Dear Kauaiian Diary

NOTE: I will be editing, spell checking, and filling in names, photos, and other details later on. :O) As for now, here's my personal notes to remember our visit.

Stay tuned...

Kaui Vacation 2008

Friday June 20:
Good flight from P. to Honolulu; probably the smoothest take-off and landing that I’ve ever experienced. Both kids were excellent on the plane ride. Chubber got a little grumy toward the end of the first 5 hour leg, but B. took him up and down the aisle a few times and it seemed to help a lot. The short, 30 minute, flight from Honolulu to Lihue was also very smooth, in spite of the fact that we were on a very small aircraft.
Rented a Chevrolet Impala SS (B’s choice), and was amazed that the trunk comfortably accomodated all of our luggage (1 large suitcase, 1 small suitcase, 1 wheeled carry on case, 2 backpacks, 1 large dive bag, 1 computer briefcase, 1 DVD carrying case, and a partridge in a pear tree).
Drove through the 'Tunnel of Trees'--a naturally formed tunnel made by gigantic trees that arch over the road--to Poipu (Po'ipu) to get to our lodgings. Found our condominium with minimal trouble (we got lost once). It is a beautiful condo with 2 bedrooms, small living room, dining area, kitchen, 2 bathrooms and laundry closet. From the front balcony porch and master bedroom we have stunning views of the ocean and the mountains. There is no a/c, however with the windows open the ‘trade winds’ blow a strongly enough that it keeps us cool and comfortable.
After settling in, we went to the pool and swam for an hour or so. The kids had a blast, and we had fun too. Interestingly enough we were talking to a man who was at the pool, and through our conversation we discovered that he lives in Ocala, FL and was born in Williston. What a small world! I explained to him that Aunt J lives in Williston, and that S comes from a town called Wacahoota (sp?) and whatnot. The man’s name was L. C., and after we left the pool and called Dad and S, we were able to discover that Mr. C did in fact know S’s family. Again, what are the odds of running into someone from such a small part of the world that we have ties with? I think the chances of winning the Lottery is more likely.
Had dinner at a place called ‘Breneke’s’ that B loved from his first time to Kaui. Nice little open air restaurant, rather spendy, but as we’re discovering: everything in Kaui is expensive.
After dinner walked over to Breneke beach, where as the Kids and I were walking to the playground we discovered a toad hopping in the grass. Kai and Lani both loved seeing him hope along, and I had a tough time keeping them from touching it (I figured it was poisonous like the frogs/toads in Florida). After a short 10 minutes or so at the play structure, we walked over to the surf to watch the sun go down. As we were walking along B and Chub came upon the tiniest of sand crabs—no bigger than a quarter’s diamater. We all had a pleasant walk, barefoot, in the surf and sand.
What a lovely first day in Kaui.

Saturday, June 21:
Woke up at 3am sharp. Wide awake and ready to start my day. Too bad we needed to sleep another 3 hours to make getting up decent. The kids suffered from jet-lag, too. Had a tough time getting them to go back down to bed (including a poop-on-the-floor incident (yuck!)), but eventually they conceeded to play quietly in their room.

Enjoyed a lovely sunrise from the front porch, followed by coffee and breakfast outside, too. Before the kids got up as I was going inside for a refill of my coffee I noticed something little on the carpet. I thought it was a dead, dried-out lizard, but when I got down close to look at it, it was a tiny little gecko! B was so surprised, as he’d never seen on so little before. Me, being who I am, told B to grab a cup from the kitchen so we could scoop the little thing up and show it to the kids. Both kids loved seeing the tiny creature. We let them each hold it in their hand. Even in the kids’ hands it looked tiny—it was about a ½ centimeter wide and maybe an inch and a half long. We’re having so much fun with all the wildlife here in the islands, an enjoying seeing the kids’ sense of wonder and their joy in the simplest of things. I imagine when they are asked what their favorite part about Hawaii was they’ll no doubt say: “the chickens, the baby gecko, and the frog!”
Started the morning searching for the elusive Foodmart that Mr. C told us about (best food prices in the vicinity). En route took a detour down a road to see a waterfall [find name of waterfall from photos taken]. While viewing the waterfall, saw an ancient Hawaiian [prayer sacrifice alter place]. The kids weren’t impressed with

either feature, but sure did have a blast chasing the wild chickens and their chicks. Tried to see { } arborateum, but the road into the actual facility was flooded, and was impassible in a car—though did see a few trucks ‘ford’ the road. The scenery was absolutely amazing. As we climbed up the road and into the lower mountains you could physically detect a change in climate: it changed from beachy type conditions into bonified jungle—humid, close, and about 10 degrees cooler. I am at a loss for words to actually do any justice to describing the lush vegetation. My photographs will have to do the talking.
Finally got round to Foodland. It was similar in prices to the Safeway or Roth’s stores on the mainland. Expensive, but in comparison to some of the closer local shops (Foodland was in W-I [check town name from map North of Lihue]. The local food shops listed a gallon of milk at over $8, whereas Foodland had it for $5. I picked up a ‘club card’ to get the ‘local’ prices. We left $103 lighter in the pocketbook, but I believe we have enough food for breakfast, lunch, and most dinners to eat at home. The cost of eating out is so expensive as to be prohibitive.

