Welcome to travels with Todd

It was after 08:00 when I managed to rouse myself Sunday morning and waddle down to the patio for the included breakfast. I know that I’m driving alone but you are with me figuratively.

(This is where we ate. It wasn’t taken at breakfast.)

I saw a couple from Germany whom I’d met briefly at the concert Saturday night. They seemed astonished that I had not heard the roosters crowing sometime around 05:00 – particularly since I’d retired so early. I told them that I’d just arrived from Aotearoa New Zealand and that I was tired enough that I could have likely accomplished the same feat someone in the Australian Road Scholar group managed of sleeping through a fire alarm. We had a nice chat about the previous night and our respective plans for the day before returning to our rooms to put those plans into action.

Standing solo in the sun

(Thanks K & P)

Longtime readers of this blog might recall my California friends K & P visiting me in Lisbon in January 2024. Not only will they return my feeble efforts at hospitality when I arrive on Oahu later in this trip but, prior to my departure, they shared stacks of information with me from which I drew my plans for this day and several others to come. (These were internet links so stacks is intended metaphorically.)

Kauai isn’t a very big island. It’s small enough that starting in one direction and appearing to backtrack to get someplace else – especially since there are places you can reach by car and places you can’t – isn’t at all onerous. The screen capture from Google maps shows my intended arc for the day.

The plan was to start by heading northeast to the Wai Koa Loop Trail then back past Lihue (marked S/F on the map) to Hanapepe before making the last stop at Poipu Beach.  (The time and mileage shown on the map doesn’t include the ultimate return to the Kauai Inn but, as you can see, it’s not very far or a lot of time in the car.)

In addition to being unconquered and the Garden Isle, Kauai might hold the title as the “Hiking Isle” at least from my perspective because so many of the suggested activities included hiking. I decided my first hike should be an easy one so I was off to Wai Koa and what alltrails.com describes as “a moderately challenging route” that’s a round trip of three-point-eight or four-point-five miles depending on the source. All Trails shows a total of 826 feet in elevation change. Here’s the slightly deceptive entrance to the trail.

I call it slightly deceptive because, unless you’re walking during the dry season, it gets quite muddy as you proceed into the forest.

And the forest is one of the main reasons you want to walk this trail. With 86,000 Honduran mahogany trees along your walk, you are amid the largest mahogany plantation in the United States. A stretch of this walk is called The Enchanted Forest.

These trees are a relatively new phenomenon in this location.

Bill and Joan Porter purchased the property in 2006 and planted the trees shortly thereafter with the dual purpose of transitioning the land from its earlier uses for sugar and guava cultivation to sustainable forestry and providing new habitat for a tree species that’s endangered in its native habitats in Central and South America.

I had a bit of an adventure heading off to the second notable feature of this walk – the Stone Dam built in the 1880s to support the Kilauea Sugarcane Plantation. Given that Kauai is one of the wettest spots on Earth, the need for a dam that raised the water level 20 feet to provide irrigation for the cane fields during the dry season demonstrates just how thirsty sugar cane can be.

I had made my way through the forest and the land was more open. I missed the sign showing where to turn to go to the dam and wandered onto private property. Had someone not come along in an SUV and pointed out my error, I might have been trespassing and wandering lost for hours. Fortunately no harm came of it and I was able to turn around and reorient myself.

I found this early photograph of the dam on the site Common Ground Kauai

and it looked like this when I reached it that Sunday.

We’re on our wayhome

(An unplanned stop)

“Estou bem, obrigado. Caio frequentemente.” This is one of the first phrases I learned in Portuguese. In English it says, “I’m okay, thanks. I fall frequently.” (It would have been more accurate to say, “Tropeço frequntemente e, as vezes, caio.” This translates as, “I trip a lot and sometimes I fall.” But that was too much for me to learn in a short time.) People in Lisbon generally don’t pay much attention when I’m walking apace through that city and apparently, I don’t pay enough attention, either. Lisbon’s calçadas are beautiful but they’re also uneven and quite slippery when wet. Combined with my natural inclination to take false steps or find the lone object in a 100 meter radius that can trip me, caio frequentemente. And this is when the Lisboetas pay attention. I fall and I suddenly have several concerned people asking if I’m hurt. Hence, “Estou bem, obrigado. Caio frequentemente.”

Well, it was muddy and slippery throughout the walk and muddier and more slipperier near Stone Dam so what happened was predictable. Eu estava bem but my clothes not so much. This meant I had to stop at the hotel for a quick change of clothes enroute to Hanapepe. While I was there, I had an encounter with a bird that also reminded me of time I’ve spent in Lisbon (and it’s not the chicken).

Longer than the road that stretches out ahead

(On to Hanapepe)

Knowing that I planned to spend much of the day tomorrow hiking in Waimea Canyon, it might seem to make little sense that I’d drive more than halfway to the “Grand Canyon of the Pacific” and turn around rather than continuing on. But, as I pointed out above, Kauai is small and it’s less than 20 miles from Lihue to Hanapepe. And I certainly wanted to visit “Kauai’s biggest little town.”

Three principal aspects drew me to this place. Hanapepe is well known for its art scene and art from my travels is my main souvenir. Although I didn’t make any purchases on this trip there, it was certainly worth the short drive even moreso when you can stop along the way to enjoy views like this.

The second reason is that, while it doesn’t aggressively promote itself as such (perhaps to maintain its authenticity), the town and its surroundings  have served as a location for movies such as Flight of the Intruder and Raiders of the Lost Ark and the television miniseries The Thorn Birds. It also served as the inspiration for Kokaua Town the hometown of Lilo and Nani in the animated Lilo and Stitch for which it has this lone reminder.

Finally, there’s the famous Swinging Bridge. Built in 1911 as a pedestrian suspension bridge to allow people – especially plantation workers – to cross the Hanapepe River, it has become not only a local landmark

but, bearing the sign,

an ironically humorous attraction (at least for me).

A Poipu platter before dinner (and a bit of a curve in the headers)

Kauai is well-known for its population of green sea-turtles called honu and the opportunity to view turtles is one I can’t pass up. The bus driver who took me from the airport to the rental car counter told me about a place called Whaler’s Cove but I’d heard that at sunset the turtles come onto Poipu beach in great numbers. I arrived a bit early and was able to wander around and look at this interesting beach

before following the crowd to see what we’d all obviously come to see. I managed to see a few.

Keeping your head above water

Making a wave when you can

Feeling rather exhilarated, I returned from the beach at Poipu to Lihue not for a Chinese dinner but at a local place Phil had recommended called Rob’s Good Times Grill. It was a rather loud sports bar but clearly frequented by locals. I had the Hawaiian Plate (substituting some sort of chicken for the Kalua pork) with a Kona Big Wave Golden Ale (a favorite of mine even on the mainland). It wasn’t the best dinner of the trip but I had my first poi and it was an interesting way to end and interesting day.

Here are the photos you’ve been longing to see.