Round the World Part Two
So after the little mishap (that's the official term now - mishap) with missing our initial flight, and the side trip to Disneyland, we jetted off to the exotic islands of Hawaii. Well, sort of exotic, the kind you might experience if you have always vacationed in Mud Flats, Mississippi and you won the raffle down at the VFW Hall. That kind of exotic. But still, it's cool. We liked it. Oh, sure Tahiti is more exciting because you know there you can probably still catch some reasonably rare and little known disease. Well, maybe not a disease but an exotic version of the common cold. A French version. And the food in Hawaii isn't all covered in cream sauce cooked in very dubious kitchens or outside in the garage over a hot plate. By the way, I'm not entirely sure, but there is a reasonable possibility that I'm not making the last bit up.
So anyhow, maybe Hawaii isn't as exotic and overrun with little known insects as some of the less visited tropical islands, but it was still a first for Mary. Pretty much for me also since the last time I visited there was during our trans-pacific trip back from Australia back in the day. I can't remember much since it was the Sixties and there were a lot of recreational drugs going around, but mainly because I was seven years old and the predominant memory I have of Waikiki was the hotel pool. Which was cool. Well, cool to a seven year old anyway. And of course this time we were traveling to Kauai and neither one of us had been there before.
As remarked in the entry on Hawaiian Airlines the trip to the islands was uneventful. We picked up our rental car from National, swung by Costco for reasons recounted here, and then proceeded to the far north of the island to our hotel in Princeville. The hotel is named, aptly, the Princeville Hotel and Resort. This hotel is a Starwood property under their Luxury Collection brand. Our decision to stay at the Princeville was motivated primarily by information we received last year that the number of points needed for redemption at most of the Starwood properties was going to be revised upwards. So we looked around online at all the Starwood hotels to find an interestingly place to go where we could make use of the points we had accumulated at that point. The Hawaii trip wasn't actually even a part of the whole Round The World thing until fairly late in the planning.
In any case, we had enough Starwood points saved up to get us a total of five nights free at Princeville. At a somewhat later point Mary decided to purchase a couple of additional nights at the Grand Hyatt on the south end of Kauai both to eke the trip out to a full week and because we heard that the weather in the south was usually better than in the north. As a matter of fact after a little more research we discovered that apparently it rains a lot on the north end, so we thought, just in case we get rained out, we'll get in a couple of days in the south where the weather is usually better. As things are wont to do, the weather at Princeville was excellent and we had no rain, mainly clear skies, and moderate temperatures for the entire five days we were there. Of course, when we went south for the remaining two days it rained, and it was cloudy the whole time.
So Princeville was cool, really nice scenery - this photo is from our room window. Although the weather itself in our area was good, the seas were pretty rough though the surfers were apparently happy - they were catching waves from just after dawn till sundown. The coast at this point is pretty rocky and it really isn't well suited for people who just want to paddle around in the water. Actually most of the beaches on Kauai seem to be similar - lots of big and small rocks along the tide line make it difficult to enjoy the water without smashing into something due to an inopportune wave.
We were both a little surprised with how green everything was. I don't know why, the vegetation was very similar to what we saw in Tahiti. Probably it was because coming from Colorado in the middle of the winter a ficus seems unbelievably green and lush. And the north of the island was supposed to be the greenest part though from our observations this is a manner of rather minimal degree as the south part of the island is pretty much indistinguishable at least to our snow blind eyes. Did I mention how green it all was?
So island - green, check, beaches - rocky, check, weather - balmy, also check. We liked it. We wandered from one end of the island to the other, checking out everything we could, including Waimea Canyon, which is called the Grand Canyon of the Pacific, and it was quite impressive if not quite as deep or wide as the original. We stopped at pretty much every town on the island and some were kind of cool in a ramshackle way. Actually delightfully ramshackle kind of defines pretty much everything outside the resorts on the island. As opposed say to Tahiti's not quite so delightful rundown and rather shabby look.
We sampled the island cuisine and pronounced it surprisingly good. Mary had her plate lunch (a Hawaiian specialty) which she'd been jonesing for since we started planning the trip. It was bountiful and chockfull of starches and fats. For the uninitiated, plate lunches, which are usually served in a Styrofoam box (go figure) are usually some sort of local delicacy like pulled pork or Korean chicken served with two scoops of rice, some sort of salad and usually but not always macaroni salad which is made with macaroni, mayonnaise, and pickle relish. It truly is as unhealthy as it sounds. It's a wonder with a diet like that, that the locals are not clutching their chests and keeling over every which way you turn.
Other than the plate lunches, however, we pretty much enjoyed everything we ate, which surprised us as Hawaii does not have what one might term a sterling reputation for its cuisine. Either we'd been misled or things are quite a bit better now than the recent past or we are rather easy on matters of food. Probably a combination of the three. Even the resort food was quite good.
Other than eating we spent the majority of our time that wasn't devoted to driving around the island to sitting around the pool and soaking up some rays - well, whatever managed to penetrate through a half inch of sun block - and reading and watching the waves and in my case soaking up a few brews.
Overall, our week in Paradise was not quite what we expected. From all of our previous impressions we kind of thought that Hawaii would be a little bit ticky tacky and kitschy. Perhaps better than Vegas but not by much. As it turned out, we really liked the people, which we did expect, but we also liked the island in and of itself. The resorts, especially the Grand Hyatt, were very nice. The weather was so pleasant (as opposed to our experience in Tahiti where day or night, month in and month out, it's always hot and always humid) that we spent much of our time with the air conditioning turned off and the windows open to catch the sea breezes and to allow us to fall asleep with the sounds of the waves caressing our cauliflower shaped ears. I think we'll probably want to go back in a year or less and check out some of the other islands.
