Waimea Canyon in Kauai, Hawaii
Waimea Canyon is called the "Grand Canyon of the Pacific" for a very good reason. Just LOOK at it! Adam and I visited the canyon after snorkeling at Poipu Beach and were blown away by how very majestic it was.
We quickly regretted booking our Hawaii trip so last minute because Kauai was gorgeous and we really wished we could have stayed and explored more of the island. But sadly, we only had a day and a half there to see as much as possible before we left for Oahu. (Oahu was beautiful too, don't get me wrong! But the scenery in Kauai is just crazy different.)
Waimea is Hawaiian for "reddish water" and I can definitely see why the canyon earned its name. The soil there was so red, it almost didn't look real. The canyon is 10 miles long, and roughly 3,000 feet deep.
I couldn't decide which part of the paragraph below to include, so I'm just going to include all of it because it's too interesting not to!
"The canyon has a unique geologic history as it was formed not only by the steady process of erosion but also by a catastrophic collapse of the volcano that created Kauai. Like the other Hawaiian islands, Kauai is the top of an enormous volcano rising from the ocean floor. With lava flows dated to about 5 million years ago, Kauai is the oldest of the large Hawaiian islands. Roughly 4 million years ago, while Kauai was still erupting almost continuously, a portion of the island collapsed. This collapse formed a depression which then filled with lava flows. In the time since, rainwater from the slopes of Mount Waiʻaleʻale have eroded Waimea Canyon along one edge of the collapse. On the east side of the canyon, the cliff walls are built from thick lava flows that pooled in the depression. Over time, the exposed basalt has weathered from its original black to bright red." (source)
How insane is that??
We wandered around near Mount Wai'ale'ale (which happens to be one of the wettest places on earth) and took in the views. We saw lots of hikers coming up over the hill and they were covered nearly head to toe in red soil. What a messy place!
Mount Wai'ale'ale's elevation is 5,148 feet, and at the summit, it averages more than 373 inches of rain per year. (Wai'ale'ale literally means "overflowing water" in Hawaiian.) There were chickens up there too, of course...
After our adventure, we returned to the ocean and took one last dip before we had to leave for the airport. We really lucked out while we were in Kauai because the weather was beautiful the majority of the time, even though it's obviously a very wet place! It only sprinkled a bit on our first night, and then down-poured for 20 or so minutes on our way to the airport the next night, but other than that, we almost completely missed the rain.
Our Earth is such a magnificent place and I feel so fortunate every time I'm able to travel somewhere new and witness beauty like this up close.
More Hawaii posts soon, I promise! As always, thanks for reading. xo