Chocolate, Rum, the Na Pali Coast, Luaus, & Snorkeling

It rains here, but it's brief, warm and beautiful.

Chocolate and other tropical delicacies....

We spent a morning on a tour of the Steelgrass Farm chocolate tour which included a tropical fruit tasting! Starting with tahitian lime and shugar cane, we then moved on to the other tropical fruits that were in season: longan, lychee, soursop, and mountain apples. The farm also grows vanilla, and has bee hives.  The honey they produce is really delicious.  After this teaser, we went on to tour their Cacao trees where we were able to see all stages of the chocolate, from flower, to full grown pods.

After the tour, we spent time in the chocolate tasting tent, were we were regaled with a history of chocolate, and the process that it goes through from harvest to product. And during the stories, we had a blind chocolate tasting.  Tasty tour!

The Na Pali Coast

Kauai is not totally accessible by car.  The road only circles about three-quarters of the island, and with the rain washing out the road west of Hanalei, that distance is even less at this time.  So, in order to see the Na Pali (the Cliffs) in the northwest, we took a boat tour that included a short snorkel and lunch.  Lovely trip with a crew that made the trip really fun. Captain Chad, a native Hawaiian, had great stories to tell, and made the long trip back fun with an open bar and karaoke.

On our way out and, a large pod of spinner dolphins followed us. The weather was great, except at the snorkel sight, where the wind picked up, and the clouds obscured the view of the coast, but that is kind of normal for here.  Saw some fish, but there weren't any rocks near enough to see any interesting corals or urchins. We did see, on our way some Hawaiian Humpback Whales.  Several blows and one breach.  Pretty cool!

Farmers Market & Rum Tasting

We spent Saturday at the farmers market, finding and purchasing some of the fruits we tasted at the Steelgrass Farm tour, and to have lunch.  Kalua Pork.  I learned that Kalua is simply the cooking method used to prepare the pork.

We also bought one of the "sugarloaf" pineapple, a white, lower acid pineapple with a creamy color.  I remember pineapples like this from my days in Ecuador.

And since sugar cane was a major agricultural crop on the island (it isn't any more), we had to stop at the Kaloa Rum Company.  The store is located on the Kilohana Plantation.  While they haven't grown the cane here for a while, they have been purchasing cane from the other islands to make their rum.  They have a new cane plantation started and will be harvesting it to continue making rum with local ingredients.  They have really good rum.  They get the color for their dark rum by using island vanilla. So tasty, that I am bringing it home.

A Luau and Snorkeling

We ended up at the Luau at the Hyatt next door.  Glad we could walk as the mai tais were flowing. And, while I know that mai tais are "the" drink here in the islands, I'm not crazy about pineapple juice.  Luckily, Eric, the bartender, was able to make me a mai tai "light." Same amount of rum, a splash of pineapple juice and topped off with seltzer.

As we walked through the lobby, I was taken aback by the view through the restaurant to the ocean.  It was like looking at a picture (see bottom left picture to the right).

The music and dancing was fun.  I loved the story telling.  Unfortunately, it started to rain, and they moved us to cover for the flame dance, so I ended up getting pictures of him from the back.

Snorkeling and Puka Dogs

We spent the morning snorkeling at Poipu Beach park.  It was a little disappointing after the snorkeling I did on Hawaii, but the water was shallower, and there weren't as many rocks for all the corals, urchins and other clingy organisms.  But there were fish here.  Way more variety than on the snorkel trip earlier.  Saw several of the Humuhumunukunukuapua'a, Hawaii's state fish, along with the Morish idol, and a puffer fish among others I could identify.  Someone was even feeding the fish, and so I saw a swarm of fish following him.

There was also supposed to be some good snorkeling at the Salt Pond Park, but the tide was coming in, and the waves coming in and going out made it difficult to navigate, and stirred up the water so it wasn't easy to see anything. Even though we were trying to snorkel between the rocks and the shore. So, we tried, but decided it was time for a lunch.

Erin insisted that we have Puka Dogs, only served here on Kauai.  It's a polish sausage that is served in a bun "tube" that is toasted.  The condiments are added and the sausage is then inserted.  Actually quite a neat way to eat them.

The condiments were your choice of mustards and island inspired relishes: coconut, mango, pineapple, papaya, starfruit and banana.  And they had a lilikoi mustard that was really good! Tasty.

We ended the day stopping by Spouting Horn, a blow hole that we caught at just the right time for maximum height.

Just a couple more days, to go.  Going to hike in Waimea Canyon tomorrow.

Hawaii? Again?

So, I had a wonderful adventure on the Big Island of Hawaii in November with my friend Lynn. One more place on my list of places to visit crossed off.  Check!

So when my sister, Erin said, "let's go to Hawaii!" I was less than enthusiastic.  However, she had a place for us to stay in Kauai, I had an Alaska Airlines companion fare available, so I thought, why not?

So here we are, staying at the Point at Poipu on the southern end of the island of Kauai. This is the oldest island in the chain, and claims to have one of the wettest place on earth.

The active volcano on the big island of Hawaii is about 200 miles to our south, and there don't appear to be any issues related to that here.  However, I would like to add that my friend Lynn and I stayed not far from the village of Kalapana and the Leilani Estates that have been evacuated recently (see previous blog posts in November 2017).  It's kind of eerie to know that we were there not too long ago.

We arrived on Monday afternoon.  Nice flight as we were bumped up to first class.  I love being an Alaska MVP, as occasional complimentary upgrades happen.  After gathering our bags, and getting our rental car, off to Costco and Safeway we went to stock up the kitchen.  Unloading and putting things away, we then spent the rest of the evening making our plans for touring the island.

After a leisurely morning, we took off to the west toward Wiamea Canyon, with the intent of stopping wherever we felt we wanted to go, and making a list of places to go that looked interesting on the way that we didn't stop at.  We are on island time, so we didn't make a schedule.

Wiamea Canyon is a ten-mile long 3,000 foot deep gorge that was cut by 6 million years of stream erosion. Known as the "Grand Canyon of the Pacific," The canyon is a mere baby at only 4-5 million years compared to the grand canyon in Arizona, which is 200 million years old.

The next day, we drove north toward Hanalei

The island was hit with a torrent of rain in April (49.7 inches of rain in a 24 hour period) that caused flooding and landslides on the north end of the island near Hanalei that closed roads for a while.  They are still cleaning up, and one can now drive to Hanalei, but the road is closed  just west of the town.    We drove to Hanalei to contribute to the economy by buying yarn and enjoying shave ice.  Yes, we did find the only place on the island to purchase yarn, "Strings and Things," which also sells ukuleles!  And, I had no idea that shave ice done the Hawaiian way includes ice cream on the bottom.  I had lilikoi (passionfruit) with macadamia nut icecream, Erin's was a mixture that was called the "blue Hawaiian.

Hanalei bay was lovely, but the road was closed beyond the town.

On our way to Hanalei, we stopped at the Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge. There we saw Red-footed boobies, Red-tailed tropicbirds and Hawaii's state bird, the Nene, or Hawaiian Goose.

There were so many tropic birds nesting in the trees along the cliff, they looked like white flowers.








We have been enjoying the time together.  We are both getting a lot of knitting done, too!

More adventures to go....