Week 52 Kauai, Hawaii

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I had two Wednesdays this week as I left Australia on Wednesday evening and flew all night on the 10 hour leg to Honolulu where I arrived slightly dazed and confused early on another Wednesday morning. There is a 20 hour time difference between the two countries which took a few days to adjust to, but it was fun having my own mini Groundhog Day and I enjoyed having an extra day in my life. Its also a year since I started this trip, which is kind of special too.

I grabbed a shuttle bus to an airport hotel where I spent the night and flew out first thing the next morning to the “Garden Island” of Kauai. Its a bit of a pain having to be at the airport 2 hours before the 30 minute internal flight, but it was all smooth and the Go-Mokulele flight itself was uneventful, apart from getting half-priced drinks as the first and last flight of this airline have happy hour - I had water as it was 8am. As there were no shuttle buses at Lihue airport, I grabbed an expensive taxi to get me the 15 minute drive to my hotel half way up the East coast at Wailua where I had booked a lovely one bedroom condo with an oblique view of the sea. The beach here is rocky and the water is too dangerous to swim in, but its nice to be able to leave your balcony door open and hear the sounds of the waves and the property has beautiful gardens and a nice warm pool.

I spent most of the second day on a hunt for an electrical adaptor as there were none for sale at the airport. The staff at the hotel were less than helpful so I trudged about a mile in the sticky heat to some shops where I was assured I could get the socket convertor. Nope. Next I was pointed further down the road by a very kind and friendly lady who was helpful enough to phone the next shop who confirmed they stocked adaptors. Another mile and a rainstorm later I arrived at the hardware shop sweating and with my soggy clothes gently steaming as the rain evaporated in the 90 degree temperatures. I spent nearly an hour and had several fruitless conversations with various members of their staff before we ascertained that the only convertors they had were for USA to Europe and not the other way around. Bugger. I limped back to the first shops where I took a risk and bought the only plug that looked as if it may work, then finally back to my hotel with several blisters and a really bad mood. Happily it worked, but I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard “wow, you don’t have a car ?!!!” during that exercise.

The next few days were a great improvement as I had adjusted to the time and humidity and was in a beautiful place. I chilled out reading books, swam a little in the pool and started to work my way down the cocktail list. The restaurant was on the pricey side but I had a couple of delicious meals there. Luckily the Coconut Market shopping area was right next door to my hotel, with 50 small shops selling mainly tourist tat and clothes but with a few cheap food stalls and a small general store that had some food items. I bought stuff to make breakfasts in my apartment but had the occasional tasty lunch at these food stalls and one memorable breakfast of a short stack of buttermilk pancakes with hot bananas and coconut sauce. Wicked.

I had my first Hawaiian Shaved Ice here too, where the ice is not crushed but finely shaved from a large block so that it is feathery light, then piled high on a plastic bowl and drenched in the fruit sauce of your choice. The place I went to had 30 different flavours to choose from and you can get icecream added to the concoction too if you wanted. You get a spoon and a straw and have to pace yourself to avoid the excruciating ice-headache that paralyse you with pain if you are too greedy. Even the smallest size was huge, which is pretty much the norm for all food portioning here and I found that often I would order a couple of appetisers rather than the colossal main courses that were big enough to feed a small army.

There are hundreds of tour options but I eventually decided on two that would cover most of what I wanted to see - a day tour around the island with a trip to the famous Waimea Canyon and a real treat and indulgence of an hour-long helicopter tour that flew over the areas that are inaccessible any other way. The island has spectacular scenery and has been the setting for dozens of famous movies including Jurassic Park, King Kong, Lord of the Flies and Raiders of the Lost Ark and the more gentle South Pacific and From Here to Eternity. We stopped at the remains of the Coco Palms Hotel made famous by Elvis in Blue Hawaii, that was abandoned after a terrible hurricane caused severe damage in the 1990’s.

The island tour was a lovely day, even though the guide got a little annoying by persistently quizzing us on the Hawaiian names he tried to teach us for everything. The language is not easy with few consonants and zillions of vowels but does sound beautiful when its spoken by the locals. We butchered it and probably got things all wrong as many of the words mean something completely different if you use an incorrect inflection or just miss off one letter. For instance a luau is a feast but lua is a toilet, so you can get yourself in a pickle. After a couple of pickups including getting 3 people from the airport who had flown in from Oahu for a day trip, we set off with only 10 of us so we managed to fit in some extra stops and had plenty of room to spread out on the bus.

