Our Hawaiian Adventure: Ziplining

When we decided to go to Hawaii, I knew one of the things I wanted to do was zipline. On Saturday August 17 at 7:15am we arrived at Outfitters Kauai which was about 5 minutes from our rental. Because of the 5 hour time change arriving at 7:15am was no problem at all. We felt like it was 12:15pm which is actually why I scheduled this early day early on in our trip.

This five hour tour took place about 15 minutes from the Outfitters Kauai office at Kipu Ranch. This is a private ranch that allows a few companies to do zipline, ATV tours etc. on their property. It is a gorgeous property  and -as you will hear all over Kauai- parts of Jurassic Park were filmed here.

There were nine different ziplines with five of them being tandem. Two of the lines allowed you to go upside down. The first three lines were down in the jungle while the last six were atop the jungle. I did not get very many pictures as the camera I was using was not very zipline friendly. Several of the people in our tour group had GoPro cameras which were perfect for the occasion. I do not have any pictures of us zipping over the jungle but it was pretty amazing.

 Note: Did you notice JP's terrible mustache? He had grown out a beard and has a tendency to shave off parts at a time instead of shaving it all off at one time. He came to Kauai with this mustache. We had a deal that he had to shave it off at the half way point of the trip.

The tour included a backpack. The top part of the backpack was used to place our personal items. The bottom part was a cooler that included a turkey wrap, pasta salad, cookie, water and Hawaiian juice for each person.

Along the trail between zips our guide pointed out this blue flowers stating that they are edible. You better believe JP, who once ate a poisonous bean at the desert botanical garden in Arizona, ate these flowers which apparently tasted like mushrooms. We also found lemon guava along the way which were really good. Thankfully our guide warned us that the things that looked like cherry tomatoes were not tomatoes but something highly poisonous.
 

We had a great time ziplining! The last line was 1800 feet long and one of our favorites. I will say that although I am somewhat afraid of heights- which I discovered at the Grand Canyon- I felt completely save doing this and had no fear at all.

After completing the nine ziplines, we walked down to a natural pool where we swam and zipped into the water for about 30 minutes.

After our zipline tour we went back to our rental and relaxed on the lanai for a few hours. We then headed down to Brennecke's Beach for the rest of the afternoon.

After spending time on the beach we headed to dinner at the Savage Shrimp. This ended up being one of the worst restaurant experiences we have ever had. It was so weird and random that it made us laugh. These are the three main reasons for our feelings of dislike

1. We had to wait ~30 minutes to receive our food which seemed to be a long time for this type of restaurant. When we walked into the restaurant, it was empty so there was no one with an order ahead of us. We also did not like how you placed your order at the counter and did not initially pay but had to go back up to the counter and wait in line after you had eaten to actually pay.
   
2. If the food had been good, the wait would not have been that big of a deal. However, the fish tacos were the worst fish tacos my husband and I have ever had. The fish was incredibly tough and we coined it "fish jerky." We could not finish it. We also got one of the shrimp plates that included peeled shrimp. It was ok but not anything spectacular.
   
3. The thing that put us over the top was the cat. The doors were open to the restaurant and the cat kept going in and out. If the cat had just stayed in the dining section it would have been bad but not terrible. The cat, however, slipped under the partition between the dining section and the kitchen several times. So, at times, there was a cat in the kitchen. 

After our not so good dinner, we decided to go to the grocery store and buy ice cream and take it back to our rental to eat. We went to bed pretty early that night as we were still not completely adjusted to the time change.