Kauai Getaway
Usually when i disappear from the net like this, it means one of two things. Either work has captured all of my attention, or it’s the opposite - I snuck away and went on vacation. This time, the latter was true. After a solid seven months of routine, the wife and I bundled up a small travel-sized version of our home into carry-on luggage and quart-sized bags of liquids and headed west, very west, to Kauai, Hawaii.
Kauai is correctly called the Garden Isle (in the literal sense, not in the way that New Jersey is the Garden State) - it’s replete with lush flora and is a great place to visit if you are particular to outdoor vacations that involve plenty of hiking, boating and of course, lounging on the beach with a book.
We spent more than half of the trip on the south shore at the Kiahuna Plantation, a smattering of condos and restaurants set up right next to the beach. All of the rooms are enclosed with plantation-shutter laden walls, which when opened essentially turn your entire condo into a mosquito-free outdoor area. The grounds are kept golf-course groomed, so everyone walks around barefooted. The beach is wide and soft, and on occasion monk seals come up out of the ocean, sprawl out, and sleep. It’s pretty idyllic.
From here, we made several day trips - a couple of boat trips along the western and northern shores - one focusing on the humpback whales that summer in Hawaii and the other focusing on the cliffs and caves that comprise the Na Pali coast. We also managed to get out to the Waimea Canyon, just inland from the west side. It’s the second largest canyon in the US after the Grand Canyon, and with 3500 foot cliffs carved out by millions of years of rainfall-fed streams, looks the part.
The last few days were spent wallowing in the luxurious confines of the Princeville hotel and grounds. We did take off one morning to go horseback riding, which was my first foray into equine transportation and was a lot of fun. The Princeville hotel itself could easily be a Vegas transplant - it was impressive from the outside and was filled inside with over-the-top cascading water fountains, large swaths of marbled hallways, and drink prices that drive you to drink. One cool thing we noticed is that if you sit in the chairs that line their beautiful beach long enough, staff comes by with ice water and slices of pineapple to accompany the views, which cannot be knocked.
Apart from being bookended by harrowing twentysomething-hour migrations, Kauai is a fantastic vacation destination which we’d highly recommend to anyone looking to get away from it all for a bit.