Mahalo!

Aloha and E Komo Mai! (Hello and Welcome!)

Amy and I were in Hawaii from July 16-23. It was my first time visiting the state, but she had been there as a kid and then again for a high school trip in the mid-90s. It was an awesome time – here are the highlights of the trip:

Saturday 16^th

First off, this was a miles trip. A celebration of not working anymore by using some of our hundreds of thousands of frequent flyer miles for a relaxing break. Oh yeah, and I think we had an engagement to celebrate too. We flew down from SFO to LAX, had a pretty long layover, then got on an evening flight to Lihue, Kauai.

The first distinctive thing about Hawaii’s airports is that the baggage claim is outside. I guess you can do that when you have warm weather 365 days a year. Anyway, I was also surprised to find the climate humid, which I shouldn’t have because Hawaii is distinctly in the tropical latitudes of the Pacific. It’s actually on the same latitude line as Peru.

Because Hawaii doesn’t observe Daylight Savings Time, it’s dark before 7:30, and the car ride

over to the hotel was a little tough to get used to – the roads in San Francisco are a little more bright during the evening. We checked into the Sheraton Kauai at around 8:30, took our bags to our ocean view (!) room, had some dinner, and crashed.

Sunday 17^th

Our ideal vacation isn’t exactly sitting on the beach and vegging out. So, Sunday at 8am, we got picked up for our snorkel tour. Our guide, a really helpful native who had also spent time on the mainland, drove us just a few miles to a part of Poipu Beach where the breaks were fairly small and hung out with some sea turtles and a bunch of schools of colorful fish. The guide gave us a flash card afterwards, but I wasn’t able to identify the most beautiful fish that were swimming with me. I even regurgitated my breakfast at one point during the dive – seasickness is new to me, and I hate it. Must be getting old.

We spent the afternoon laying out and reading, talking a little bit about our wedding. It’s so exciting – not just to be planning an event together that will involve our family and friends – but to think that we’ve just started on the path of being together forever.

For dinner, we checked out Roy’s – highly recommended. We’d gotten tips from more than one friend to dine there while in Kauai, and we were not disappointed. I actually had the best Ahi I’d ever had – it was seared and served in a thin black bean sauce. Amy got the same thing. No room for dessert, but their signature desert is a chocolate soufflet that other diners seemed to be enjoying.

Monday 18^th

Monday’s adventure was a 5-mile round trip kayak trip on the Wailuea River, split by a 2-mile hike up to an amazing 130-foot waterfall. The River is a short drive up the east coast of the island, pretty close to the Lihue area where the airport is. One thing that’s amazing about Hawaii is the proximity between rainforest, mountains, greenery, and beach. If we didn’t live in San Francisco and appreciate microclimates, we would have had a lot to get used to.

Amy is quite the water sports enthusiast, so she steered our kayak while I rowed in front. We gave ourselves a little bit of a workout by keeping an aggressive pace, but took plenty of time to take in all of the scenery along the way. This trip was our favorite “activity” of our time in Hawaii, and we would recommend the vendors with whom we did it. Yes, there are mosquitoes in Hawaii, in case anyone wants to know.

We learned about some purple flower that tastes like portabella mushrooms, and learned that Paul Mitchell’s Awapuhi conditioner comes from a plant in the Hawaiian “jungle.” People were literally squeezing the conditioner out of the plant into their hair – see Amy’s picture here – and it’s smoother than anything you can buy at the salon. Very cool.

We met a nice couple named Todd and Tracy from Boston on the hike, and amazingly, Todd was able to talk about the Red Sox in 5,000 words or less. We didn’t even get to talk about things like Johnny Damon popping out of a slump by hitting a grand slam in game 7 or any of the other hundred miracles that happened in late September 2004. We went out to a bar in Poipu called the Beach Broiler at the recommendation of our Kayaking guide, and were not disappointed by either the casual atmosphere or the friendliness of the locals. If you ever get there, check it out, and ask for the bartender Richie – and tell him how much you love Oregon State. It’ll net your crew a free round.

Tuesday 19^th

One thing that really sucks is that my hair is starting to thin out. But, I don’t want to talk about it.

Tuesday was our day on the north side of the island. We drove up the east coast, around to the north, and did a hike on the northwest Na Pali coast. Here some pictures from the hike –

the views were incredible. Exactly what I pictured when I thought of Hawaii.

On the way back to Poipu, we stopped at the Princeville Resort, since we had reciprocal privileges there as Sheraton guests. Quite fancy. Pool bar. Mountain vistas. Did I mention the pool bar?

We had a terrible dinner that night at the sushi restaurant in our hotel, Naniwa. Do not go there, and if you do, just get a salad or something. It gave Hawaiian sushi a bad name, which I don’t know if it deserves or not.

Wednesday 20^th

This was our day to check out the west side of the island – this is the more agricultural side of Kauai, where coffee is grown and different crops are harvested. It’s also certainly the oldest and most residential part of the island.