Our first stop was at the Spouting Horn, where two blowholes make roaring and rumbling sounds and one produces a 20 foot tall spout of water every minute or so. The holes are formed by ancient lava tubes and the noise is said to be the breathing of a giant dragon according to local folklaw. The place was swarming with chickens that run wild over the whole island, with the black-legged ones being native. The birds were released during the hurricane and never recaptured and as there are no natural predators on the island they have flourished. They did try to bring mongoose onto the island to combat the rodent population infesting the sugar fields which would have been a predator, but when the crate arrived in the harbour in 1883 one of the animals bit the hand of a sailor who then threw the whole crate overboard, so no mongoose arrived in Kauai. The chickens can be rather noisy as the roosters seem to crow at all times day and night but they are multi-coloured and attractive, the baby chicks are really cute and its hilarious when you see them crossing the roads using the pedestrian crossings. They are everywhere but nobody seems to know how many there are - no reason to count their chickens I guess.

Its weird coming from Australia which probably has the highest number of toxic and deadly flora and fauna on the Planet to an island where almost nothing can harm you. The most dangerous wildlife seems to be a few feral pigs, a couple of “pesky” spiders and wasps and the only harmful plant is the oleander shrub that the locals call the Be Still bush as its poisonous. The only other thing you are warned about here is the red earth that can indelibly stain your clothes and shoes - in fact they have turned this into an attraction with a locally produced range of dyed Red Dirt Shirts which look bloody awful but its pretty potent stuff as it only takes one bucket of red Kauai mud to dye 500 shirts - but although its tasteless its hardly life-threatening.

We passed through several agricultural areas that have recently moved from sugar plantations, which stopped production here 2 years ago, to growing coffee, macadamia nuts, large crops of corn and a whole range of tropical fruits. There are lots of the slim elegant bendy Hawaiian palm trees around that are extremely tall and are the height limit for any building on the island. Kauai only has small towns and villages and the four-storey limit keeps the place looking attractive and quaint, unlike its sister islands of Maui and Oahu where there are huge cities of highrise skyscrapers, so out of keeping with the lush tropical landscape. There is always an exception to every rule and here its the Marriott Hotel which is taller than 4 levels, but recently strengthened building laws will stop that happening again. The other main contributor to the “garden island” character is the abundance of flowers and fruit growing everywhere and the higher level of rainfall that keeps everything lush and green.

We stopped for a while at the Kauai Coffee plantation where we got to sample dozens of different blends including various nut, vanilla and chocolate flavours. One lady was extremely concerned that her non-coffee-drinking husband was going to be kept up all night as he chomped on the delicious chocolate covered coffee beans that were also available, but as it takes 4,000 beans to make one pound of coffee I don’t think that was likely to be an issue. They also had a wall-less maze that was actually just a twisty path through the coffee bushes, but it did have interesting information posted on signs along the route explaining more about the production process. The harvest was due to start in a few weeks and the bushes were laden with ripe berries.

We got to Waimea Canyon, known as the “Grand Canyon of the Pacific” by late morning and stood in awe gazing at the colours in the layered rocks that constantly changed in the dappled light as the heavy rainclouds passed overhead, leaving small bright sunny gaps that made the red and ochre colours in the rocks pop out. We were over 3,000 feet up on the rim with brilliant views along part of the 10 mile long slash in the Earth but could not really see the Waimea river that runs at the base and has formed the gorge over millions of years. We could see several waterfalls including glimpses of 800 foot tall Waipo’o Falls. We stayed for quite a while taking in the views and trying to get decent photographs in the constantly changing light, then gorged ourselves on juicy sweet fresh fruit for sale at a stall in the Lookout carpark.

Lunch was at a golf club restaurant in the southern coastal area of Poipu with wonderful views of the mountains and the cloud shrouded Mount Wai’ale’ale on the horizon, which is the wettest place on Earth with annual rainfall between 400-700 inches, and the manicured grounds of the golf course around us. We were entertained by a series of golfers using the practice putting green in front of us, more by their gaudy outfits than their skill with a stick...club...putter...whatever.

