Lihue, Koloa, and Po'ipu

For a change of scenery, we switched hotels partway through our trip and we are now on the southern side of the island, in the Po'ipu/Koloa area. As we drove between the two towns, we made a stop in Wailua River State Park to check out the stunning 151-foot cascade of Opaeka'a Falls. The falls flow year-round and it's one of the only waterfalls on the island that is visible from the road.

Then we hopped back in the car and drove around to the other side of the river to see the equally majestic Wailua Falls. For anyone who grew up watching TV in the 1970's this waterfall will be instantly recognizable from the opening credits to the show Fantasy Island. Say it with me now: "Da plane, da plane!"

Speaking of TV shows, we have been enjoying the Apple TV series Chief of War with Jason Momoa. The show depicts the unification of the Kingdom of Hawai'i under the reign of King Kamehameha I, during the time period of 1795-1810. We enjoyed a stop at the wonderfully informative Kaua'i Museum in Lihue. There were many displays with historical artifacts, portraits of Hawaiian royalty, tools, and musical instruments. It gave us a good overview of what life was like in these islands before and after Western contact. They pack a lot into this excellent little museum!

The history of this island is so interesting! We made a point to visit the Lawai International Center, which is located in a sacred Hawaiian valley that was once the likely site of a long-gone Heiau (Hawaiian temple). In the later 1800s many Chinese and Japanese immigrants leased land in this valley to grow various crops including rice, taro, and vegetables. 

In the early 1900s, Japanese workers built 88 small Buddhist shrines into the hillside to replicate (in miniature) a 750-mile pilgrimage route in Shikoku Japan. Until the 1940s the Lawai valley shrines were a well-known pilgrimage site for islanders of all beliefs to come and pray for miracles. After WWII the shrines received fewer visitors and fell into disrepair. But one local Japanese-Hawaiian woman named Takano Nonaka continued to visit them faithfully every month for more than 60 years, hacking her way through the overgrowth to reach each shrine and pray. 

In 1991, local volunteers decided to purchase the land so they could restore the shrines and regrade the walking path. Through fundraising efforts they also built a larger-scale wooden Hall of Compassion using traditional Japanese methods. They created the Lawai International Center Foundation to preserve this site as a non-denominational and non-religious cultural center where people can "gather for quiet contemplation and personal renewal". Visitors can borrow a walking stick and hike up the hillside past each of the 88 shrines in succession.

Sure, it does sound a little woo-woo but the site is beautiful and you can walk as slowly or quickly as you like among the shrines. The path is lined with delicate orchids in all colors and varieties, and each shrine and Buddha statuette is unique. It's a lovely spot and yet another example of Hawaii's unique cultural tapestry. 

Okay, enough culture - it's time for a drink! One thing we learned during our time in the Caribbean is that wherever there is sugar cane, you can always find a rum distillery. We didn't have to look too hard to find one here in Kaua'i.

Koloa Rum Company has been making award-winning rums since 2009. Even though large-scale sugar cane farming on Kaua'i ended that year, the Koloa Rum Company was still able to source Hawaiian-grown sugar cane for their rums until 2016. Nowadays the sugar cane is brought in from Louisiana, but the other ingredients and know-how are 100% local. We booked a tasting so that we could try a few of the rums on offer, including their spiced rum, coconut rum, and their cinnamon-flavored Cane Fire rum. All were delicious. It was a fun experience, and our bartender/guide knew so much about the distilling process and had lots of great recommendations for drink recipes. We were happy to know that we could find most of these rums in our local Total Wine store so we saved on luggage space by just buying some tasting-sizes of the Coffee and Cacao-flavored rums.

Throughout the week we spent plenty of relaxing mornings and afternoons reading by the pool. We also took some nice walks, including a scenic hike along Maha'ulepu Heritage Trail. This trail starts at Shipwreck Beach, which was right next to our hotel.

This trail follows the coast through sand and beach scrub trees. There was even a preserved Heiau cultural site that you can view from the trail. Just before we turned around to go back to the hotel, we were rewarded with beautiful views from the cliffsides.

