Читать книгу Kauai Trails. Walks strolls and treks on the Garden Island онлайн

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When you’re on foot, Kauai’s rugged landscape seems to be faceted like a diamond, so that with every few steps you take, it reveals a new face to you. The rain may fill one face with rainbows, another with waterfalls flying down sheer cliffs. Where rain is abundant, as on the northern shore, luxuriant vegetation envelopes the landscape, softening its lines and muting its colors. Infrequent rain, as on the southwest coast, yields dry golden dunes stretching along the sea for miles and bare red cliffs soaring behind them. Inland, dense banks of ferns dotted with wild orchids set off abandoned roads whose eroded surfaces may display an astonishing array of colors. Cascades barely glimpsed from the highway show themselves to the hiker as immense falls, like Namolokama, the great waterfall that leaps down into Hanalei Valley. Dozens of unnamed waterfalls may be apparent, from broad ribbons of white to stairstep cascades to fragile wisps blowing in the wind. A stroll down a cane road shows you how the clipped, gray-green carpets of the canefields unfold across the plains and stop abruptly at the shaggy, dark green mountains of the forest reserves.