2019-05-07: Tubing in Kauai

We woke up to the view of our ship pulling into Nawiliwili Harbor on Kauai. We sailed past a golf course perched on a cliff and then into the harbor. We got ourselves dressed and had a bit to eat in the Windjammer Cafe again. We returned to our room, put our bathing suits on, and left the ship. We had a tubing adventure with Kauai Backcountry Adventures booked.

We waited for a while for a taxi at the pier, but eventually got one and about 10 minutes later was at the site. We checked in, signed the waiver, and were given a helmet with a headlamp and some gloves for our adventure. At the appropriate time, we were loaded into a shuttle and driven into the bush. The tubing takes place in the irrigation canals of an old sugarcane plantation. The land is now owned by Steve Case who was the CEO for AOL from 1991 to 2003. He has left the land in it’s natural state so there is no further development of the 17,000 acres. The land is not open to the public so we were lucky to be able to see it.

Along the drive, we made a stop at a scenic outlook that had a great view of the mountains of the crater in the distance. The crater receives rain around 340 days of the year which provides the source of water for the irrigation canals. Shortly afterwards, we arrived at the start point for the tubing. We were given a quick safety orientation and then were led to the water. Patrick was the first one in the water.

The irrigation canals are a mix of above ground canals and tunnels through the ground. We went through 5 tunnels in all with the longest tunnel being 3/4 of a mile long. The guides were great and were cracking jokes the whole time. One of them sang songs to us in the tunnels. There were different colours of earth along the route and they encouraged us to use it as war paint.

The tubing tour was about an hour long. Afterwards, they took us to a nearby pond and gave us a “Costco special” lunch as they called it. It was make your own sandwiches with ingredients from Costco. After lunch, we returned by shuttle to the check-in building where there was a gift shop of course, and you could view the photos they took of you along the way. It was a great experience!

We had arranged for the taxi that dropped us off earlier to return at 2:15pm to take us back to the ship. The driver was right on time and within about 10 minutes we were back at the pier. Once we were back onboard we stopped at the room to drop off our gear. The kids wanted to go swimming in the pool. We were still in our swimming gear from tubing so we headed up to the pool for awhile. The ship pulled away from the pier while we were enjoying the pool.

We returned to the room and got ourselves ready for dinner. Tonight was the first formal night of the cruise so we had the chance to get all dressed up. We headed to the dining room and had an enjoyable dinner. As soon as dinner was done, the kids started hassling us to take them to the kid’s club. We dropped them off as requested and then wandered the ship for a bit. We noticed we were passing Oahu again. We returned to our room for a bit before picking up the kids from the kid’s club and calling it a night.

We’re in Hilo on the big island tomorrow!