island. It wasn't a very interesting shoreline, but I was starting to think I really would make it all the way around the island and was happy to get this section "under my belt". I paddled past the Lihue airport and watched a few jet planes fly over me to land. Before I came here I had expected to find regular ferry boats running between all the Hawaiian Islands, but there are none. When Hawaiians want to get from one island to another, they take a commuter jet airplane. In fact there weren't very many fishing boats, few yacht harbors, and practically no commercial shipping. The marine radio frequencies on my VHF radio were almost completely silent on this whole trip.
Because the park was closed, when I got to Hanamaulu Beach I just went right on by. The sun went down as I paddled north, and the moon came out. We had been watching the moon the last few evenings and I knew it was going to be pretty close to full as I searched the shoreline looking for a place to camp. Past a big golf course, I saw lots of surf and a few surfers, but the waves don't look very scary. It looked like a slowly sloping sandy beach with breakers reasonably far from shore. I turned in and caught an incredible ride! The kayak held onto the wave facing directly into shore and kept going and going, making me think I could make it all the way to shore on one wave. But half way there the wave petered out and I actually pulled ahead. My rudder clinked on a reef (the chart doesn't show one here at all) and then the wave, seriously diminished, caught up and passed me. I found myself behind a reef with water plenty deep enough to paddle in. The long sloping beach I thought I detected was actually the waves breaking over the reef out at sea.
I landed near where I saw surfers in the water and cars parked up above beach. But it turned out to be some sort of weird local scene: There are lots of dirt roads running around the red soil above the beach. There were lots of cars parked (mostly 4x4 trucks) but few people in them. Many more vehicles than explained by the few surfers I saw. The few people I saw around the cars were young men. I ducked into a wooded area to take a pee. There was someone else in there already behind a tree, but he doesn't seem to be taking a pee. As I walked past, he rotated around the tree away from me so I never saw his face. Does he really think I haven't seen the rest of him there? I DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHAT EVERYONE IS DOING HERE! I jumped back on my kayak and paddled down the beach behind the uncharted reef. There is another City Beach Park somewhere ahead that doesn't allow camping but sounds a lot safer now.
Now that I was behind a reef, it seemed a safe place to paddle by moonlight. I paddled up the coast trying to figure out where the city park was. As I passed a float in the water I was hailed by someone on shore and turned to go talk with him. He was a local fisherman who had placed the baited float out in the water this morning. He thought that the float was bobbing like it caught something and asked me to bring it in for him. I did this but it still had bait on it so I took it back out for him again. I landed a second time and asked him where I was. Lydgate City Beach Park. I explained my situation to him and he thought that I would not get in trouble for camping here. It is a well lit park with picnic tables in grassy areas along the shore. Many of the picnic tables have pavilions, roofs with no walls, over them so you don't have to abandon your evening out just because it is raining. Some of these pavilions are huge, with a dozen tables and a little raised theater at one end. As I noticed elsewhere, families sit out at the tables until all hours feeding campfires and talking. I chose a place for my tent in the street-light-shadow of a large bush. I cooked my camp dinner and sat watching the moon on the water.
At 10:00 PM I went to brush my teeth but had to wait in line at the shower with a group of kids. They were just back from swimming in an artificial lagoon created as part of the park. "The water is warm" is their explanation when I ask them about swimming so late. These kids remind me of some observations Marty has made about how living in a place with mixed races is healthy. This group is two teenage Asian girls herding a group of younger kids (difficult to count how many). Most of the kids are Asian or Polynesian, but in the moonlight two of the kids have VERY BRIGHT BLOND HAIR. I think Marty would approve of this neighborhood. I relax some and fall asleep in my tent after paddling 30 kilometers this day, 12 kilometers since I left Jamie at the harbor.
