On Kauai, It's More Fun Wet Than Dry

We do our part to clean up the plate of free samples before heading onward to the town of Hanalei, seven miles from the end of the road that encircles most of the island. "Idyllic" is a word that should be used sparingly, but as a laid-back beach town with great scenery, Hanalei comes close.

At the heart of town, which sits at the foot of steep green hills rising into the mist as if in a Chinese brush painting, seafood restaurants cluster near a small shopping center. Dirt lanes lead past houses on stilts to the beach, and traffic comes to a halt at numerous one-lane bridges, where etiquette dictates you must wait for all oncoming traffic to cross before proceeding. It's a good place to help fight the urge to do something all the time.

We buy fish and corn chowder at the market for dinner, and watch the sun set from our hotel balcony. A boy fishes in the surf below as his father casts a net into the water. Tomorrow is the big paddle, and we want to be rested and ready for a pre-dawn departure.

Sacred Scenery

Two hours into the kayak trip, we've gotten into the groove.

Three-foot swells seem a lot higher from kayak level, but with two people in each bright-yellow boat, working the double-bladed paddles isn't that difficult. After a while, the motion becomes almost hypnotic.

A tailwind doesn't hurt, either. We shudder to think of what paddling into the wind must be like. ("If people bonk [collapse], we paddle them," says Webb. "One guy paid $350 to be taken back by motorboat.") Our guides lead us into caves carved by the ocean, where a group of dolphins passes in a series of smooth gray arcs in the water. Waterfalls spill from hanging valleys overhead. Sea turtles seem to be everywhere.

After an extended lunch break -- the guides packed sandwiches -- at Milolii Beach, we continue past Honopu Valley, which we'd glimpsed from above during our hike out the Honopu trail. Accessible only by water, Honopu Beach is considered one of the most beautiful in Hawaii, if not the Pacific, but landing any sort of craft is forbidden. (Unless you're a Hollywood director, apparently -- the 1976 remake of "King Kong" and 1998's "Six Days Seven Nights" feature scenes shot here.) The valley is sacred to the Hawaiians, who once buried their kings here. The men who buried them, it was said, would then kill themselves to keep the location a secret.

It's another hour to the end of the trip at Polihale State Park. We help load the kayaks onto a trailer behind the pickup van and drive three-quarters of the way back around the island to Hanalei and a well-earned breather. For the moment, though, as we watch a waterfall cascade from a thousand-foot cliff of green near a sea arch the size of a school bus, we're happy to stay in shaker mode a little while longer.

Julian Smith last wrote for Travel about hiking in Sedona, Ariz. For a photo gallery with additional images of Kauai and the surrounding area, go to www.washingtonpost.com/travel.