We made a few other stops during the early afternoon to see old sugar mills, waterfalls and a few important cultural monuments such as the Birthing Stone where all royal babies had to be born in ancient times. Some of the group had opted for an extra trip on the river to the Fern Grotto where lots of people get married and you were entertained by a singing hula group, but I decided to put the extra bucks towards buying the front seat in the helicopter tour that I did a couple of days later. I enjoyed the day and although it was a pretty packed itinerary from 8am to 4pm, we had travelled around more than half of the island and seen many of the islands amazing vistas.

Two days later I was picked up at 7am by the helicopter company and driven to the airport where we were given safety talks, weighed and sorted into seats. I had paid a premium for one of the 2 front seats but had opted for the earliest flight as the cost was slightly reduced - I don’t think people want to get up that early on their holidays. There were 6 of us in total and we had to pose for photos before boarding as the company makes money from selling these and a DVD of your flight - I didn’t bother. You are advised to wear dark clothing to minimise the reflections on the windows that ruin photos, but you are also given a luminous yellow lifejacket pouch to wear around your waist that will probably appear reflected in many of my shots. Our pilot Jon was softly spoken but gave a constant commentary that was easy to hear over the noise-cancelling earphones.

The extra money on the “first class” seat was well worth it as I had a brilliant view, both front and sideways plus a small area of glass by my feet. However what I saw has not really translated that well onto my photos as along with the rain staining the glass there was quite a bit of vibration that ruined many shots and when the sun shone there was a lot of glare - anyhow you will get some idea of the stunning scenes we saw. We headed north over the first set of mountains where we hit rain for a short time and saw a full circle rainbow. The mountains are full of triangular shaped peaks with rows of rippled cliffs covered in bright green rainforest, topped by a thick canopy of trees resembling a patchwork quilt when you are above it. As we skimmed over yet another ridge we suddenly saw the whole of Waimea Canyon below us and we then flew down the red-layered sides to travel along several miles of the gorge that I had admired from the Lookout on the ground a couple of days earlier.

We reached the sea along the north-east Na Pali coast where the shallow water was green and clear enough to see the coral formations and dark blue as it got deeper away from the shore The jungle-covered razor-sharp cliffs and ripped ridges of old lava flows were fascinating and you could see why most of this area is totally impenetrable. Kauai is the oldest island in Hawaii, formed over 5 million years ago from a volcanic hot-spot in the ocean resulting in an island with 111 miles of coastline. We flew over a couple of lovely sandy coves backed by thick rainforest that are only accessible by boat or by doing the arduous 22 mile long Na Pali coastal trek and saw dozens of waterfalls feeding small streams that flowed into the sea. We also skirted around the large horse-shoe shaped bay by Hanalei, the most northern resort area that many people think is the mystical town mentioned in the song Puff the Magic Dragon.

We turned in towards the centre of the island and over several more mountain ridges before climbing up to the rim of the huge crater of the extinct volcano Mount Wai’ale’ale. Jon steered us on a complete loop of the rim before dropping us down unto the crater itself where the steep green forest-covered walls were gushing with the longest, narrow waterfalls I have ever seen. I didn’t know there were so many different shades of green as we looked down on the thick rainforest. It was exhilarating and awe-inspiring and it felt as if we were descending into a Lost World. Brilliant. Our last treat was to view the huge Manawaiopuna Falls that was featured in Jurassic Park - sadly it costs an extra few hundred bucks to go on the extended trip where you can fly down this amazing waterfall and land in the deep canyon underneath, but Jon did take us on a circuit around the top of the falls so that we all got great views. It was an amazing ride and over far too quickly - actually we had barely 45 minutes in the air - but I am so glad I did this and would highly recommend it to anyone visiting Kauai.

I am staying on Kauai for a few more days in a different hotel before moving on to the volcanic wonderland of the Big Island of Hawaii, where I hope to take another helicopter ride over the live volcanoes and lava flows, to visit the USA’s largest cattle ranch and to star gaze from an observatory on the tallest mountain on Earth - if you thought that was Everest, you would be wrong !!!

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