Exploring Kauai's Hard To Get To Places

We had one more tour booked through Globus, and that was a 'must do' helicopter tour of the island. Their supplier of choice is Safari Helicopters, which has won numerous awards for the quality of its aircraft, pilots and product. And they certainly didn't disappoint. The whole experience was so good that we bought the souvenir video of our specific flight that included all of the pilot's narration and background music. But, of course, there's no way we can describe any of this, so we'll show you some photos and video instead:

Mt. Waialeale is known as the rainiest spot
on earth, getting over 500 inches per year. Our
helicopter tour included a visit to the
crater - where, of course, it rained! These
are photos of other waterfalls originating
on the mountain.

Another view of Waimea Canyon

The Napali Coast

Us and our 'copter.

Monday was our last full day of the tour and since we had already had one 'farewell dinner' for the people in the group who had booked only to Maui, we were now having a Farewell Lunch for the rest of us. This lunch was at the St. Regis Resort in Princeville at Hanelei Bay. This whole area is famous for a number of reasons: 1) it has been featured in movies for many years, dating from South Pacific where the mountains represented 'Bali Hai', and are known as the Bali Hi Mountains, to the whole Jurassic Park series, including the recently released Jurassic World, 2) it is the vacation home area to many celebrities, and 3) if anyone remembers the Peter, Paul and Mary song, 'Puff the Magic Dragon', the place where he lives, Honalee, is actually Hanalei, slightly amended so the song would rhyme.

The St. Regis is a gorgeous resort on one of the few calm bays on the Napali Coast. According to helicopter pilot it should also post a sign saying it is the 'wettest resort in the world', since it is on the wet side of the wettest island in the world. It didn't disappoint us, either, since it rained so hard while we were having lunch that we all had to change tables on the Makana Terrace.

Views from the Makana Terrace restaurant
over the hotel and the bay

The inside of the restaurant

The bay in between rain showers

At the top of the stairs to the terrace. What a gorgeous
resort!

The main foyer

On the way back to the resort, we stopped
at an overlook of a taro producing valley. The root of the taro is used
to make poi, the traditional starch accompaniment to Hawaiian meals.
This valley produces wet taro which makes poi; dry taro
is prepared like mashed potatoes.

On Tuesday morning, we moved ourselves from the Sheraton to the Grand Hyatt Kauai Resort about a mile down the road. This place was huge and gorgeous, with multiple large pools, a water slide, and even a salt water lagoon since the beach had too much of a surf to swim easily.

We had booked a Kauai Backroads by 4x4 tour before we left, and we didn't know how long the trip was back to Lihue to get to the operator's office until we'd been back and forth in the bus a few times. So we rented a car for the day to get our bags to the Hyatt, and then get us into town for the tour. All good, and we found that the fellow who owned the business was originally Canadian had lived all over Toronto and south/central Ontario before moving to Hawaii.

We set off for the tour not realizing that it would be the bumpiest ride of our lives, even giving the rough spots on the Road to Hana a run for its money. We covered the area near Lihue from a small dormant volcano crater to a secluded beach and an old sugar cane processing factory.

One of the few different birds we saw. This
is a South American Red-Headed Cardinal.

Lots of Angus beef is raised on the islands on various ranches. The
old Grove Farm sugar cane plantation has now been mostly
turned into a cattle ranch.

This is the road at the top of the crater

The view down

Yes, this IS a road! There had been so much rain
in the last few weeks that all the grasses
grew faster than they could chop them down.

At Hanamaulu Beach - secluded and hard
to get to if you don't have a 4x4!

The property we were on was Grove Farm, formerly a sugar cane
plantation. This is the old sugar mill that has been closed since the
late 1980s.

The tunnel behind us was carved in 7 months to make
it easier to get cane from the other side of the hill to the
mill for processing.

The view from inside the tunnel to the
opposite end

An Albezia Tree. These were imported from Africa
to provide shade for the cattle and sheep being raised here.
Now they are being farmed to provide fuel for the
biomass energy plant. 300 acres of albezias is
supposed to provide 10% of Kauai's energy needs
for about 30 years.

Norm wanted to play golf in Hawaii for his birthday, so Larry arranged a round at the Poipu Bay Golf Course, right beside the Hyatt. They spent as much time gawking and taking photos as they did playing golf, but still both managed to play really well. Some of their pictures:

That evening, we celebrated Norm's birthday at the Tidepools Restaurant on the resort property. Delicious!

Norm got a complimentary bottle of champagne along
with his Strawberry Shortcake birthday cake.
That was quite yummy, too!

Beaches in Hawaii are all different, depending on where they are. Some are good for swimming, some for snorkeling, and some for surfing. This was the beach at the Hyatt - no wonder they have a salt water lagoon!

Our last Hawaiian sunset for this trip

All in all a very good holiday - quite busy but we also had lots of down time. We never thought we'd see quite so much of the Hawaiian islands, but we now have a really good understanding of the geography, geology and history of the islands and their people. We are looking forward to going back and seeing some of the more interesting places in more depth - and even playing a little golf!!

Kauai - The Garden Island

Our last on-tour flight took us to the oldest of the Hawaiian islands - Kauai. And this would be our longest stop with three days at the Sheraton and three more, celebrating Norm's birthday, at the Grand Hyatt.

Flying over Honolulu - Diamond Head from the air

Honolulu's oceanside

As usual, we started off on a tour as soon as we left the airport. This time, we headed out toward Waimea Canyon, which Mark Twain dubbed 'the Grand Canyon of the Pacific' without even having seen it based on a description he heard. In order to get there, we drove the only main road around the south and west part of the island, stopping at the Spouting Horn on the way.

Spouting Horn is a small lava tunnel right at the water's edge. It sounds like a dragon's breath when the water rushes in underneath and then spews out the top.

Once we reached the canyon, we realized that it was in fact very similar to the Grand Canyon on the mainland, except shorter, not quite as deep and a lot greener!

A stand at the Waimea Lookout with all kinds of local fruit

On the way to the hotel, which, of course was most of the way back around the same road, we also visited the Kauai Coffee Company. We had already purchased some coffee beans at the Kona Coffee Farm, since it is a non-profit, so this was more a tasting stop than anything else.

Should this go up on facebook?

At the Sheraton Kauai Resort, we got settled into our rooms and then went out to find lunch. There was a small plaza nearby that had a reasonably good restaurant, on the opposite side of another resort but Randy had told us we could walk through their gardens to get there. 'The gardens' turned out to be a very lovely collection of orchids that is even written up in the local tour guide books. Of course, there have to be some pictures:

Gardens at the Sheraton

Fish ponds with huge Koi were at every
resort we visited.

The Moir Gardens at Kiahuna Plantation
Resort

There is so much more to show on this small island that we'll leave the rest for the next post.