Kauai is now my new favorite island

I have really been slacking lately, so this post will encompass my last couple of weeks here. To start off, we celebrated cinco de mayo here. Now i thought my friends were joking when they said that they were going out for Cinco de Mayo, since there is not one mexican, or spanish speaking person for that matter, on the entire island. We did actually eat mexican food and drink margaritas, but i will say it didnt compare to what i would have had back in Houston. I did call my grandmother to wish her a happy cinco de mayo since everyone here was wishing each other a happy day, and she got upset with me. She reminded me that we are, in fact, not mexican so why would i even think to wish her a happy cinco de mayo. She really doesnt want anything to do with this holiday. So in the future i will have to remember the peruvian celebrations and call her on those days to make it up to her.

I was talking to my dad around this same time, and he was telling me about all of the rallys in houston surrounding the new immigration policies, and he asked me if we had any out here. I will say that this is probably the only state where i would venture to guess that everyone is 100% legal. i mean my dog is sitting in quarantine for 4 months just to get off a plane over here, and everytime i come back from the mainland i have to claim every possible thing in my bag, so i think it would be nearly impossible to get here illegally. And since we are 5 hours by flight from the nearest non-us country, swimming here seems out of the question.

So this past weekend i went to visit Kauai. My main motivation for going over there was to hang out in this badass pad that ford and his roommate live in and watch anything and everything that came on HBO since i have given up cable. However, i will say that the island is so beautiful. I definitely felt like i was on a vacation the whole time i was there. We went out friday night to what appears to be the only bar in Kauai (or at least in Kapa'a where they live), and drank a little too much. My thoughts of waking up late were quickly shot down when the roosters started crowing at all hours of the night, so i was completely awake at 7AM. I cant remember who it is that is scared of birds (maybe Gainor?), but i would strongly recommend not going to Kauai. There are no less than 200 chickens for every human running around free on that island.
So we hiked Saturday to a waterfall called Wailua falls and sunday we hiked the Na Pali coast. Both were incredible, and i am happy to say that none of us got injured, although we almost lost Dunla (the dog) in the river's current. The Na Pali is the coast where we are going to kayak/camp in August. I cant wait because when you hike it there is so much that you arent able to see on the trail that we will be able to see in the water. It should be a very interesting trip since I dont think any of us have ever kayaked before, and the amount of food we are going to need to bring to keep me from getting whiny will take up an entire person's space in the boat. I am hoping we get to practice before we head out.
Other than that we hung out and ate and i got to watch some cable, which was nice. I did cook jose's dip to satisfy our craving for mexican food, but there is no rotel out here, so i had to make do with some salsa.

You can see all of the pictures from Kauai here -

http://www1.snapfish.com/share/p=476171147892847790/l=98223485/g=32613520/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB

I hope everyone is doing well. Our paddling season starts the sunday of Memorial day so Elizabeth bowen is going to get to see me in my first real race. I will have her try and take pictures so i can post them.

Some more things to add to my list of what i have learned while out here:
1. Flip Flops = slippers. It took me a while to catch on to this one until a friend of mine asked me repeatedly where his slippers were and when he found them he showed me a pair of flip flops
2. I still have not been able to find fish out here other than ahi, ono and mahi mahi. Desperately looking though
3. People out here speak the hawaiian version of spanglish - mixing in hawaiian words with english. So every day i am learning new words. One of the first ones i learned was pau hana (finished working) which really means happy hour.
4. Hawaiian music is really really good. Better than i thought it would be, and now i have tons of new songs on my ipod.
5. Roaches are everywhere. In addition to one crawling down my leg when i put on pants, another one crawled out of my suitcase after it was packed when i was heading to kauai.