Allan’s Site

We took two island tours away from the resort today.  The first was to take the river boat tour to the Fern Grotto.  It was pretty staid and uneventful.  The thing I remembered from my childhood visit to the grotto was that we could walk all the way into the grotto.  Unfortunately, a series of heavy rains more than a decade ago made clear that the ground above the grotto was too loose to be safe, so now tourists aren’t allowed to enter.  Instead, we viewed the grotto from a platform at some distance, in the sunlight where it was both hot and humid, while musicians played for us.  They also played for us on the boat ride back.

We were scheduled for a 4 PM helicopter tour of the island, including a landing at a waterfall that had been shown in Jurassic Park.  However, we had a number of hours to kill between the Fern Grotto and the helicopter tour, so we made a stop at Wailua Falls and then drove to Waipouli for some snacks and downtime.

We got to the airport in Lihue at 3:15 PM in time to check in (and weigh in), and just before 4 PM, we boarded our helicopter.  W and I were extremely lucky to get two front passenger seats, him in the middle and me on the far right.  I had forgotten to wear dark clothing to avoid my clothes being reflected in the windows (and ruining my photos), but the tour operators gave me a dark t-shirt to drape over my light green shirt.  Hsuan and J sat in the second row, along with two other fellow tourists.

We all wore headsets, so we could hear the pilot over the sound of the helicopter itself.  In order to speak back to him, though, we had to use separate microphones.  (It turns out he bought his first house in La Cañada, so he knows the Pasadena area.)

Shortly after we lifted off and headed inland, the pilot started playing music from his iPod nano, piped over our headsets.  The first song:  The J Bond Theme (from “Dr. No.”).

The second:  The Theme from Mission Impossible.

It was a great way to set the mood for much of our tour, between the times he’d cut the music to talk about what we were seeing or flying over.  Other movie themes included Jurassic Park and Braveheart, plus some pop and rock songs on occasion.

Our first destination was Manawaiopuna Falls, more popularly known as Jurassic Falls, or the waterfall near which the helicopter landed toward the beginning of the movie.  (Many other falls are from the islands are seen in the movie, but this one is specific to the helicopter landing — which I verified by comparing my photos with the movie.)  Many tours fly over the falls, but we booked a tour that actually landed nearby, so we could walk to the falls and hang around a bit.  During the approach, our pilot flew us through the narrow canyon leading up to the falls, while the Theme from Jurassic Park — or the Journey to the Island track from he album — played over our headsets.

Seen from the base of the falls, the foreshortened perspective from looking upward makes it hard to tell how tall they are, but they’re listed at about 400 ft.  And maybe the movie was filmed with a perspective to emphasize the falls height.  (Actually, throughout the tour, I found it hard to gauge sizes — the terrain in some parts of Kauai are so awesomely eroded and jagged that gigantic formations, abundant everywhere, seem “ordinary”.  One spectacular waterfall is followed by a half-dozen others.  One impossibly steep canyon is followed by three more.  One cliff face that extends up to the clouds is… well, we could be surrounded by vertical cliff faces extending upward to the clouds, with no top in sight.)

The Jurassic Falls were a very nice, restful stop.  The helicopter landed at a pad nearby, and the pilot shut everything down.  We walked the trail to the falls and just hung around for a while.  The air was clean and refreshing, and the sound of the falls was both soothing and exciting.  I noted an optical effect of how the water arcs or doesn’t appear to arc (when there’s no water) as the falls hit various outcroppings, with the lines always being reproduced, and I pointed it out to the pilot.  He complimented my observation, while I admitted I was merely thinking about how a computer rendition might fake the effect.

I was surprised — then later not so surprised — to find that the falls are located on privately-owned land.  That probably made filming easier — easier to get permission, possibly, from the owners than to get permission from the state when filming in a state park.  I was also surprised to learn that the falls are fed entirely from accumulated rain water from the plateau (rather a bowl-shaped area) above.

After about 15 minutes, we got back in the helicopter and took off.  The pilot flew us west-northwest to Waimea Canyon, and then he flew us to the Na’pali Coast.  While Waimea Canyon does deserve its nickname as the Grand Canyon of the Pacific, I had to admit I found Na’pali Coast even more spectacular.  The cliff walls on the coast are more shear, in some places almost vertical for what appears to be as much as a few thousand feet of elevation, going straight down to the coastline.  There are deep, narrow canyons along the coast of such extreme narrowness and vertical scale that I had thought such things existed only in Bryce 3D renderings, not in the physical world.  But there they were.

The flight through Waimea Canyon seemed almost secondary compared to the Na’pali coast flight, with the pilot relishing flying over the water along the coast, and then flying into a canyon on occasion, approaching the canyon walls for close-up views before returning to the coastline, only to fly north to visit yet another canyon.

Throughout the tour, I kept looking down through the window at my feet, seeing the canyon floors and rivers and thinking that people had never visited these areas on foot, so remote were the areas and so extremely rugged was the terrain.

