October 28th, 2017
Sophon and I left on an early flight to Lihue and got there by noon. I was a bit surprised at how empty the plane was. I am used to seeing standby lists and offers to give up my seat for a later flight. Everyone had their own row and there were empty rows. You don’t see that very often. I asked the flight attendant about it and she said that the weeks leading up to the holidays were the best times to go to vacation destinations – people were not travelling in anticipation of holiday travel!
Kauai was and always will be a special place for me. The first time I was in Kauai was when I was installing system for Computerized Lodging Systems (CLS). I spent 8 weeks working for Aston going back and forth between Kauai and Maui working on Property Management Systems (PMS). How could life be any better? Caught in a traffic jam between Lihue and Poipu? I should be so lucky, I can think of worst things to deal with.
A few years later, I cashed in my frequent flyer points to bring my parents to Hawaii. I grew up in the Northeast and Hawaii was a 10 hour flight, one of those once in a lifetime trips. I cashed in frequent flyer miles and took my parents to Hawaii in celebration for their retirement. They visited me in CA and we went on to Hawaii, first Oahu and then Kauai. I was going back with fond memories of working there followed by being there with my parents.
Kauai is the most filmed Island which is one of the reasons that I love it. After being there, I would see the places that I had visited and loved on the big screen. All of the Jurassic Park films, Indiana Jones and the list goes on and on. On my visit with my parents, my mom went on and on about South Pacific.
When I tell people that Kauai is my favorite Island, I always find the response funny. Part of it depends on the age. I often get, “Not Maui?”, “Not the big Island?” and by younger people I hear the comments about how those Islands close down early. guess we all have our favorite island and we all have a hard time understanding why your favorite island is not the same as mine!
Sophon and I arrived around noon. We had done our research via yelp.com and tripadivsor.com and knew where we wanted to make our first stops. Ginger fried chicken and poke from Konohhiki Seafood market followed by a quick stop at 7-11 for SPAM Masubi. Did you think I came here to eat healthy?
We headed north up the coast toward Hanalei bay. It was a rainy day. First photo-op was Kilauea Lighthouse. There wasn’t too many other photo ops but that did not stop us from taking pictures of Hanalei Valley where you might recognize from Jurassic Park and Lumahai beach where South Pacific was filmed. Too bad it wasn’t a sunny day!
Spam Masubi
Lumahai Beach
Hanalei Valley
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