In late March I flew to Kauai to visit best friend Paul for two weeks.  It was an awesome time.  Warm, beaches, lots of catch up with our lives, frisbee, bit of snorkeling, lots of bike riding and hiking.

Other highlights included a work party at a new and impressive tropical food forest.  I played ultimate frisbee a couple times and was reminded of muscles I don't normally use.

There was a lot of driving.  And there is a public transit bus between Kauai's various towns that offers an alternative to the car. I did use the bus for a visit to the west shore. One of my favorite places was the 5 mile long bike path in Kapaa, where Paul lives.  There are more plans for bike infrastructure.

I also met with Sustainable Kauai, a meet up group wanting to green lifestyles on the island.  People do know about permaculture, there was even a permaculture design course just before I visited.  There is always room for more people to act on living local and green.

The rain shadow was a high light.  Northeast tradewinds mean the north and east sides of the island are well watered and lush.  See the fotos below.  The south and west is much drier.  You can see the clouds in the interior uplands evaporating as the move towards the southwest.

The visit was a lot of fun.  Great to see Paul. The tropical scenery and beaches could not be better.  I loved the bike riding.  And its good to be home.

The map below shows several features of my visit to Kauai.  For scale of distance, the magenta line along the left [west] shore between the two Bs is ten miles. The magenta lines are bicycle rides.  The Fs  mean exceptional fotos were taken here.  Red lines are hikes.  Blue line is the car drive to Waimea Canyon.  B are beaches visited.

Below the map, the fotos have captions and will enlarge when you clik them.