Hawaii - October 11, 2003

This was our first day to really get out and see Kauai. It's very difficult to describe Kauai without using tired, overused phrases like "lush, garden paradise" but phrases like that were made for Kauai. It's green and beautiful for as far as the eye can see, in exactly the way garden paradises have been portrayed in TV and movies for years. In no small part this is because Kauai is the filmmakers' prime destination for jungle location footage. From South Pacific to Jurassic Park by way of Fantasy Island and Raiders of the Lost Ark, Kauai has been the home of dozens of Hollywood movies and shows. It is easy to get to, it has the necessary infrastructure and it looks marvelous. As I stood in a beautiful "tunnel of trees" along one the highways, I started to think, as many, many have done before me, "Hey, this would be a great place to live."

That is the kind of scenery we found ourselves in as we headed west towards Waimea Canyon, but I wasn't expecting any velociraptors to come crashing out of the jungle while I, rather dryly, wondered how many more "waimeas" there were in Hawaii. I suppose each island, when they were mostly independent of one another, probably named their towns and mountains using common Hawaiian words, but only when they came together under one umbrella did it seem somewhat duplicative.

Like most days when we were on Kauai, it was threatening rain, but if we let that stop us, we'd never see anything. The weather was such, and I'm sure this is probably true year-round, that rain wasn't much of a concern. We headed west, following the suggested route in the guidebook we'd been relying on.

We stopped in the small town of Koloa. Originally a sugar town, it now seemed mostly an unemployed and/or tourist town. My in-laws went to a candle shop to see about some souvenirs, while Chu-Wan, Michelle and I went looking for throat lozenges for her father, who was showing signs of coming down with a cold. We stopped in an ice cream shop to try some exotic flavors - I had chocolate. You just can't improve upon chocolate.

We were getting ready to leave when my in-laws decided to go back to the candle store and buy something, just as the sky opened up in a terrific and very sudden downpour, so they decided not to get out of the car. If they'd headed for the store a few seconds earlier, they'd have been soaked to the skin in seconds.

We headed to the shore, near Po'ipu and drove along the coastline. We stopped briefly at a beach, but it was drizzling, and yesterday I'd heard a news report that sharks had been sighted at this beach (presumably in the water) just two days ago. We hadn't brought any swim wear so, sharks or no, we wouldn't have gone swimming.

Just down from there is Spouting Horn Beach Park. There's not much of a beach, but there is a park - or, at least a parking lot. The lot was filled with bizarrely metallic green chickens. These were apparently domesticated chickens that escaped after a hurricane and now run wild all over the island. There was also an arts & crafts fair, which, upon closer inspection, appeared to be the same one we went to on the previous day, just relocated to new hunting grounds. The real attraction is the Spouting Horn, a blowhole in the volcanic shelf that shoots water into the air with every few waves that come in. There had been another blowhole next to it that shot water 200 feet in the air, but that was dynamited in the 1920s because the salt water spray was ruining the sugar cane in the area.

Further down the coast, we stopped at the Salt Pond Beach Park, a very safe water beach, which I was scouting for a possible later excursion. it is also the sight where they still make salt out of seawater, which I was curious to see.

No one else was at all curious and they didn't want to get out of the car, so I went alone. About 50 yards from the car, a strong wind came up from behind me, nearly knocking me over with its force followed by, seconds later, a torrential downpour even stronger than the one we'd experienced earlier. I turned around and tried to get back to the car, but I was now facing into the wind and walking in a bizarre motionless pantomime. I was soaked to the skin by the time I reached the car.

We continued on the way to Waimea with my shirt on the heater vents. Somehow I doubt the heater had even been used in that rental car before. That helped my shirt dry (some) but there was nothing we could do for my pants.

When we reached Waimea I was hungry, and they took pity on me so we stopped at (reportedly) one of the 2 best pizza places on the island, Pacific Pizza. Everyone else got out of the car and I turned up the heat all the way, trying to use the vents as a drier. Then I used their restroom to wring out my clothes and paper towel myself off before going in to eat. Finally we all met inside.

With the exception of big megastores, buildings in Hawaii rarely seem to be air conditioned. This restaurant was no exception and the the pizza oven was keeping the temperature inside about 120 degrees. By the time we left I had dried off and begun to get soaked again (along with everyone else) in sweat.

The pizza was... ok. It's better than your average chain-restaurant assembly line pizza, but nothing too exciting. It was also rather expensive, but I gather not nearly as expensive as the "best" pizza restaurant on the island, Brick Oven Pizza which reportedly costs $28 for a 15" combo pizza.

Having no "really good, reasonably priced pizza" put one check in the "reasons not to move to Hawaii" column of my mental list, but on the other hand, perhaps that's just what Kauai needs, a really good pizza restaurant.

As we headed west, the character of the terrain, like the other islands, turned to desert. Waimea sits just about at that turning point and this is where we turned north, inland up Waimea Canyon.

Waimea Canyon was once described by Mark Twain as "the Grand Canyon of the Pacific." Coming, as I do, from the Grand Canyon State, most canyons likened to it pale in comparison. As we drove up the road, there wasn't much canyon in evidence, but as we continued up through the cactus, the scrub brush and the bizarrely red earth, the canyon finally came into view. Nowhere nearly as large as the real grand canyon, it is nonetheless impressive and bears more than a passing resemblance. It is beautiful and somewhat unexpected here in the middle of the island.

Continuing along the canyon, we finally came to Koke'e Park, A green, grassy mountain meadow, surrounded by pine trees. The road that leads to the best lookout of the canyon was blocked off to motor traffic, and too far for us all to walk. We traveled as far along the roads as we could, but we were stopped by either a NASA tracking station, or a military one. This is the heart of our Pacific space tracking stations.

On the way back, everyone stopped at Jo-Jo's Clubhouse in Waimea for "Hawaiian Shave Ice" - apparently Hawaii is quite proud of its shaved ice and poor spelling, as you'll be corrected if you call it "shaved."

It was a full day, and that evening, Chu-Wan, Michelle and I walked around the Coconut Marketplace, a shopping plaza next to our hotel looking for dinner. We didn't find anything and ended up eating in our room.

On to Day 14 ==>

Kauai - Tree Tunnel, Maluhia Road	Kauai - Tree Tunnel, Maluhia Road	Kauai - Tree Tunnel, Maluhia Road	Kauai - Tree Tunnel, Maluhia Road	Kauai - Spouting Horn Beach Park
Kauai - Spouting Horn Beach Park	Kauai - Spouting Horn Beach Park	Kauai - Spouting Horn Beach Park	Kauai - Dramatic red earth on the Waimea Canyon Rd.	Kauai - Dramatic red earth on the Waimea Canyon Rd.
Kauai - Runoff cuts deeply into the soft volcanic earth	Kauai - Waimea Canyon	Kauai - Waimea Canyon	Kauai - Waimea Canyon	Kauai - Waimea Canyon
Kauai - Waimea Canyon	Kauai - Waimea Canyon	Kauai - Waimea Canyon	Kauai - Waimea Canyon	Kauai - Waimea Canyon
Kauai - Waimea Canyon	Kauai - Waimea Canyon	Kauai - Waimea Canyon	Kauai - Waimea Canyon	Kauai - Koke'e Park
Kauai - Koke'e Park	Kauai - Koke'e Park