At the Smith Family Garden Luau, they drove us around the grounds before the festivities started. There were ponds and flowers and blooming trees. There was a goat cleaning her kid that had just been born. And there were peacocks like this one.
All the tourists were snapping pictures of all these things, and I was right there among ’em.
“Did you see me?” Trudy asked as I sat down next to her.
She had returned to the beach before I did, because the swells were making her dizzy, and her goggles were slipping. So I was just now rejoining my fair and industrious wife.
“Did you see what happened when I got out?”
I wasn’t sure what she meant.
“It was terrible,” she said.
It turned out that when she swam to shore, she was disoriented and got out on the rocks instead of the sandy beach. The ocean swells and breaking surf tossed her back and forth against the sharp lava rock.
She couldn’t stand up. She couldn’t sit down. She couldn’t swim to shallower water away from the waves. And evidently she couldn’t swim away from the rocks, either.
“I couldn’t get out,” she said, pointing to a bloody scrape on her leg.
As she was struggling with this predicament, being battered on the rocks by the waves, I was oblivious, swimming with the fishes and looking at urchins nestled in the lava. And no one on the nearby beach noticed her trouble, either.
When she did finally pull herself ashore, where was I? I was out in the water swimming with the fishes and urchins having a grand time periodically poking my head up and waving to her obliviously as she nursed her wounds.
She had a sad look on her face and even a hint of tears in her eyes.
“Your husband abandoned you,” I said.
“He did,” she said.
As soon as we put our faces in the water at Po‘ipu Beach, we were surrounded by fish. One moment we were mere tourists in the water and the next we were among swarms.
There were Yellow Tang. There were Orangestripe and Whitespotted Surgeonfish. There were various kinds of Butterflyfish. There were orange Elegant Coris and ones with black and white stripes. There was a Flowery Flounder fluttering on the bottom. There were Triggerfish. There were long skinny Cornets. There were Parrotfish crunching their beaks on the rocks. And there were Moorish Idols with long dorsal fins streaming behind them.
Some swam in schools, sometimes posing for swimmers with cameras. Some swam alone, coming right up to your face to stare you down.
It made us feel as if we were in some sort of Jaques Cousteau documentary. And it made us glad we rented snorkel gear for a week.
At Spouting Horn there is a big hole in the lava at the water’s edge. As the blue waves of the Pacific crash onto the rocks, the ocean spouts out of a hole in the ground straight into the air.
Tourists arrive in rental cars and buses to stand at the edge of this marvel of mother nature. They wait patiently for the water to spout.
And there are the wild chickens. Because this is Kauai.
Trudy had heard of this breakfast place in Kapaa called Eggbert’s. So after the sun was up, we went looking for the place with a trusty Google map in hand.
As it turned out, Google was wrong. So we drove around a bit until we finally asked a construction worker if he knew where Eggbert’s was. He pointed down the street.
“On the other side of that building in a strip mall,” he said.
We thanked him and drove off. And as it turns out, that strip mall was Coconut Market Place, which is next door to where we were staying, literally walking distance.
I had the #3: two eggs, bacon, toast, hashbrowns and coffee. Trudy has the #2: two eggs, bacon, toast and coffee to which she added a papaya pancake with coconut syrup.
Oh my gosh.
We did go to a different place for breakfast on one of our mornings there, but let me tell you we didn’t make that mistake twice.
On the morning of our first full day in Kauai, we woke early. Light was just beginning to coming in thru the curtains. The fair and industrious Trudy got up and peeked out.
“Is the sun up?” I mumbled.
“Not yet,” she said.
There was a pinkish glow on the horizon.
I sat up quickly.
“Let’s go.”
We pulled on some clothes and went down to the beach. We walked past the leaning palm trees. We walked barefoot in the surf. And we watched sunrise on the Pacific.
On our first day in Kauai I took a fancy to a small piece of driftwood washed up on the beach. I picked it up and proclaimed, “I’m taking this.” Trudy scowled.
The next day, I woke up sick. I had a headache. I had a neck ache. I was nauseous and didn’t want to get out of bed. I’m just saying … that’s what happened the next morning.
That evening we went to The Smith Family Garden Luau where a man sitting across from us told a story. It seems he had a friend who had come to Hawaii once and taken a small piece of lava as a souvenir. Knowing nothing of my driftwood, this man explained how his friend’s luck turned bad when he got home.
“He lost his job,” the man said, “and his family left him, and he’s in jail.”
For the next four days, Trudy grumbled regularly about my driftwood and said I needed to put it back which I pointedly did not do.
So on the morning of our last day on Kauai, as I was taking a shower, the fair and industrious Trudy announced that she was taking my driftwood back to the beach.
And as far as I know, my first day at my new job is still on for tomorrow.
Lihue is not a big city. Indeed, it’s not a city at all but just a town, albeit the largest on the island. So there was no delay catching the rental shuttle and renting a car and driving from the airport to our condo in Kapaa.
When we got to the room, day was almost done.
We walked down to the steep, sandy beach. Kapaa looks east, so the sun had already sunk behind the mountains. There was no orange globe descending into the distant water. That would have to wait for another day. But the trade winds were blowing out of the east. Coconut trees were swaying in the breeze. Tiki lamps were burning on the lawn. Waves were crashing on the beach.
We took off our shoes and waded in the surf.
The air was warm yet cool. We had twelve days ahead of us. It felt like infinity.
Having arrived in Lihue, we waited at baggage claim A for our bags.
“Why are our bags always last?” Trudy asked, adding in her characteristically optimistic fashion, “They must have been the first ones on!”
So we waited. And we waited. And then the carousel stopped. There was no sign of our big yellow duffle or small blue suitcase.
“Did you fly in on Delta?” the woman at the baggage desk asked.
“Um, no, we flew out of Houston on United and transfered…”
She patiently told us to go to baggage claim B and pointed at the other end of the terminal.
So we walked. And we walked. We walked until we thought we had gone too far.
“Excuse me, where is baggage claim B?” I asked a woman who looked official, interrupting a conversation she was having.
She and her friend were silent for a moment, and then she pointed to a sign that said, “B”.
So we walked a little further, and when we got there we saw two lonely bags sitting against the far wall: a big yellow duffle and a small blue suitcase.
What a relief.
Wait.
When I spoke disparagingly about our seats on the flight from Honolulu to Kauai, I omitted one important point.
Yes, for most of the 30 minutes, our view out the left window offered nothing but ocean and whitecaps all the way to Tahiti. But as we turned for Lihue, the plane flew nose first into the trade winds blowing out of the east. And as we made that turn, it was the folks on the right who had the oceanside view. Ours was of the mountains.
Green forests climbed up the slopes, disappearing into mist and dark clouds. And the clouds in the heights were dark. It was raining up there.
The late afternoon sun was behind us. And on our final approach for the airport, a rainbow appeared, reaching from the mountains down to the sea.
Welcome to Hawaii.
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