It is now 3:20pm, and we have finished our simple lunch of sandwiches, chips, grapes, and water. Well, all of us except Chubbers. Mr. Andersen has been asserting his “two-ness” to the Nth degree for the past week. As soon as he decides to eat ONE single grape, we will be off to Poipu beach. That is how I have time to write right now, Chub is being stubborn, and I’m taking advantage of the down-time. I do hope he decides to eat soon. I really want to go play at the beach!
Finally won. Chublet ate not only one, but two grapes! Went swimming at Brenneke beach. Came home, ate bbq burgers, rice and had chocolate ice cream. Went for a walk over to the Kaui Poipu Grand Hyatt. BEAUTIFUL grounds. Spent 2+ hours. Saw little girls do hula show.

Sunday June 22:
Going to try out church in HI. Interesting service, very contemporary and the kids loved going to the nursery.
Waimea Canyon—see pictures. Picnic in Waimea canyon (PS: don't you just love that guy's butt? Yeah. Me too. Makes it look so classy).

Went to Kaui Coffee Company tour, very cool. Learned a lot about coffee, including that 60% of the WORLD’S coffee comes from Kaui Coffee. Then went to the Salt Pond park, outside of Hanapepe. A lot of fun, full of locals. Big fat undertow, but nobody got swept out to sea.
Came back into town and had dinner at Poipu Beach Broiler—great food, expensive price. For two ‘bar menu’ dinners, one kids meal, an orange juice, and two Mai Tais (plus tip) we were out $50. OUCH!
Then a relaxing evening at home, as we were all bushed.

Monday June 23:
A relaxing day. Visited Kilohana (meaning: unsurpassed) Plantation. In its heyday it was the most expensive and extravagant home in all of Kauai. It was built in the 1930’s by sugar tycoon George Wilcox for his wife, who wanted a house as fancy as any that could be found in Hollywood. In its day 40,000 acres of sugarcane was planted and harvested by the 12 hour work day. Today, the estate is still run by family members but is only a fraction of that. They no longer harvest sugar cane (interesting fact about sugar cane: it takes one whole 6’ tall cane to produce only one tablespoon of sugar), but instead harvest fruits and plants for botanical spa products. We chose to tour the plantation via plantation train. Chub and Peanut loved it! It was a fun way to see a smidgen of what plantation life looked like ‘back in the day.’ To this day, some people who work on the plantation still live in the original plantation ‘shacks’ (small homes) that were used by the original workers.
Inside of Kilohana there is one room (living room) restored to its former lavish glory, with the remainder of the interior open to the public to enjoy: an expensive restaurant called Gaylord’s (think $25+ per plate), and various artisan shops selling Kauai made products.
After visiting Kilohana, we tried to find the Alakoko Menehune Fish Pond. Call us lame or crazy, we found a beautiful lookout point, but no success in actually finding the swimming area of the pond. So, we went, instead, to Nawiliwili Beach to play in the ocean and dig in the sand. It never ceases to amaze me just how content the children can be to simply dig in the sand. They can dig for 45 minutes or more without stopping. Our trip to the beach ended when mother nature decided it was time to water the vegetation (rain). But, that was OK since the kiddies were getting tired, us too.
After a morning at the beach and a nice nap for the kiddies we went to the condo’s pool to splash and play. It was absolutely delicious: the air was warm and humid and the pool was cool and refreshing. Sometimes it is just perfect to hang around ‘home.’




