Kauai 2013 day 8, part 2

And the second part of the day, beginning with a shot I took of a taro field as we waited in traffic:

A palm tree with some interesting foliage hanging from its trunk; you can see a bit of the car in the lower left corner:

For a bit of perspective, that's a myna sitting on top of the white stuff:

A look at the reason why we had to wait: construction crews were busy shoring up this hillside against future washouts:

Not the best pic, but I thought it worth sharing because it features two birds that are both endemic to Hawaii and on the endangered species list. The dark bird with the red on its head, seen towards the left side of the image, is a Hawaiian Moorhen. The dark birds with white on their heads are Hawaiian Coots:

Some shots of the gorgeous Anini Beach, which I was seeing for the first time:

That white structure out on the point you can see in this photo? That's the Kilauea Lighthouse. 

I had a hard time choosing between the next two shots; they're similar, but different things appealed to me in each. In the first, I really liked the look and color of the waves:

And in this one, I liked the contrast of the beach against the blues and greens:

Zoomed right in on the lighthouse:

With this one, I was trying to include a variety of elements: the foliage in the foreground, the ginormous piece of driftwood in the middle, and the shoreline/lighthouse in the background:

We spotted a whale breaching quite close to shore as we drove along, but by the time we pulled over, parked, and got over on the sand, this was the only really decent shot of the whale I ended up getting:

Since the level of travel congestion can be hit or miss when going to Kapa'a, where our dinner destination was located,  we ended up being plenty early for our reservation. I decided to wander along the sidewalk a ways, and ended up spotting this green anole during my travels:

Climbing up a step of a nearby building:

I offered a tissue, but the anole seemed to have little interest in wiping its latest meal off its nose:

Dinner was at Kintaro's, a Japanese restaurant that features both sushi and a teppanyaki area, where you get to watch the chef prepare the meal on a smoking hot iron griddle. While the surface was warming, Dad and I enjoyed some terrific seared tuna:

One of the highlights of the teppanyaki experience is the onion volcano. The chef slices an onion half, stacks the slices on each other in a cone, then pours a trail of some sort of flammable liquid between the onion and the side of the grill. He lights a separate section of the liquid, then uses his finger to drag the flame onto the trail leading to the volcano. The result can be pretty spectacular:

And a look at my finished meal, teriyaki chicken. Great stuff.