Today was the tubing adventure. We drove just north of Lihue and grabbed some breakfast from a little cafe next to the tubing company. Damon and Amy had a sort of omelet/quiche thingy. Damon's had sausage and cucumber and cheese while Amy had a similar one with something else in it. That deserves repeating: DAMON HAD A SAUSAGE AND CUCUMBER AND CHEESE OMELETTE/QUICHE THINGY. That kind of thing is just not like him. The Hawai段an sun must have got to him and made him start eating unusual things. Anyway, it was all good! In fact, throughout the entire stay in Hawai段 we had unbelievable luck with breakfasts.

The tubing adventure is on a big piece of land owned by someone in charge of AOL (or WAS in charge of AOL). The tour guides told us that we were near where the poles for the Jurassic Park sign are still in the ground. Another interesting thing we learned was that the Jurassic Park type trees that were everywhere (and very pretty) were brought over from Australia or Africa or somewhere and they just took off in Hawai段. Unfortunately, they grow differently in Hawai段. The climate there causes them to grow taller and faster than in their homeland, and as a result the branches are too weak to hold their own weight and break frequently. This makes them undesirable in populated areas.

So back to the tubing: The tubing adventure is just a ride in an inner tube down some little canal that used to be used for transporting sugar cane. A number of tunnels along the canal were dug in the 1800's by immigrants. The tunnels were usually no smaller that 10 feet across and you could usually touch the ceiling if you reached high enough. We all had helmets and gloves along with a helmet mounted flashlight. In the middle of the longest tunnel we were all asked to turn off our lights. Talk about pitch black! At the end of the journey was the obligatory swimming hole dip and lunch. Since this company was a sister company of the one through which we did the zip 'n dip the day before, the lunch was almost identical. But it was still good. However, we didn't try any swimming this time, we just put our feet in the water for a few minutes. Overall the tubing adventure wasn't nearly as good as the Princeville zip 'n dip. The guides for the tubing were a bit obnoxious and not as welcoming, and we were expecting a little more excitement with the water, like going faster at times, twists and turns, stuff like that. But it was relatively tame throughout the tour. Overall the activity was still pretty fun, but we probably wouldn't recommend taking the time to do it if vacation time is limited.

After the tubing we went down the road into another Hilo Hattie where Damon got some macadamia brittle which was quite yummy. Amy picked up a CD by the group Hapa. The guitarist we saw at Tahiti Nui is in the Hapa group. That worked out so nicely, because with all the pretty Hawai段an music we had been hearing here and there, we had been thinking we would come back home with some, but we would not have known what to get. So instead of arbitrarily picking something, we were able to snag something with a memory attached.

From there we went looking for a new beach to do more snorkeling. Unfortunately the sun was setting and it was a bit chilly in wet clothes. We stopped at a couple of different beaches and tooled around, looking at shells and small sea life in the rocks, but we didn't go in the water. We also visited Spouting Horn just down the street from our condo. Spouting Horn is a hole in the rocks where the waves force air and water through making airy horn noise and blowing some water in the air. We got some good pictures and moved on.

We got back to the condo just in time to snap a few pictures of the sunset. We spent the rest of the night packing for Maui.