Hawaii Day 8, 4 January 2020

An early start saw us packed and ready for our transfer to the airport for our flight to the island of Kauai. This island is located north west of Oahu and is called the garden or nature island and is going to be a total contrast to Waikiki.

We had a seamless trip and entry to the airport, boarding was a doddle as well.  After a 45 minute flight we landed in Kauai, grabbed our bags and jumped into our hire care a Hyundai Elantra. Our first stop was Walmart to pick up supplies and we found our way easily as it is only minutes away from the airport.  It helped that Lance had his driving day yesterday on Oahu as he is doing well driving on the wrong side of the road.

Walmart was an experience in itself. Clothing, house old items and food. We grabbed breakfast things and a few snacks but thought we would get our cold stuff closer to home.  We also grabbed beer and wine, and they had it! NZ wine! God bless Kim Crawford, Nobilo and Oyster Bay for doing a fine job in promoting their products in the USA!
The sights you see in Walmart!

Whilst Oahu is green and pretty this island is lush with plants choking anything that they can, climbing fences and creeping out onto the road.  It reminds us of when we lived in Lae in Papua New Guinea.  At one point the large trees had monsteria plants covering the trunks of trees high in the canopy. 

We passed small towns and roads leading to beautiful beach resorts. Lance was thrilled to pass Turtle Bay golf course and resort.  It looked beautiful with long manicured greens and deep bunkers.

It was necessary to stop for lunch and we came across a small village called Kapaa, so we pulled in. The first place that we saw was Pho Kapaa and that appealed so we wandered in.  We love Vietnamese and were not disappointed with some deep fried prawns and egg rolls and a fried rice.  Then we got back on the road to Princeville.
I spotted this car charging in Princeville. It has Christmas lights taped all over it! Imagine that coming along the road at night!

The accomodation that we booked is through our time share and we had left booking a bit late so were not expecting anything flash. As we got to Princeville we decided to stop at the small village and have a look around.  It looks like we will have places to eat and a few shops.  The food store is pricey but is a bit of a boutique food place.  Cold stuff was purchased and it included two types of poke tuna.  This is chopped raw tuna with spices, and this is dinner tonight. 

The road to the Wyndham Ka’Eo Kai resort is quite posh and runs alongside the Princeville golf course. On arrival the rain was still coming down so we checked in and waited for our room to be ready.  The concierge ran through everything with us and did the usual time share promotion, so we have booked in for a lu’au at half price if we go and listen to their promotion. Done, saved $120 US dollars.

After waiting for about an hour we in the comfortable lounge we got a complementary mai tai to drink and we were ready to go to our room. 

We have been pleasantly surprised, the room is not luxurious but nice enough. The bathroom is almost as big as the room and we have a tiny kitchenette.  When the weather clears we may even have a peep of the sea.

So here we are watching ridiculous TV on our 250  channels, trying to find something worthwhile.  We do have a TV guide but have found that things are duplicated. For example there are two different travel channels but when you try them they are the same channel?  The news is all Trump news (blah) and the movies are ancient. 

The weather app says that it will be fine tomorrow and we hope that it is correct as we have a helicopter ride booked!

Hawaii Day 7, 3 January 2020

After picking up our little 2 door jeep we got out of town!

Lance has driven on the right hand side in several countries, but it is always a challenge starting out in the middle of town. With minimal yelling and no heart attacks we took a bit of a curly route out to Diamond Head and onto the the coast road. We had driven this way in the tour bus on our first day in Hawaii so had a bit of background knowledge. 

The day was cloudy and whilst the views were still beautiful they were not as impressive as the views on our first day. 

As we got further out of town we saw a few dumped cars and it was clear that this area was not as salubrious as the areas that we had already seen. But there were also areas that had a familiar Polynesian feel to them and many houses had tarpaulin structures attached to houses and garages. There were also quite a few dwellings that looked as if they may belong to vagrants as they were totally tarpaulins with piles of rubbish around them. Not so bad really though when they were planted right on the most magnificent beaches. You do have to wonder if it is such a bad life.

The road curled around the coast and from time to time we encountered a tricky intersection. Picture me saying "Turn left here" and Lance saying "Keep right, keep right." It was okay when he had someone to follow when turning, but nine times out of ten he was the leader.  In fact later in the day as we approached the city of Honolulu he was in this predicament and just said "F@*# it! I’m going straight ahead."

Both busting for the toilet we took a stop at a macadamia nut farm touristy place.  It was on our side of the road and we had enough warning, so in we went. It was a nice place with free macadamia nut coffee and plenty of touristy things to buy. I had to queue for the toilet, and it was clean, but cosy! Ladies, you will understand me here when I talk about ‘the hover’. Well it was impossible to hover and I just had to check the seat and sit. If I had hovered my head would have been pressed hard against the door.  There was only a finger length between my knees and the door!

We were hoping for more to eat as by now it was lunch time but alas there was not much at all. I bought a pack of macadamias nut butter cookies and we scoffed them in the car. And that was lunch, no cocktails, no beer, no NZ wine!

At one stage a bus was waiting to come out from it’s stop and into the traffic, the man in front stopped to let him out and a sign flashed up on the back of the bus with the hang loose sign 🤙  and then ‘mahala’ which means thank you. I would love one of these on my car and also one that says ‘oops sorry’!

When we got to the top of the Island we turned inland and took the highway back to Honolulu which was very efficient!

The car was returned and frayed nerves calmed with the remaining cookies.