We drove about 11 miles up to the top of Waimea Canyon, and had a great vista from up there. It’s kind of like a miniature version of the grand canyon with a decent amount of greenery growing on the cliffs because of the misty conditions at that altitude.

On the way home we stopped at the Kauai coffee company. We walked out into the fields and saw the coffee beans growing, and tasted a number of the flavors inside their market. It’s cool that the same island can grow both coffee and sugar, huh? They have to get the milk from somewhere else, though (thus it’s $5 a gallon).

If you stay at the Sheraton Kauai, try to spend at least one afternoon from 5-6pm there for the Mai Tai happy hour – all you can drink for one hour (a Mai Tai is rum and OJ). Cool entertainment and we got to meet and talk to some other people from SF while putting back as much free alcohol as we could handle before sundown. Amy and I had dinner right there and chilled in the whirlpool before heading back.

Thursday 21^st

Transit day…flew from Kauai to Honolulu to Maui…we landed in the early afternoon and did some snorkeling and hanging out on the beach once we got to the Westin at Kaanapali. That night we had our best dinner of the trip, which was a seafood tapas experience at Mala. Off the beaten path on Front street in Lahaina, it’s definitely one of the better meals I’ve had in a long time, and we were full and out of there for $40. Most highly recommended restaurant of the trip. And apparently one of the waiters there is from Toledo (I heard this from another friend in Toledo).

Amy and I got some cheap Brut from the Safeway and popped some bubbly back in our second oceanfront room of the trip before hitting the sack. We’re really happy to be together, in Hawaii or anywhere else.

Friday 22^nd

The Road to Hana. If you’ve done it, enough said. If not, go to Maui and do it. Not the there-and-back, but the whole circumference of the island, driving clockwise. An intense cornucopia of rainforests, mountains, ocean, sand and lava beaches, backwoods local areas, real roads, unpaved roads, desert, valleys, and plains.

We set out at 6:30am, stopped at Charley’s for breakfast, drove up and down mountain roads and over one-lane bridges, took pictures, bought bamboo necklaces, stopped to hike 2 miles to a huge waterfall in Haleakala National Park and went through the most amazing bamboo forest, braved the unpaved and treacherous roads on South Maui, learned that the south side of the island is a full-on desert (and that almost no one ever goes there for any reason – which is a shame because we saw a bluer ocean than I’d ever seen even in my dreams), stopped at a winery that had crappy pineapple wine, and were accompanied by a nice random mix on the iPod during which Amy and I picked out our song for the wedding. Can’t write it just yet, but lets just say it’s not typical.

We were exhausted when we got back to the west side, so I napped poolside and we had dinner at the hotel restaurant that night. We were in bed pretty darn early after deciding we just couldn’t drink our bad “wine” purchased earlier in the day.

Saturday 23^rd

Our last day, so we took it easy…it was really hot outside. We had a plate lunch (mine was great, a chicken/fish/beef combo, but Amy got some so-so salad) and did some shopping at Banana Republic (ahem…1.75% sales tax…pretty good deal) and some of the other local stores in Lahaina. When we got back we hung out at the pool, snorkeled a bit, drank, and enjoyed our last few oceanside moments. We showered around 6:30 and headed toward the airport, grabbed some Thai food for dinner, debated whether to buy me some Tylenol PM for the red-eye home, didn’t, then got to the airport and dozed on the flight that took us back to SFO.

Other Notes

We used some of our time on Kauai and Maui to learn about timeshares. We’d heard someone say on Kauai that the only predator on the island was the Timeshare Salesman, but I wanted to at least learn about the costs and benefits of the arrangements. After we got the sales pitch (horribly executed) and thought about it a while, we realized it didn’t make sense at this point in our financial lives – and maybe ever. Even though Starwood has lots of reciprocal privileges no matter what the “home” resort is, the asking price of the soon-to-be-built places on Maui were simply too much compared to what would fit into the budget of moderate vacationers like us. We’re deal-hunters and don’t mind using energy to find good prices – the idea that the hotel is “taken care of” is great but not a tremendous luxury for us.

We really liked the pace and style of Kauai, and will definitely return there in the future, perhaps after we have children. It’s pretty easy to get to from the west coast, and offers a much more relaxing atmosphere for less money than we could get at many other warm weather destinations. The population is only about 55,000, so it’s not crowded, and I don’t think it’s going to become that way anytime soon.

Things that happened on our trip:

- Lance Armstrong wins his 7^th consecutive, and final, Tour de France

- The NHL PA and Board of Governors approve a CBA with a cap and other pro-league features, thus making the NHL the last major American sport to adopt salary controls

- John Roberts is nominated by President Bush to replace Sandra Day O’Connor on the bench of the Supreme Court

- We talked about our wedding a lot

Mahalo (Thank you) if you’ve read this far!