Day 1: Saturday, June 2, 2001
Fly to Kauai, check out Wailua to Hanalei

Our flight left at 9am so we were up at 6:45am to get ready. Up and out quickly. When we got to the airport, there was a long line to check bags, which I'd forgotten about, so we used Skycap, which took 5 minutes. I don't know why more people don't do that. The flight was completely full, but people were generally happy and upbeat, quite different from going on a business trip where everyone's very serious. There were families and groups chatting across aisles, having fun. During the flight, we wondered how many hours back to move our watches, since the maps in the flight magazines show Hawaii 2 hours behind California, but that didn't match up with the flight time and scheduled arrival time. It turned out Hawaii doesn't observe daylight savings time, so they're three hours behind in the summer and two in the winter. This was nice, though because it meant we'd get more time after we arrived.

The flight was smooth, and we arrived at Honolulu airport on time. We picked up our bags with no trouble and then walked over to Honolulu Inter-island terminal, which has Hawaiian and Aloha airline shuttles to the other Hawaiian islands. They have a "Wiki Wiki" shuttle bus to take you to the other terminal, but it's a quick walk and after sitting that long, we didn't mind the 5+ minute walk (with bags on wheels, at least). The hops to Kauai go about every half hour, and you don't necessarily need reservations, you can just get on the next one when you check in, unless they're full. We'd booked a flight just incase, but we were able to get on the earlier flight since everything had gone smoothly.

The hop to Lihue Airport on Kauai took about a half hour in all, we probably spent more time waiting at the gate than we did in the air. When we got there, we picked up the car at Hertz, all without any problems. We got a white Corolla 4-door, which was fine. We loaded up the car and followed directions to the condo in Wailua, the Wailua Bay View condos, which turned about to be less than 10 minutes away and easy to find.

Wailua Bay View Condos

Well, easy until you got to the Shell station. There's a right fork just before the gas station and there are cars coming out of the station, so it was a little hectic. The condo is immediately after that, just off the main road, and I hadn't given Walendo enough warning, so we went by it. When he tried to turn around, a van pulled out from being parked on the road when Walendo wasn't expecting it, so the last 10 yards were a little hectic. After that, Walendo often pointed out how crazy that corner was, with cars doing things at short notice with no signaling - so it wasn't his fault he'd missed the condo. He was at least right about people not signaling very often.

Our condo living room

It had just started to sprinkle when we pulled up. They'd given a combination to open a little key box by the front door, so we went up and let ourselves in. It turned out to be a very nice 1 bedroom condo with nice furnishings, much as the picture showed. (Sometimes those can be deceiving, as we'd later encounter in Oahu.) It had a nice lanai (balcony) that looked right out at the beach, very nice. One thing that struck us right away was how loud the ocean was. It sounded like the waves were crashing right onto our lanai. We both find the sound soothing, so it was kinda nice. And as it turned out, the ocean helped drown out the sound of some neighbors on their balcony, and if there was any traffic noise, we didn't hear it. (You can see the road that's just along the beach.) In any case, we brought our bags in and settled in.

Crafts fair in Kapa'a

It was now around 3pm so we had a little time to explore, and by now the sprinkling had stopped as well. We decided to explore Wailua and Kapa'a, the nearby town. Wailua is a tiny town with a half block of stores on either side of the road. There was a sign for TCBY, so we stopped there and got a yogurt each. Then we headed into Kapa'a. As we drove along, we saw a crafts fair at the end of town, so we stopped to check it out. There was a small area full of booths, probably about 20 or so. Some had jewelry (freshwater pearls of different colors, hematite, and other stones), others had sarongs and dresses in colorful fabric, there was a photography booth, a fruit booth, and a few native crafts booths. I decided to get freshwater pearl necklaces. Last time I'd been on Kauai 11 years before, I'd wished I'd bought more, so I got three. One had pink strands mixed in, and the other two had different sized pearls, all for $50. They brought the price down as I bought more, you could tell they were kind of making up the prices. I could have bargained more, but I was happy with the price and figured the extra $5 or $10 wasn't a big deal to me. I was really happy to have found a fun "event" and to have scored some loot so quickly! We also got some homegrown tomatoes, yum. Walendo wandered about and checked things out, but didn't buy anything.

Map showing places we went today

We continued on up the coast. The Hidden Hawaii book mentioned a couple of towns along the way, but they were so small we didn't even notice them as we drove by. Instead, we just kept going and checked out the coastline and the vegetation. The area seemed less manicured than Walendo had expected. The book said this was a more working class area, less resort oriented, which is fine with us.

We made our way past Princeville, where we stopped at a shopping strip. It had a hobby shop / game store, so we checked that out. Walendo noticed they had little football with fins and thought it might be fun to throw it at the beach, so we got that. We also somehow wound up with a Go set, figuring that could be fun to play in the evening, even though neither of us could remember how to play. I also got a map of Kauai. Don't feel complete without one. Walendo also noticed a colorful flag at the store, which he thought might be good as a gift for Russ & Judy, who were taking care of Libby for us. They'd just bought an elaborate kids play station (not sure what to call it, but it had much more than swings), and he'd noticed that it had a place to put a flag. This seemed like a nice idea, so we noted it for later. He took pictures with the digital camera incase we wanted to compare it with something else later. There was also a photo store there, so I went in to get a UV filter for my telephoto lens. I'd broken it earlier and had forgotten to replace it. Unfortunately, they didn't have the size that fit my lens, but the guy said there was another photo store one town up in Hanalei, so off we went.

Overlooking Hanalei

Just after this shopping center is a pullout on the left side of the road. It looked like a nice view, so I pulled in (across traffic). It overlooked a patchwork farmland scene with a river running through it, very pretty. We continued on the road, which took us right to where we'd just looked. When you get to the bottom of the hill, there's an old one-lane bridge. You have to alternate cars going in either direction. The bridge was so old that Walendo noticed the steel girders were completely rusted away - he wasn't sure what was holding it up. Later we learned they had to reinforce the bridge from the bottom.

Hanalei is a reasonably sized town for Kauai. It's about two or three blocks long and had a few shopping strips and some other buildings. It's right on the river that we saw from above. We noted the kayak rental shop on the right, thinking we might come back there later (which we did on Day 5). We stopped in one of the shopping strips, found the camera store and I got my filter.

Kapa'a Fish & Chowder House

At that point, we turned around and headed back to Kapa'a. When we got there, we drove through the main section of town scouring for restaurants but weren't sure where to go. I parked and we walked along, but nothing struck us. There was a sushi place with one guy sitting in it, and when we walked in, he said they weren't serving yet, and something about getting stuff from across the street. It seemed a little odd, so we left. Then I checked the Hidden Hawaii book and they recommended The Kapa'a Fish and Chowder House that we'd seen at the north end of town, so we decided to go back there. It turned out to be a nice place. Walendo had the albacore tuna special and I got sea bass. I liked his better and he liked mine. I liked that the waitress was honest when I asked her about the dishes and she generally steered us well. We had a chocolate cake for dessert that was pretty good. The food was good, but the bill came to about $75, which seemed like a lot. We agreed to eat more casually after that.

On the way back, we stopped at the Safeway and got some breakfast and lunch supplies for the condo. Most of the groceries seemed very expensive, more than at home. (The gas was also about the same as home, which has some of the most expensive gas in the country. I guess this isn't a cheap place to live.) When we got back to the condo, we hung out for a little while and then went to bed early. We'd been up a long time.

Previous   (Itinerary)

Next   (Kayaking Wailua River)