Even though it's hard to leave we know we eventually have to go home. Luckily the Hawaiian language uses the same word to say both hello and goodbye. So aloha, Kaua'i! I'm sure we will be back soon!

Kapa'a, Kaua'i

Aloha! It's been a decade since we last visited the island of Kaua'i. Last time we here we went heavy on the adventure -- with a doors-off helicopter ride over the Napali Coast. This time around we have a more relaxed agenda, starting with a couple of delicious Mai Tais and some live music at our hotel in Kapa'a, on the eastern side of the island (also known as the "Coconut Coast").

Our hotel offered beach yoga, so we gave that a try. As it turned out, it was actually more like "grass yoga" but at least we weren't covered with sand by the end!

Kaua'i is the lushest and greenest of the Hawaiian islands; its nickname is the "Garden Island". This is due to the generous rain that falls at Mount Wai'ale'ale. Wai'ale'ale is an extinct shield volcano that is the heart of the island of Kaua'i. At its summit, this peak gets nearly 400 inches of rain per year - that's a LOT of water! When the sugar cane industry got started on Kaua'i in the mid-1800s, farmers were able to use the heavy rainfall to their advantage. Teams of workers hand-dug long irrigation canals to bring freshwater down from the mountains straight to the cane fields. In the photo below you can see misty clouds covering the summit of Wai'ale'ale.

The last commercial sugar cane plantation closed in 2009 and sugar cane is no longer harvested as a commercial crop here on Kaua'i. But the Lihue Plantation's former Hanama'ulu irrigation canal is still in use -- as a tourist attraction. 

The best way to see this part of the island is to do the tubing adventure with Kauai Backcountry outfitters. They kit you out with helmets, gloves, and headlamps, then load you into a 4x4 shuttle vehicle for the scenic drive to the launch site. Everyone climbs into an inner tube and then it's off to the races.

There's no steering involved, you just float and spin along with the brisk current through the 2-mile run of the "ditch". Along the way, you go through five tunnels that have been carved right through the hillsides. The longest tunnel is about 1/2 mile. It's pitch black in there, which is what the headlamps are for.

Everything about the tubing adventure exceeded our expectations -- the guides were great, we learned a lot about the history of sugar farming on Kaua'i, and we even got to see a part of the island we wouldn't normally get to see because the route goes through private land. If you're ever on Kaua'i, we recommend checking it out!

Hawaiʻi - Waikiki Beach and Oʻahu

There’s something about Hawaiʻi that keeps calling us back. In the past ten years we’ve been to the other main islands (Maui, Kauaʻi, and the Big Island of Hawaiʻi) so we thought this time we should check out Oʻahu. We booked a quick one-week trip through Costco to Waikiki Beach.

Duke Kahanamoku statue on Kuhio Beach

Kuhio Beach

We stayed at the Outrigger Waikiki Beach Resort, which was in a perfect location right on the beach and within walking distance to lots of great restaurants. Our balcony even had a (partial) ocean view. (We also had a full view of the balconies of the hotel next to us; it’s always interesting to look across while sipping a sundowner and see about a hundred other people staring back at you).

Our room was decorated in – what else? – a Hawaiʻian theme.

From the beach in front of the hotel, we had great views of Diamond Head, a huge volcanic cone that is one of Oʻahu’s most-recognizable landmarks.

The other great thing about the Outrigger beach resort is that they have a fantastic jazz venue on site, The Blue Note. We went to two shows here during our stay and it is a great place to see a live performance – there are only about 300 seats and all of them have a great view of the stage. Lots of big names perform here even though it’s a small venue because, hey, free trip to Hawaiʻi.

We rented a car for one day and drove the loop around the island, starting our morning at the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor. The Park Service is currently repairing the dock at the Memorial, so we couldn’t disembark and see inside, but it was a very moving experience just to be there and reflect on the many sailors and Marines who lost their lives on December 7, 1941.

