Life is beautiful and ominous here at Ali’i Kai 7203. The wind is almost always blowing and the waves are constantly coming in. I watch them through a small ravine that cuts through the cliff and leads down to the ocean – but I can see the great Pacific before me. It has so many moods and is forever changing and moving. Right now, the swell is pretty small but the wind waves are creating a lot of chop on the surface of the water and making white caps that appear and disappear. The swells here travel thousands of miles away from storms on the Baring Sea.

View from Ali’i Kai

I love going to sleep and waking up to the sound of the ocean. There is a constant water-rushing sound but then also the crashing of waves on the cliffs below. I always think of waves as the ocean’s way of breathing. It’s the back and forth of the waves and the constant exchange of oxygen as the foam forms and releases. When the surf is high, it’s actually so loud I need to shut my windows or else I’ll get woken up by the continual pounding. High surf hitting the cliffs sounds like when a freight train is slowing down and all of the cars bang into each other in a thunderous succession as the waves roll down the shoreline.

Humpback Whale waving its dorsal fin

Whales are a near constant sight out in the deep water. They have all sorts of movements that no doubt are meaningful to other whales but not to me. They sometimes stick their dorsal fins clear out of the water and wave them around before whacking them down on the water. Yesterday, I watched an individual stick his tail out of the water, wave it and slap it on the water surface at least 6 times in a row before going back under the blue abyss. After coming up for air, sometimes they display their whole tail as they dive deep under. The most exciting show is when an individual ejects itself completely out of the water and slaps down making a huge splash. This event can be seen for quite a ways off and I have discovered the difficulty of trying to catch such an event on film because you never know exactly where they’re going to come up.

Red-crested Cardinal

So many birds are present here at our condo. We’ve seen the Red-crested Cardinal, Northern Cardinal, Pacific Golden Plover, Spotted Dove, Zebra Dove, Common Myna, Cattle Egret, Nene (Hawaiian Goose), Chestnut Munia, Nutmeg Mannikin, Moa (Red Junglefoul/Wild Chicken), Great Frigatebird, and last but certainly not least, the beautiful and graceful Laysan Albatross. The albatross ride the wind currents rising up the cliffs along the shoreline. Their long pointed wings allow them to move through the air barely having to beat their wings. Less than a mile from here, the albatross’ are laying and sitting on their eggs.

Ne Ne (Hawaiian Goose)

The Nene (pronounced like “nay nay”) is a silly and fun bird to watch. They almost always travel in pairs. In the mornings, they sometimes fly in groups of four or five and will land on the grass between the condo and the cliff. They make a big racket for a few minutes after they land, honking and squawking at each other with head down. On the Big Island and Maui, these birds are hard to find, but here they are plentiful, especially on golf courses and other grassy areas. These birds were nearly extinct on the Islands but they were reintroduced on Kauai years ago and have really become very plentiful here. They’re smaller than our Canada Geese back home and are quite beautiful to look at.