On the second day, we plan to hike further along the trail up the side-canyon. In several places, there are nice swimming holes along the stream, and a bubbling side stream with taro.
But don’t be tempted to stop for long because the trail ends at some pretty cascades with smooth rocks that make great slides.
Of course, we had to try the slides, after all we had carried our bathing suits all this way just for this:
The lower cascade looks like a slide, but I think it really is too steep and dangerous:
All in all, this is a really beautiful place:
But we were not done yet. A bit back on the trail is a really nice swimming hole with 2 waterfalls and more views of the canyon. So of course we had to jump in the water and swim some more.
It was fun to swim around the pool and have the current from the upper falls carry you through and under the second waterfall:
Then we found a nice rock to do some photo-op jumps, some graceful, others not so graceful:
On the hike back to our camp, we saw some coffee plants that were planted when people used to live this far up the canyon:
There were also native wiliwili trees blooming in the canyon:
Just a pretty fern:
We found lilikoi (passion fruit) and guava to eat, and even an avocado tree I had never seen before. I also uprooted some young coffee plants to carry out and grow at home.
The dogs are used to napping all day, so all this hiking was probably a bit tiring for them:
Leilani learned a lot about hiking and camping. Here she is making our lunch of macaroni and cheese
with tuna fish–great food with lots of energy:
Then we had to pack up the camp and get ready to hike out:
Even though it was just a short walk back to the river, we still stopped to rest and play:
Then we had to hike the big hill 2000 feet (600m) back up out of the canyon. By now the dogs were tired and would lay down a lot. Leilani was tired too, but just pretended to lie down with them.
Actually Leilani did her biggest day of hiking ever so far on that day: over 8 miles up to the swimming holes and then down to the river and back up to the rim of the canyon. But we had lots of fun, and it was all worth it.