I also spent this part of the tour trying hard not the vomit from the increasing air sickness.  Barf bags were nearby, on the right of the pilots console.  W and Hsuan had taken air sickness medicine.  Hsuan later said she was very calm during the tour.  W, I noticed, had fallen asleep a few times.  Neither J nor I took the medicine.

On the way back to the airport, the pilot flew us to Mt. Waialeale, the island’s volcano that is also the wettest spot on earth, or one of the wettest spots, anyway.  The top of the volcano was hidden in the clouds, but he was able to approach the sides of the crater and fly by the Wall of Tears (waterfalls).

After returning to the airport (and after tipping both the pilot and one of the staff), we promptly drove back to Poipu and the resort for dinner.

After packing late last night, well past midnight, I woke up at 4:40 AM this morning and got dressed, and the rest of the family followed.  We left the house around 5:20 PM and drove to LAX for our Hawaiian Airlines flight, which was scheduled to take off at 7:40 AM.

The entire trip to Lihue on Kauai, from leaving the house to leaving the baggage claim at Lihue, was uneventful.  J and I were seated separately from W and Hsuan, and J and I slept for most of the flight, waking up toward the end to watch Vacation on my iPhone.

As we drove from the airport, it was around midday, so I wanted lunch.  Hsuan looked up some places on her iPhone and started giving me directions.  I tried following, but it was simply too irritating to drive without knowing where I'm driving, the lay of the land (or having a map in my head), or anything about the destination, so I pulled over.  It turns out she wanted to go to The Fish Express, which is a highly rated restaurant in Lihue, but it's more of a fish market kind of place than an actual restaurant.  It's essentially take-out food.

I decided instead that we'd eat at Gaylord's at Kilohana.  It was clear it was an actual restaurant, and it gets even better reviews on TripAdvisor.  Hsuan thought it was a chain restaurant, but I hadn't heard of it.  It turned out not to be a chain restaurant.  It seemed like what I wanted, so we drove there.

It turns out that Kilohana is also a former sugarcane plantation, and it's a historic site.

First off, lunch was outdoors under covered walkways adjacent to the mansion.  It was very tasty.  J, as usual, had chicken and pasta.  W had chicken crepes.  Hsuan had an ahi poke in a coconut bowl.  I had beer battered tacos.  For dessert, W had a slice of the plantation pie, and I had some coffee.

Then we walked around the plantation.  There were shops, and there was a train ride tour of the plantation, so we got tickets for the 2 PM ride.  The ride itself was short and pleasant, with our guide describing all the plants still cultivated on the plantation.  It turns out that the sugarcane and other fruits are used by the bartenders in the restaurant to make new cocktails, among other things.  There are also a few animals on the plantation -- donkeys, horses, some cattle, goats, tons of wild chickens and even a herd of wild pigs.  The islands are overrun by wild chickens and pigs, but the plantation decided to corral a small herd of wild pigs to keep as the plantation's "pets".  We stopped the train, and people got out to feed bits of bread to the pigs, chickens, and goats.  The bread is just a tasty snack; in reality, the pigs' main sustenance comes as leftovers from the restaurant.

The Koloa Rum Company also has their company store on the plantation.  When we visited the store, one of the ladies staffing the store asked if we were local, using some Hawaiian phrase that I don't remember -- I think it might be kama'aina.  She said we looked like we belonged there.  Later, I signed up for a rum tasting in the store, and I joined a group of 11 others in the bar.  Despite the fact that she and I both had California drivers licenses, the woman next to me also asked if I were a local.  Hmm.

Anyway, Koloa rum is made with pure cane sugar, not molasses, so it's very high quality, high-end rum.  It's also difficult to make or maintain profits, sits molasses is much cheaper, but they seem to be doing well.  The company has won many awards at assorted rum competitions.

The four varieties of Koloa rum I tasted were really good.  Very aromatic, but the favors were bold and not overly subtle.  I'm glad Koloa rum is widely available in the US, so I didn't have to buy a bottle to bring home in the luggage.

Afterward, we made the short drive to Poipu and the Grand Hyatt Resort, where we'll be staying for our vacation.

We rested in our room for quite a while, and then just before 6 PM, we left to explore the resort grounds.  Maybe we're just not used to it yet, but the Grand Hyatt grounds are more convoluted than the Grand Wailea in Maui.  More places to hide in, more places to get lost in.  It has its attractions.  The beach waves were high and dangerous-looking, though, and the weather was cool, though the time must have had much to do with it.

We had an expensive dinner at Tidepools, the resort's signature restaurant (or one of them).  Then we returned to the room to wash up and go to sleep.

At the LA County Science Fair, W won 1st place in his category.  This year, he competed in a more advanced category, with fewer but more capable competitors.  Moves on to the CA State Science Fair, though he has to register, etc.

He also won a special award from one of those professional organizations that provide prizes or recognition for specific topics other than the fair categories.

I posted photos and details for family & friends on Flickr.