The last time we came to Kaua'i was in 1993, right after hurricane Iniki. It was pretty sparse back then, as the whole island was rebuilding, we stayed at one of the few hotels that was still whole, and we ate at one of the very very few "fish" restaurants and the waiter there thought we were remarkable as we were dressed like a native, but no native would be eating fish at a restaurant. Everyone had plenty of fish off their boat or their uncle or cousin's boat. They wouldn't be paying money for fish.
It's very different now. We've also been to Hawaii a few times, including a trip to the big island after Jet graduated, so that he'd get a trip to Hawaii under his belt before he left home, and then another to Maui to look for whales. We love the Big Island a lot, but memories of little, old Kaua'i with it's perpetual rain storm at the top of the island prompted us to come back when we were thinking of how to escape the winter cold of Colorado.
I was finally finished recovering from COVID, with a rebound after the Paxlovid knocked the initial take on it's ass. I was super grateful that the "rebound" was a mild case, as it knocked me over, and I suspect that a full case would have ended up with me in at least Urgent Care if not the hospital with me missing a third of my lung capacity and my asthma. As it was I basically had COVID for three weeks, and mostly just stayed home. Luckily John took only a bit more than a week to get over his case of it, and he could do errands and his usual work load while I slowly recovered.
I'm still easily breathless as we go dragging luggage around.
We traveled with Southwest. We like how they do things, and really enjoy the free checked luggage as it really does help with the amount of room for people in the cabin and there's no stupid last minute check your carry-on shenanegans as there are with other airlines. I also enjoy some of the head cabin attendant's humor. It's fun. And the first come first served seating feels more efficient than everyone jockeying for their seat and getting to see how differently they're treated from the first class folks.
The flight from Denver went to Oakland, first, as there were a bunch of folks from Denver going to various Hawaiian Islands, and it looked as if a whole wing of the Oakland airport was actually taken by Southwest for flights to various Hawaiian Islands. I particularly loved a very large Despicable Me three-D display with moving Gru and Minions.
I also really loved how Oakland goes from having nearly no water whatsoever to being suddenly nothing but water. The waters of the San Francisco Bay are beautiful. I used to fly into Oakland every year to meet up with Carl at some RPG convention or another, and it all looked so familiar and also reconstructed.
The Denver flight boarded at 5:35 am. So, yeah, we were up at 3 am. I was asleep nearly as soon as the plane pushed back from the gate, and woke up to the sound of the engines readying for touchdown at Oakland. The flight from Oakland to Lihue took about five hours and went really smoothly, with one substantial snack and one sweet snack with coffee. There was a little turbulence here and there, but on the most part it was pretty easy.
I'd loaded a bunch of anime episodes from Crunchyroll, and marveled at the fact that I could just download anything I wanted to watch and have it all available while I was offline. I love that feature, and loved it with YouTube, too,. when I watch a lot of that.
Of course the first thing that greeted us at the rental car office was a wild chicken. Actually, a whole flock of wild chickens. They were running in and out of the office while people waited and this one came out to eye me warily before it curled up next to my luggage until the other chickens all came out and chased it off. They were all looking for handouts.
Some things don't change.
Everything else really does and there really isn't any changing back.
The rental was a nice little condo in the town of Kapa'a, which is on the east side of the island. The last time we were in Poipu, which is a resort town, at a half-wrecked Sheraton. It had been a trip that John had gotten at work for something he'd done, and we were living it up that time for the first time. So it had been resorts. This time we were paying our own way and took half a day to look at all the possibilities and we rented through vrbo resources that hadn't even been available back then. Looking for a nice little condo near the beach, near amenities, but out of the tourist mainstream. We like local food.
I realize, now, that part of the whole scene at the restaurant back then might have included the fact that the locals didn't always cook their fish, the way that fish restaurant cooked their guests' fish. Poke wasn't even really a thing back then, and sushi was slowly making its way into Seattle, LA, and San Diego. I don't think that back in 93 I'd gone to Shiro's little Japan Airline restaurant, yet, with Singer.
