Paul & Libby’s World of Travel

The morning started with breakfast, a bit of packing / repacking, dropping of the rental car, and checking in for our slightly longer flight to Lihue, Kauai. Although the distances aren’t great between the islands, you lose approximately 1/2 a day unless you fly out really early in the morning or really late at night going through the airport rituals. That’s probably the greatest downside to island hopping. The benefit, however, is building a richer tapestry of appreciation for the islands. 

Like Maui, we arrived a little before noon, grabbed our luggage, and picked up out rental car at National. Since we could “pick any car” with national, Emerson sold us on a cherry red Ford Mustang convertible — not awful for a mere $34 per day!

Coming from the airport, we stopped by Fish Express for a proper, no frills Hawaiian lunch plate like the locals eat. We then went to a local park and had a bit of a picnic, where we got to experience Kauai’s now (in)famous wild chickens up close and personal. According to perhaps an urban legend, it seems that these chickens really blossomed following the landfall of Hurricane Iniki in 1992 — though wild chickens are found on every island, Kauai does seem to have an outsized share of them. 

 

 
After checking into our Marriott Beach Resort hotel (decent room, underwhelming “oceanview”), we ran a few additional errands for beach and food supplies and then spent the remainder of the afternoon lounging by the pool. 

For dinner, we went to Duke’s an enjoyed good food and drinks in a really nice beachside setting. 

This morning we woke up early to drive  the Road to Hana (R2H), which is a narrow, curving, single-lane bridge festooned roadway to (unsurprisingly) the town of Hana on the lush, windward side of the island. I sort of vaguely remembered it from childhood (having not paid especially close attention to driving conditions as a kid), but I figured that I was either brave or stupid enough to just go with it as an adult.

The drive and environment really is spectacular. Neither words nor pictures can do it justice. It must be experienced firsthand to really appreciate it. There’s also a lot to do along the way; thus, we were a bit forced to make decisions about what to do and what not to do. We opted from the Garden of Eden Arboretum (totally worth the proverbial and literal “price of admission”), the (not so) Secret Falls, and the Wai’anapanapa State Park (for lunch, seaside lava caves and blow hole, and black sand beach). 

 

   
After lunch, we arrived in the small town of Hana and faced a decision: return via the route we’d come or press on to “The Beyond” (which I’ve heard might not even be approved for rental cars to traverse). Having managed the R2H without any white knuckle moments, we opted to press on and make the full circle. 

The scenery–though less lush–was as or more spectacular. The road–about a lane and a half at its widest, unpaved or poorly paved in parts, and blocked occasionally by cows–might have been a bit too much for some, but I didn’t mind the drive. Our Buick SUV handled it fairly well (though a smaller car would’ve been nice).

After completing this lap, we drove up the mountain we’d been circling for the better part of the day: the 10,000 ft volcano called Haleakalā, which means “House of the Sun.” This too is a spectacular drive, especially on a day like today with a cloud layer between the base and the peak that you get to drive through on the ascent. 

 

 
  
Amazing! It’s like driving your car to heaven. 

The summit is pretty amazing too. The crater of the volcano looks more like the surface of the moon. This, of course, is even more spectacular when juxtaposed with the tropical lushness and sun-baked brush that we’d see but a few hours prior on different sides of the same mountain. 

For dinner, we ate at a local Mexican place called Amigo’s. It was surprisingly good and all the more so after a long day!

Like yesterday, this morning started with a work-related phone call followed by breakfast. I also discovered that Hertz overcharged me (by double!) for my rental car… and the Hertz customer service folks really pissed me off by not being able to correct it immediately, refusing to let me talk to a supervisor, and telling me it might take up to 7 days to correct. Well, having rented countless cars and spent thousands of dollars with Hertz, fuck them, I say. I cancelled my subsequent reservations and switched to National. This saved me a few hundred dollars in rental fees and took $1000 out of the pocket of Hertz.

We left our hotel around 7:30 for our brief (20 minute or so) flight to Maui. All was very smooth with Hawaiian Airlines. We arrived in a rainy Maui on time, grabbed our luggage, and picked up our rental car.

