Nakalele Blowhole

On Monday, we went on a hike to the Nakalele Blowhole.  It was supposed to be this easy 30-minute hike from the parking lot to the blowhole, but since this was another unofficial hike, it was a little difficult to find the trail.  We ended up taking a different "trail" and ended up at the peak and had to rock climb down.  I'll have to admit, it was a little scary since we were so high up and the rocks weren't very stable and the lava rocks were so sharp it looked like they could easily cut into your skin.  But we eventually found it and the blowhole was that much more rewarding because of the difficulty we had in finding it.  

From my understanding, a blowhole is actually a lava tube that has an opening up top.  So the water from the ocean comes into it and the pressure is so strong that it spouts out of the top.  I don't really understand it, but it's pretty amazing to watch.  We actually saw a couple blowholes along our hike, but the Nakalele Blowhole was definitely the biggest.  It would "blow" almost every time the waves crashed... so about every 20 or 30 seconds.  Apparently how often and high the water shoots depends on the strength of the waves and this day ended up being great for it!

After seeing it, a pretty bad storm came in (probably why the waves were so good).  So our visit to the Olivine Pools was pretty muddy and not that appealing.  But the drive there was pretty interesting as a lot of rocks had fallen off of the cliffs 

 onto the road.  We also saw a lot of surfers racing to get to the good waves.  There was one little section of ocean with probably about 50 surfers taking advantage of the waves.  It was a pretty cool site to see!

We went to sushi at Sansei that night.  We were pretty hungry after our drive/hike, so we tried to get there right when it 

opened.  And a good thing we did.  Apparently they have a happy hour special and everything ordered before 6pm is 25% off for tourists, 50% off for locals.  The restaurant was packed when we got there (15 minutes after opening) and we actually got the last table!  Joe loved this sushi place.  It was a little fancy for me as we mostly got a lot of the special rolls and I normally like the simple sushi rolls... but it was still very tasty!