My fabulous first weekend

Sorry it’s taken me this long to get something posted but my Internet access at this point has been minimal and every day after work I’m running around trying to find a place to live, getting a mailing address, trying to get a bank account (all of which, by the way, are still failed missions). So, back to my first weekend on the island.

I woke up pretty early on Saturday (and still haven’t adjusted to sleeping in) and got groceries at the little market next door. Some things are high priced, but not all. It’s weird—meat is fairly comparable to home but milk is $6 a gallon (shopping around we found one for $4). After groceries I wandered the town of Waimea. It’s very linear; the whole town is only 3 blocks wide and stretches along the highway. There are a few restaurants and grocery stores and even a theater which plays one movie (for $7 and only on certain days/times). It was cute. I went back to the apartment and heard Rick knocking around upstairs, so I thought I’d see if he was interested in doing some hiking.

And magically, I had a friend. And my weekend was made. Rick took me the whole 10 miles to the Waimea Canyon—it was incredible. It’s so strange here because there are so many ecosystems present on the island. Ten miles away is the ocean and here is a huge, colorful canyon—I was awestruck. I think that Rick got a kick of me being the massive tourist and taking a bunch of pictures, but he was a good sport. There were a few tourist buses there so we left to stay ahead of them. On a side note, Kauai has a lot of tourist industry yet they’re not overwhelming. You can tell who is not from around here just by their demeanor and I find myself asking everyone that’s clearly not from here where they’re from and what their story is. It’s really interesting and I’m glad I’m not constantly fighting tourists for my everyday life.

Rick and I drove to the end of the road (it’s an 18 mile road—the longest road that comes off of the main road, I believe) to see an amazing view of the Kalalau Valley on the Na Pali Coast. The picture that I took reminded me of all the others that I had seen in any photo in a guide book. We could also see the island of Ni’ihau—the forbidden island—from many of the lookouts. It lies about 17 miles southwest of Kauai and is almost a plateau coming up several hundred feet (if not thousands) straight out of the ocean. I can see it from the beach by my apartment as well and for some reason that makes me feel better—that I’m not on a lonely rock in the middle of the ocean. The views all morning were incredible, and that was just the beginning of the day.

On to the greatest adventure I’ve had thusfar—the Awa-‘awapuhi Trail. I wanted to go hiking so Rick picked a trail and we started hiking. It was fairly easy going on the way out. The views were incredible and kept us going farther just to see a little more. That and we kept running into people that kept saying the end of the trail was only another ½ mile. Turns out we ended that trail and decided to walk the .3 miles to a waterfall and after hiking far further than .3 miles decided to turn around. At first it wasn’t so bad, but it seemed like the trail was impossible and incredibly long on the way back. After getting about halfway back up to the car we started taking a break every 10 minutes. Then it was every five. Then our breaks became longer than we were hiking. We felt really out of shape. We finally made it back to our car (after what seemed like forever) and headed down to the park’s lodge and museum—we were hiking in Koke’e Park. Turns out that Awa-‘awapuhi is one of the most strenuous trails they have there and the hike back up changes 1500 feet in elevation. After finding that out I felt pretty good about myself. The museum they had there was pretty cool, too.

After the hike I laid around my apartment, got my hammock up on the porch, rested a little. Rick and I went to the beach to watch the sunset over Ni’ihau, but the clouds hindered that. We had decided earlier that we deserved some beer, so we headed to the (only) bar in town which is also a restaurant. Waimea Brewing Company, whose catchy slogan is “The last beer before tomorrow.” Apparently they’re the westernmost brewery in the world. Good food, decent beer, very nice atmosphere. It’s the restaurant for the Waimea Plantation Cottages, a tropical resort here in town. Went down to the pier when we got home from the brewery and watched the stars until I got cold. It was an amazing first day in Kauai.

Sunday was a little less strenuous with a little less good views, but it was still a good orientation to the island. Rick needed to buy some things for his apartment so we went to Lihue to go shopping. Lihue is the biggest town on the island but is still relatively small—I want to say under 10,000. It’s 23 miles from here and depending on the time of day takes between 30 and 60 minutes to get there. We shopped around a while—hit K-mart and Wal-Mart (no Targets in Hawaii) and walked through the courtyard of the open-air mall they have in town. Drove around a little to see the harbor and the movie theater and car dealerships. Just errands—I got flip-flops which is pretty much the only footwear here, and they call them slippers—and looking around. On the way back we stopped in Hanapepe and looked at the salt pond beach which looks a lot nicer than the one that we have a block away from the apartment. Unfortunately we didn’t have our suits so we had to wait until we got home. We tried swimming at our beach, but that wasn’t the best idea I had all day. I was trying to be cool and jumped into a wave and got knocked down and drug along the bottom—got some sand burn and lost some skin. Not cool. Neither is the amount of sand that I got up my nose. Rick continued playing and I went back again only to get knocked on my butt and bounced on the bottom. It was not a good day for me. Not too much later a woman found a 2-foot hammerhead shark washed up on the beach, so that put a damper on our day as far as the ocean was concerned. Turns out you’re not supposed to play in the water at our beach…

And Sunday night hit me like a freight train and I fought of sleep until about 9:30. And then there was work, but I’ll save that for another time.