We then proceeded to get an awesome cup of coffee (Maui Red) at the Wailuku Coffee Company and picked up lunch for Emerson. To avoid the rain, we drove up the leeward side of the island to visit the town of Lahaina. Although windy (which amazingly drove a light rain from clouds seemingly miles away), Lahaina lived up to its reputation as a town bathed in sun. We visited the small museum in the courthouse, had some high quality ice cream, and generally strolled around the quaint but slightly touristy town. 

 

  
For dinner, we drove to Wailea for dinner at Migrant, a restaurant by Top Chef contestant Sheldon Simeon. The food was  both inventive and outstanding with the highlight being the “bottom of the plate lunch” cabbage salad with puréed macaroni salad and kalua pork “chews.”

  

     

I’d been spending my early morning hours doing some work-related activities, but today I found work to be a bit more consuming then I’d otherwise planned. Nonetheless, I managed to grab breakfast with Libby and Emerson and head to the beach with them for a while.

After the beach, they went to lunch without me while I participated in another meeting and then we spent the afternoon at the Honolulu Zoo. 

 

For our last evening in Waikiki, we ate dinner at P.F. Chang’s and then explored some of the shops and hotels along Kalakaua Avenue. 

 

  
 

We grabbed breakfast early this morning before heading off to Hertz a couple of blocks away to pick-up a rental car at 8am. Once behind the wheel, I set the GPS for Hanauma Bay which is located about 25 minutes to the east of Waikiki. From my childhood visits to Oahu, I distinctly remember this place as one of the most captivating bays / beaches in the world, reknowed for its reef and associated marine life. Having never snorkeled there as a child, I thought it would be awesome for the girls to have that opportunity to do what I never did: swim with tropical fish and see a coral reef up close and in its natural habitat.

 

 
That said, even arriving early, visiting the beach at Hanauma is a bit of a hassle. Thankfully, we got there early enough to get a parking spot. Unfortunately, there was a lengthy line to pay for admission and get a timed entrance ticket. Why timed? It turns out you have to watch a safety / education video before they’ll let you down to the beach. Once at the beach, I returned us snorkel / swim gear and a locker (about $65 for the three of us). Then we headed to the shoreline and got our gear on… or tried too… as the girls couldn’t handle walking in flippers. 

Indeed, we found access to the water difficult even without fins (in hindsight I realize we picked a bad spot) due to coral / rocks that came right up to the water line. What’s more, Libby realized she wasn’t a fan of swimming with either a snorkel or so close to so many large fish. For her part, Emerson liked the fish but found some of the marine invertebrates a bit unsettling (like the spiky urchins) and feared a face-to-face encounter with an eel (which I never saw) thanks to the damn safety video. 

As for me? Well, it took a little bit to get comfortable using the snorkel. Breathing through your mouth underwater doesn’t feel natural. However, once I got the hang food it, I have to say… wow… that was one of the more spectacular experiences of my life. I felt like I was part of an ethereal undersea world… or maybe swimming through a giant scale version of my childhood salt water aquarium. I now fully understand the appeal of snorkeling and (presumably) scuba diving. Just spectacular!

After Hanauma Bay, we drove up the windward coast of the island toward the North Shore. A particular highlight (despite it now raining us) was the replica of the Byo-do-In Temple of Equality and surrounding gardens located in the Valley of the Temples cemetery. 

 

 
We continued through the drizzle to the North Shore, stopping at Waimae Bay to see (for the North Shore of Oahu in winter) only relatively modest surf. This was a bit disappointing, but what can you do? Wind and currents are not within my control.

 

 
Having little surf to watch, we proceeded to the Dole Pineapple Plantation, which was transformed (based on my childhood recollection) from factory tour and fruit stand into far more of a proper tourist destination (complete with gift shop, cafe, gardens, maze, etc.). Despite a drizzle, we opted to conquer the world’s largest maze: requiring a person to enter the maze with a time-stamped card, find eight locations and stencil each’s associated icon onto the card, and then successfully exit the maze to receive a completion time stamp. The record elapsed time is around 10 minutes; the average closer about 45. We managed it (despite the rain and sliding through red mud that eventually covered our feet and legs) in 28 minutes. Not too bad!

 

 
As our reward, Libby and I had a Dole Whip! Emerson–not a fan of pineapple–got a bag of BBQ chips, much to my chagrin.

We drove back to Waikiki via downtown Honolulu (which allowed us to briefly see some of those sights), arriving back at the rental car agency around 5:30pm.