Paradise Regained

Kaua’i could not be more different from Honolulu. 

The best reason not to swim on some beaches on Kaua'i

Where Honolulu is big-city America with high rises, high crime and high prices - Kaua’i is small-town America with low buildings, low crime and regular prices.  I have not seen a building here that is above 2 stories high. Kaua’i is sleepy, quiet and even slightly dusty like something you forgot about in the back of the closet.  They have a Costco here and a Wal-Mart – but that is the extent of the fashionable high-end shopping you will find.  If you want to spend money you can go to one of the myriad souvenir shops that will gladly sell you something you don’t need and won’t believe you bought when you get back home.

We like it.

The place we are staying is on the east coast of Kaua’i.  Being on the east coast means that you get the trade winds all the time and that makes the sea fairly bumpy.  These are 1 – 2 meter bumps.  Great surfing - rotten swimming.  The ocean here has a bit of a bad rep – so far this year there have been seven tourist fatalities due to things like rogue waves, floods, and foolishness.  There may be eight as the coast guard is currently searching for a missing surfer.  The trade winds do keep the temperature much more manageable – none of this laying in bed dripping perspiration while trying to sleep.

The beaches are quite a bit smaller than those on Oahu and Maui and much rockier.  I don’t think the sand has much chance to form a beach what with the ocean barging in all the time and washing it away.

Telen demonstrating how to avoid drowning in Kaua'i.  Stay OUT of the water

There are warnings everywhere about not swimming in unguarded beaches.  I know we are in the U.S. but these guards are LIFEguards – not someone from Homeland Security.  The guarded beaches we have seen all seem to have an area that is protected by dikes of lava rock.  I suspect these are not natural but they do have openings to the ocean.  That means that fish can swim in and out of these pools.  There are two of these beaches within easy reach of where we are staying but the beach in front of our accommodation is treacherous.  We have spent some time there dabbling our feet in the water and fabricating some Vitamin D. 

Snorkeling has been a bit of a challenge.  I have this hair that grows between my nose and my upper lip.  This prevents me from getting a proper seal with the facemask.  I snorkel for a bit and my mask slowly fills up with water.  When it is about half full it is like looking through a broken window.  Everything is quite distorted.  Telen (and many other people) have been telling me for quite some time that my outlook is quite distorted but I don’t know how they knew this before we went snorkeling.  I suggested shaving my mustache off but Telen screamed and hid in the closet and wouldn’t come out until I promised not to.  Earlier on this trip I did shave my beard and mustache off and every time I would walk in the door Telen would call the police, start throwing things at me and scream something about “Friday the 13^th”.  I guess she prefers me with bits of my face concealed.

We took a drive down to Po’ipu.  I know, I know, the name sounds like something that would make a 12 year old break up into gales of laughter.  (They call snacks here pu-pu’s - another one for the kids.)  Po’ipu is on the south coast and therefore much more protected from the winds and is supposed to have the best beaches. The waves were marginally less but not so much that you felt like you wanted to just jump into the ocean.  They did have an area that had a breakwater around it - sort of like a gigantic kiddie’s pool.  So, we swam there.   What we did not know was that this kiddie’s pool was a turtle pool.   There were huge sea turtles swimming there munching on the algae growing on the rocks.   We managed to see two only about a meter off shore casually swimming around having a pu-pu.  They did not seem even aware of all the people yelling and splashing into the water to try to get their photo.  If I were them I would have thought I was being attacked by a herd of multi-hued walruses.

The light brown spot in the upper right corner of the picture is the turtle.  Really!

Telen was thrilled to see the turtle.  She did not have that privilege as I did at the Great Barrier Reef.  She would still like to see one while snorkeling and it is something we will try to accomplish while we are in Hawai’i.

A friend of an acquaintance told us that there were lots of sea turtles at a beach called Anini on the north end of the island.  So we headed off to see the turtles at Anini.  What I did forget was to bring was our snorkeling equipment.  When we got to Anini the waves were thrashing on the shore like an ex-wife.  We thought it best not to get between them and guessed that the turtles probably had the same idea.  So we walked around a bit and headed off to Hanalei.  We felt that if we could not see turtles we would settle for a dragon.

Hanalei is a very funky little town.  Where the other towns on Kaua’I are your sleepy old grandpa who you love very much - Hanalei is the cousin that still wears tie-dyed shirts, multi-coloured headbands and overuses the term “groovy”.  The town is eclectic, has energy and is very picturesque.  Alas, no dragon.  Apparently “Puff the Magic Dragon” has sadly slipped into his cave and is no longer seen in Hanalei.  Part of that is due, I suspect, to the reduction in hallucinogenic drug use since the ‘60’s.  When I asked about Puff the locals usually answered, “Cha, right, man. Uh, Dragons, man? Far out! I, like, haven’t seen one in, like, decades, man.  I don’t do that sh_t anymore.”  I presumed that I was not going to get any joy there. 

This is where Puff the Magic Dragon used to hang out.

 The film “South Pacific” was filmed in Hanalei.  I guess Hanalei was a “body double” for Tahiti.  Kaua’i is very tropical looking with remarkably blue water but it is not the South Pacific.  This is typical of Hollywood – getting the important details completely wrong.  Look at the movie “Argo” as an example of getting things completely haywire.  Apparently there were a lot of movies that were filmed or partly filmed here on Kaua’i.  I can see why – it is a very exotic looking locale.

The Taro fields at Hanalei.  See any dragons?

An interesting thing about Kaua’I is the wild chicken.  Everywhere you look there are chickens running around.  It gives the whole island the feel of an Asian village.  These chickens came from domestic chickens that got loose during a hurricane and refused to come home for dinner.  They are everywhere, as I said, and I suspect it has to do with the lack of their natural predators – the feral Chinese.  I cannot imagine any of these birds surviving an influx of these voracious predators.  They would quickly become soup.   As it is I have caught Telen sneaking out the door with a soup pot and a cleaver hidden behind her back.

The Kaua'i feral chickens.  Smart and almost inedible. 

Telen writes:

I have to admit that being a person of Chinese descent, I have been busy coming up with various strategies to capture these “free range chickens” for the dinner table.  They are literally everywhere!  The little chicks are sure cute so they would be spared from my cleaver.

So far, I have caught none.  They always seem to stray just far enough to taunt me.

I asked a sales lady the other day if people hunt these chickens for consumption.  She looked at me with such horror on her face so I stopped pursuing the topic.  I then searched the internet.  Yes, these chickens are edible.  One recipe said that “put the cleaned chicken into a pot of boiling water, add a rock.  Cook until the rock is tender”. 

Telen demonstrating the "Tree Pose".  Notice that the tree is doing it wrong...