Our next stop was at Haleʻiwa Aliʻi Beach Park on the North Shore to watch the Van’s Triple Crown surf competition for an hour or so. The waves were huge and the surfers were just tiny specks in the blue sea, but the hilarious commentary over the loudspeakers filled us non-surfers in on every drop, cutback, and wipe out, and helped us make sense of what we were seeing.

As we made our way to the eastern side of the island, we stopped at the Byodo-In Temple which is a half-size replica of Japanese temple of the same name. Since we plan on heading to Japan in spring 2019, this was an interesting place to visit – we plan on seeing lots of temples while we are in the Land of the Rising Sun.

Our last stop with the rental car was at Kualoa Regional Park, where we had great views of the Koʻolau Mountain Range, which has been the backdrop for many films and TV shows including Jurassic Park, Lost, and Magnum PI.

As I mentioned, we only rented a car for one day, but the local bus on Oʻahu is cheap and easy to use to get around. We took the bus into downtown Honolulu to check out the beautiful ʻIolani Palace, America’s only official royal palace and a National Historic Landmark. It was decorated in Monarchy-era bunting in honor of what would have been King Kalakaua’s 182^nd birthday.

We were also able to take the bus to the world-famous snorkeling site at Hanalei Bay. It was packed with people, and it is so popular that they actually close the site down one day a week in order to try to let the coral recover from all the snorkelers. Unfortunately the coral still looked mostly bleached to us. Although the snorkeling was kind of a bust, at least there were gorgeous views of the bay from the trailhead.

Hawaiʻi is a food-lover’s paradise, and of course we had plenty of kahlua pork, poke, and loco moco on this trip. We also made sure to have at least one token meal that included SPAM.

Too. Much. SPAM. (And way too many pancakes, too!)

But something new that we tried on this trip were malasadas from Leonard’s Bakery. Malasadas are the Portuguese version of little jelly doughnuts, covered in sugar and filled with all kinds of sweet jams. We tried a variety of them – the guava flavor was my favorite.

This was Kevin’s second trip to Oʻahu and my first, but there was just so much to do and see on the island that I know we’ll be back again soon. Aloha!

Hawaii - South Kauai

The last few days of our stay on Kauai were spent on the south side of the island.  It's drier and less rainforest-y than the north side, but it does have the better sunsets, in my opinion.  Our hotel was fantastic (the Grand Hyatt in Poipu) and we spent several days just lounging by the pool and going for walks along the beach.

We had a really nice anniversary dinner at their Tidepools restaurant.  Kevin had fun throwing bread to the koi fish in the pond below the window.

We also took a day to drive over to Waimea Canyon.  It's gorgeous -- like the Grand Canyon, but with a bit more greenery and lots more waterfalls.

The drive was really pleasant and at the highest viewpoint we had a good view of the beginning of the Napali Coast.

On the way back, we stopped in at the Kauai Coffee plantation to do the self-guided tour.  It used to be a sugar plantation, but was converted to coffee back in the 1980's.  They now have over 4 million coffee trees growing on 3000 acres.  We got a nice caffeine fix while sampling all the varieties on the tasting patio.  I liked the aptly-named "Rooster Alarm".

One of the best ways to really see the island of Kauai is by air, so we booked a helicopter tour.   We had the choice of a normal helicopter (with windows and doors) or one that had the doors off (for better photos and a bigger adrenaline rush).  Feeling brave, I had booked the doors-off version and we boarded the flight with just a hint of trepidation.

But as soon as we took off, all fear disappeared instantly.  Instead we just marveled at the gorgeous scenery far below us.  We got up close to the waterfalls and sheer cliffs in Waimea Canyon...

...hovered over the reefs on the north end of the island...

...and had stunning aerial views of the Napali Coast.  It was just breathtakingly beautiful.

And here's a video summary of the whole trip, including some footage from the helicopter ride.  Enjoy!


Hawaii Trip 2016 from Solsticecatamaran on Vimeo.