Tuesday June 24:
Went into Lihue to do some shopping. No visit to Hawaii, at least for our family, is complete without a trip to Hilo Hattie’s to get ripped off buying a Hawaii shirt. We spent about an hour or so looking around, and managed to find goodies to take home to family and friends as well as ‘outfits’ for each of us (at 40% discount, whoo hoo!) to wear for our evening’s festivities—a Luau!
Headed out to Wailua around 4pm to go to the requisite Luau. How can you possibly come to Hawaii and not go to a Luau? You can’t. So, we chose to check out the Smith Family Garden Luau. Interesting fact: by booking though ‘Activity Warehouse’ we saved about $130 on our Luau over booking through Smith’s itself. Weird, huh?
Smith’s Luau? Yes, Smith. I don’t suppose you could get any more English of a name if you tried, but we gave it a shot anyway. The grounds boast 30 acres of lush tropical gardens, ranging from local Hawaiian plant varieties to Japanese and Philippino. The gardens were spectacular, in a word. Once we were admitted to the grounds we hopped onto a little tram (think tractor pulling wagons with seats) to take us through the gardens with a narration of the plants. It was cool, because we got to learn a lot about different plant varieties, and I got to finally get a name to put to the most interesting plant that I find everywhere here: spider lilly. The kids loved the tram ride, well, because it was a ride and because they got to throw heaping handfulls of birdseed to the myriad of chickens and peacocks. Yep, peacocks. B’s favorite bird—we weren’t terribly impressed with the royal turkeys because of our old neighbor having them and us constantly finding them on our back porch, driveway, roof…. But, the kids sure got a kick out of them. We also were treated since it is mating season, the males had all their plumes fanned out to impress.
The dinner was good. We were seated next to a friendly single-mom family from California whom we talked to at length. She told us some of the tidbits about Kauai that she found helpful and was, in general, a lovely dinner companion. The food was good, although not as good as other Luau’s that we’ve been to (I rated it about a 6 out of 10 in comparaison to the Polynesian Cultural Center’s –-a 10+). There was macaroni salad, cucumber salad, green salad, sweet-n-sour mahi-mahi, Kahlua pig, bbq chicken, fried rice, mashed potatoes, mixed steamed veggies, and, of course, Poi. (blech! If you’ve never had it, think eating purple Elmer’s glue). Following this spread was a fruit/dessert table: mangoes, pineapple (all that Chubb would eat—nothing else), coconut milk jello, coconut white cake, and Peanut’s favorite: rice pudding. We also got to partake in AYCE mai-tais, but after one, I was sufficiently sugared out and turned to coffee.
The dinner show/hula show was decent. There were dances from Japan, China, Philippines, Fiji, New Zealand, Samoa, and Hawaii. Our favorite dances had to be the Fiji men’s and women’s dancing (the fast grass-skirt hip shaking dances—Hawaii’s hula dances do NOT involve grass skirts, that’s from Fiji). But the bes of all was the Samoan Fire Knife Dancing. It is always the best.
Peanut and Chub did pretty good through dinner and the show. Though, by 1/3 of the way through the dancing show Peanut was begging to go home and go ‘night-night.’ Chubbers was absolutely rivited to the dancing the whole show.
Both little kiddies crashed on the way home from the Luau. What a lovely way to end our day.

Wednesday June 25:
Headed out to the beach again, just this time we went to Lydgate Park, just south of Wailua on the East Coast of Kauai. What a great park! It was just perfect for the kids, and B and I managed (with children in innertubes in tow) to get in some snorkeling, too! We saw all sorts of fish, some of the fish we saw were: Unicorn Fish, Needle Fish, Moorish Idol, Eye-Stripe Surgeonfish, Saddleback Wrasse, Yellowfin Goatfish, Bandtailed Goatfish, Ornate Butterfly Fish, Longnosed Butterfly fish, Convict Tang, Seargeant Major, Blue Crevalle among others! Chub cried most of the time we snorkeled, Peanut loved it! She got such a kick out of being the ‘helper’ to hold the rocks and shells we found.
While in the kiddie area Chub-chub was the master of finding little blue crabs (about the size of a mini-bagel). He has the most amazing little eyes! I would likely have never spotted them, but he sure found them easily. It was fun watching this tiny little boy crawling around the rocks and where the breakers hit standing so still, only to discover he had found marine life all on his own.
B has been obsessed with going to this hamburger joint called ‘Bubba Burgers,’ so after leaving Lydgate park we finally indulged his obsession and went to have lunch at the place that touts that “We cheat tourists, drunks, and attorneys” on its sign (pretty creative, if not honest!). The burgers, drinks, fries, onion rings, and a t-shirt (for B) came to $47.50. Ouch! The food was OK, but nothing to write home about. But, at least B’s itch has been scratched.
Then, a quick trip to Foodland for provisions, and back to home. We are just loving the beach and the laid-back atmosphere here. This white girl is getting less white (think: I don’t look like like the milky-bluish color of skim anymore), and Brent…well, another few days and he will be as dark as a local. The kids? I’ve been doing well by them with the SPF 50 (they have a tiny bit of a tan, and no burn!).