The fun thing was that we took our rental car to our vrbo, unpacked, and walked out to the beach, which was on the way to the nearby grocery store, which was also a path that took us by a lot of little restaurants that we could peruse the menus of. We picked up an ube sweet bread from a bakery we'd known on a previous visit to another island. We got fresh pineapple, eggs, local sausage, and locally brewed beers. Stocking our little condo with breakfast foods, as they're usually the least likely to be worth eating out for.
And after stocking up, we were able to figure out that what we really wanted to do was go to the Wailua Drive-In. It has been known as the Saimen Dojo, and the Google Maps page for it was still filled with pictures of local Saimen with delicious looking broths. But the lady behind the counter said that they'd rebranded, and weren't selling any saimen anymore.
Given that the star menu item was the chili pepper fried chicken, we decided to go for that. Given that the flavor profile for Hawaiians was a bit like the very spice sensitive Japanese, it seemed reasonable to try the "spicy". And sure enough, it was really mild. Tasty and well spiced, but mild in heat. It's a funny taste dynamic, but it worked well.
The greens were a decided improvement over the traditional macaroni salad. The chicken was great, dark meat chicken, obviously real meat in solidly layered muscle and small strips of attached skin that crisped beautifully. The sauce was sweet, soy, garlic, and spice. Really great compliment to the chicken. The poke was a surprise for us. It had a creamy dressing along with a sweet ginger soy dressing added on top! The chunks of tuna were huge, too, compared to the tiny squares on the San Diego preparations we'd had in the past.
The whole of the poke and chicken combo was huge, and we were both grateful we were sharing the meal. This is the other trick we've picked up in our travels, we often share a meal, as American restaurant meal sizes are ridiculously large.
Especially since we had plans for after dinner. We have a great friend, Marti, who is a stewardess for an airline that flies to all the various islands of Hawaii. And she recommended three different shave ice combinations at Wailua Shave Ice. Nearly all of them involved real fruit, instead of syrups, or syrups and jams made from the actual item involved in the flavoring of the ice. Her recommendations included a coconut one, an ube (Japanese sweet potato that tastes like buttered popcorn, of all things) one, and a lilikoi or passionfruit one.
We settled on the passionfruit one, and one bite brought me back to Puerto Rico, of all places. There, we'd walked the property of the place that housed us while we were working on roofs there, but it was a dorm in the jungle, and the jungle included wild passionfruit plants. And the idea of the plant is to drop the fruit, which ripens and cracks open for the animals to eat, so you want the ones that have already fallen on the ground. Jet and I would find them, wash them, and then finish cracking them open and eat them scooped all over unsweetened yogurt.
Sweet, tart, with peppery seeds that were big enough you kind of had to eat them to eat the fruit, and Wailua Shave Ice simply spooned the fresh fruit all over the shaved ice after dousing the ice with a good slug of sweetened condensed milk. So simple, not too sweet, and super refreshing in the humid heat here.
With my prediabetes, I have to walk after I eat anything sweet. It brings the glycemic impact down if I burn as much of the sugar as possible soon after eating it, so we shopped through the mall, getting postcards, sunscreen with mineral elements rather than the stuff that kills corals, and looked through shirts before heading to the Safeway for some those stocking items I talked about earlier.
One of the tricks we've picked up over the years has been eating most of our breakfasts in the hotel/condo/tiny kitchen we rent. It's usually pretty protein based because I have prediabetes. The sweet bread will be paired with eggs and sausage, and we also got unsweetened yogurt to go with the fresh pineapple.
I enjoy cutting a whole pineapple into edible pieces. It's meditative and the gain of something really good for a really great price is helpful. It didn't hurt that we'd gotten the pineapple at Safeway and we had three dollar coupons for produce at Safeway due to their Health tracking system. But having breakfast at "home" instead of eating that one out allows us more calories and money for the more interesting meals to be out.
Most breakfasts aren't worth buying, I hate to say, especially when they're too large to actually eat for us. It's hard to share a breakfast when John likes scrambled eggs and I like fried, when I don't need potatoes or more than half a slice of toast. I can't really do waffles or pancakes, or any of the sweet specialties for breakfast without walking for ten or fifteen minutes or more afterwards. So it's fun to just have what we would normally eat, mostly, or plan a two or three hour bike ride after Malasadas. We'll do that. It just takes planning.
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