Kauaʻi – Lawaʻi Beach

The flight home was not scheduled to depart until 11:00 PM and we wanted to spend our last day on the beach so we headed for Lawaʻi Beach.  It is small but we had the place to ourselves. The snorkeling was excellent, with an outstanding variety of fish many fish and many sea turtles.  This beach had no shower facilities, and we didn’t want to get on the plane feeling covered in sand and salt, so we went to the YMCA in Lihue and asked if we could use the showers.  They looked at us weirdly, but we showed our member ship cards from our home town YMCA and they let us in.   Cleaned and dressed, we ate at Duke’s Canoe Club – very touristy, average food, but fantastic views). Still too early to head for the airport, we went next door to the Anchor Cove Mall to get a few souvenirs for those back home. Every single store was playing Kamakawiwo’ole’s “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and I began to wonder if it was mandatory.

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The Language

After two weeks, I was also getting overwhelmed by vowels, so I bought a Hawaiian phrase book. It turns out the Hawaiian alphabet has only 13 letters – 5 vowels, and 8 consonants. It was invented by missionaries, because Hawaiian had no written language.  So, on top of the destruction of the Hawaiian culture and religion, we also have them to thank for all the vowels.  My first thought was that priests should leave language to linguists. But as I thought about it, I realized the more time they spent inventing languages, the less time they had to corrupt the native religion/culture.

The Airport

We arrived at the airport at 9:00, went to return the car and the rental return guy said, “Hey you dented the bumper.” I said, “No way, that dent was there.” “Did you go to Dukes? he asked. “Yes.” “Did you use valet parking? “Yes.” “OK, no problem, then,” and off he went.

There was obviously some kind of scam going on, but it seemed that we were no longer involved.  We went inside the airport, dropped our luggage and went to get something to eat and a bottle of water to take onto the plane.  And true to form in this part of the island, everything was closed– bars, restaurants, and even newsstands, even though it was only 9:00 P.M.

Accommodations and Travel Tips

Waimea Inn  – gorgeous, the rooms were very comfortable and the service was great – highly recommended.

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Hawaii is a great place to visit, but as with many other destinations, the well known places are subject to over tourism.  My recommendation would be to look for the second tier destinations to avoid crowds.  The only exception is Volcano National Park which has no alternative and is big enough that you can generally avoid the crowds.

Guidebook – the guidebook we used was “The Ultimate Kauai Guidebook Kauai Revealed” by Andrew Doughty.  It was excellent and I highly recommend it.  I usually find guidebooks useful for a general overview, but he lives there and it shows in the detail and accuracy of his information.

For this trip we used a combination of Airbnb and VRBO. See Travel Resources for further info.