Kauai (part 4)

A bit further south of the Waimea River, where it joins the sea, is another complex of heiau. The Hikinaakala is one of them. It served as a place to worship the sun. It was constructed around 1300 and served as a refuge for people who had broken kapu (taboo).

Not far from it, close to the shore is huge rock with several motifs. This is a very eye-catching one, pecked and incised, and therefore post-contact:

We also visited the Kauai Coffee Company. Starting as a sugar plantation, it diversified after it was bought form the Kauai Coffee Company and after the hurricane Iniki destroyed most of the crop they decided to concentrate on coffee. Since 1996 it has been the biggest coffee producer of all the Hawaiian islands.

So you can visit, walk through the coffe garden with different coffe plants, gaze at old coffee roasting machines and try out different coffees, with or without addes flavours. But to be honest I like the Kona coffee much much more.

There are also lovely flowers in their garden like this Bougainvillea:


Quick! What colour are the flowers of the Bougainvilleas? You are probably wrong ;). I'll tell you at end.

I then wanted to find some rock art, but the book I have is horrible. The guy that wrote it was never there and just cited sources from the 30s and 50s. He gave me a really hard time. We didn't find the rock art, however, we landed at Glass Beach. The beach is in the middle of an industrial zone with petroleum tanks etc. So not a nice place to swim, the current is so strong here that you would probably be smashed at the rocky shore anyway. Besides, it was used over long times as the garbage desposal area. But exactly this is what makes it so interesting. Smashed glass bottles and containers were shredded and roundes by the sea, which looks like this:




On close look you can see green and brown 'sea glass', but also rarer colours like blue and aquamarine:

http://www.thehawaiitraveler.com/2008/06/sea-glass-by-the-seashore-kauais-glass-beach/

The area was quite interesting, too. It looked a bit creepy:

And some people are still offering at the cliffs, like this offer consisting of three animal skulls:



PS the flower is white, have a close look. The colourful ones are bracts (Hochblätter wie beim Weihnachtsstern).