Humuhumunukunukuapua'a
Andy’s Honeymoon Journal, Day 4
Today the plan was to drive all the way up to the North Shore of Kaua’i to Tunnels Beach, located along the last three miles of road before serious mountain country. We loaded up our masks, fins, rash shirts, and assorted beachgoing equipment before heading out along what passes for a highway here: Route 56, the Kuhio Highway. This road is narrow, twists like a snake’s digestive tract, and winds around some of the most ludicrously scenic country I’ve ever seen.
The view shifts from stunning to humbling to awesome. We passed over hills above Taro fields and waterfalls, through emerald tunnels of looming tropical trees, and beneath ancient volcanic mountains sculpted into gravity-defying shapes. I’m not the type that usually spends a lot of time looking at scenery: I’m usually more interested in DOING something in the scenery. Out here, though, I am compelled to gawk at every opportunity. Everything is so beautiful and bizarre. It all seems wildly improbable, like a nice cinematic CGI background in a fantasy movie that the designers got carried away with. "Come on, guys… the jungle is nice, okay, but the mountains? You’re trying too hard to make them look like dragon’s teeth carved from jade. You need to tone down the water, too. Way too blue, way too perfect. Grub it up a little. Lighten up on the spectacular cloud banks, shrouding the 400-foot falls."
Thing is, it’s all actually there. It’s real. And the best part is, after I stop staring, there’s stuff to do in or on or under all this scenery. Sandy had blooded herself on her first snorkel excursion the day before, when I took her out to what I thought had to be the best snorkeling on the island.
I was SO wrong.
Tunnels Beach is pristine and magnificent, an s-curve of flawless and coarse sand that’s accessible only via dirt road or a long walk from another beach. The water is sheltered by a long, c-shaped reef offshore that’s actually visible from space. The water is insanely, hysterically blue. Like Windex. Looming over us behind the beach is a series of heavily eroded mountain spires covered in Jurassic Park greenery. Hundreds of feet above, a monolith of some kind had been placed, barely visible with our zoom lens. It looked like a huge chunk of volcanic rock, a rough cube, and I cannot help but think that somehow it had been placed there with human intervention. Possibly by Menehune, or maybe some obscure Hawaiian yamabushi sect. So: to our left, the most beautiful mountains I’ve ever seen, rising above a tropical jungle. At center, a beach like an airbrushed travel brochure of heaven. To our right, the sheltered bowl of a Pacific Coral reef.
There were a fair number of snorkelers out already, spread out in the shallows about ten feet offshore. I thought, “Oh, beginners in the kiddie pool.” Then Sandy and I got in, and in three feet of water within ten seconds of entering I saw hordes of beautiful, fearless, exotic fishes. Rainbow-colored wrasses, the size of my forearm. Purple and pink trunkfish. Spotted puffers. Plum and yellow damselfish. Even scores of the characterful and brilliant Picasso Triggerfish, known locally as Humuhumunukunukapua’a, each munching at their own section of reef. It was like taking three steps and falling into the greatest tropical aquarium on earth. Pearlescent jacks buzzed us in curious schools while we hovered within a foot of a neon blue and pink fish with a flamboyantly fluted snoot of a nose. It couldn’t have been easier. Sandy was squealing into her snorkel, pointing frantically hither and yon. I could have gone diving every day for years on Cape Cod and not seen a fraction of the diversity and color we saw in fifteen minutes. Any yutz with a mask and no experience whatsoever could get out there and see all these Salvador Dali-fish in a few seconds. We brought along a cheap 35 mil camera in a waterproof housing, but I was the one taking the pictures, so who knows if they came out.
A guy on the beach said he saw a few turtles off the second portion of the reef, so while Sandy rested on the sand I swam out solo to scout ‘em out… I know if Sandy actually gets to see turtles in the water in the wild, she’ll go berserk. However, Sandy doesn’t really swim, let alone swim in the Pacific Ocean 200 feet offshore, so finding a definite location for the turtles was paramount, so she didn’t have to swim aimlessly. I couldn’t find the shelly little freaks, but I did get to snorkel in 40 feet of water like glass. I could easily see the bottom in detail after the first reef dropped off, and out there I spotted some white-tipped reef sharks, lizardfish, and other species that prefer deeper water. I grew up on Cape Cod and I was on my High School swim team, so I’m a pretty strong swimmer, but it had been ages since I had been in deep salt water and really went swimming. It felt so good to just open up the throttle and go fast, covering a lot of distance at speed. The creeping sense of dread that I always experience in murky New England the waters was nonexistent in Kaua’i. I just hauled ass, gazing the while at the sandy bottom below.
We packed up and headed out after spending a little more time on the beach, admiring the view. On the way home, we stopped at Bubba’s Burger stand, having heard that the place was very Boston-friendly. That one rumor didn’t pan out, but the burgers were okay. Then sleep, dinner, fruity drinks, and late-night crab hunting by me on the beach. Not hunting to eat, hunting for pictures… those little bastards are called ghost crabs for a reason. I couldn’t get a shot. I might try again tonight, using a pepperoni lure and a chem-light stick. Okay, done now, more soon.