As we are flying to Kauai tomorrow we thought that we would lighten the load and drop a couple of cases off to the Outrigger, which is the hotel that we will return to after a week. We had asked the concierge previously and he said that it wouldn’t be a problem so we trundled our cases up the road with our passports and booking voucher in case there was a problem. Amazing! He took our name, gave us a chit and took the bags! With all of the lunatics around I thought that the last thing they would do was take bags without some sort of security check. Anyway, I hope that they are there when we return because they have most of our shopping in them!

I checked out the opening hours of Ross Dress for Less. Would you believe that they open at 7am and close at 1am!

Lance had booked us into Tommy Bahamas restaurant and bar for dinner so after a rest off we went.  As I said earlier it was a cloudy day and it had been sprinkling on and off, so we were glad that we hadn’t booked rooftop. Our entrees were superb we had Ahi tuna tacos with island slaw and wasabi & avocado creme. Along with ‘World famous coconut shrimp’. Both were outstanding and we gobbled them down with a Heineken and wait for it... a rose that was not from Aotearoa. Well I had a go, but I didn’t like it much so went for a NZ Sav after that.

Mains arrived promptly, in fact a little too promptly as we had only just scraped up the last of the entrees. And needed time to breath after the feeding frenzy. Lance had Guava glazed baby back pork ribs which were nice, I had a special which was mahi mahi resting in a light but fragrant Thai curry sauce accompanied with a delicious risotto. The fish was good but the risotto was great. We had a go at sharing the key lime pie but couldn’t finish it.  And I must be honest, twice that we have had key lime pie here it hasn’t been as good as my own home made.

Off we toddled home for our last night in our psychedelic hotel.  

Post script

Two events last night:

1. Lance always puts the safety lock on the door and he says that he always worries that he will get up in the night and think that the door is the toilet and will get locked out in the corridor.  I have always thought that this was bloody ridiculous but have gone along with it. Well in the middle of the night last night I woke up and though,"Why is there a light behind the wardrobe door?" I got out of bed and opened the door and lucky the safety lock only let me open it a couple of centimetres because it was the door to the corridor!
2. In the morning Lance told me that he had smashed his head when he had gone to the toilet in the middle of the night and told me and I just grunted. Poor bugger went to sit on the toilet for a wee (night time don’t want to put the light on for a stand up job) and bent over too far and hit his head on the basin! He has a small split on his forehead!

WE WERE NOT DRUNK! ONLY HAPPY!

Hawaii Day 6, 2 January 2020

Beach morning

Donning our togs we grabbed towels and beach chairs and headed to the Beach.  Waikiki Beach is only a short stroll from our hotel. We were reasonably early so we planted the chairs bedside the Royal Hawaiian’s loungers where the outgoing tide was trying to tickle our toes. So close in fact that I popped my jandals behind me in case they floated away. 

We had a lovely morning in the sun and the people watching was almost a sport.  Young women in full evening make up and one even in platforms, through to large men in budgie smugglers who really should stay wrapped in a towel. 

It wasn’t long before I needed to take a dip and the water was refreshing at first and then very comfortable. It was a bit tricky getting in as the sand drops away suddenly and is soft and unstable. For a surf beach the waves were pretty tame, like an east coast Auckland beach on a good day. But that suited me and I frolicked in the waves happily. Getting out was trickier than getting in as it was like walking up a sand hill with the tide tugging at you calves. It was almost like walking up stairs it was that steep. Later we heard raucous laughter along the beach as a nana was trying to get either in or out of the water. She took several tumbles and it wasn’t helping that she was laughing. Luckily grandad came to her aide and helped her out. 

It was a bit like sitting at the boat ramp because the outrigger canoes full of people landed just beside us and also the catamarans that were loaded with tourists. As the cats came in they had someone on the bow blowing a conch and directing swimmers out of the way. It was pretty impressive how the 45 foot cats came right onto the beach and people just walked off and on.

Lunch was had at Tiki’s Grill and Bar where the food was good but the service a bit slow at first which worked out well for us as we didn’t want to rush. The bar is located further east along the beach and we had a little walk to get there. We had seen a few homeless people in Waikiki central but there were quite a few at this end of the beach. It had started to rain so they were all gathered in a covered area with all of their worldly goods. The yucky bit was that every now and then when were were eating we could smell them. But it was not very often. It can’t be very easy living that way, but at least it doesn’t get that cold here. We haven’t seen many people begging but today we did see... you wait for it... Indiana guy the noisy phone talker on the Pearl Harbour bus ride! And he was begging with a sign that said ‘every little bit helps’. At first I felt a bit guilty for having mean thoughts about him, but then remembered that he had a decent phone and obviously had a good phone plan. And a mother in Indiana!

We had an easy afternoon and packed a couple of suitcases with things that we won’t be needing.  We plan to drop them at the hotel that we will be staying at when we return form Kauai on the 11th.

Lance had booked us a table for the evening at the Sky Bar on the balcony. But as we made our way there for dinner the rain continued to sprinkle. It wasn’t pelting down but just enough to be annoying. When we got there they said that they could put us undercover on the balcony but around the side, not up the front. We took this option and were very happy, the couches were comfy, we still had a great view and were out of the rain and the sea breeze.  There was a band playing and they were great, and the food was outstanding, some of the best that we have had since we have been here. And of course they had Heineken and NZ wine. We started with a plate of yellowfin tuna ceviche and it was so good we had another! We also had a slider selection and I had a pick from the middles because I don’t usually eat bread. The tri sampler came with a lobster salad slider, a teriyaki pork with mayo onion and lettuce, and a garlic chicken with a furikake macaroni salad,  These were all served on potato rolls. Not only were the fillings good but the potato rolls were to die for, so we ordered another serve of the garlic chicken sliders.

We had thought that the food may be a bit ordinary and would be more ‘bar’ food so that is why we had a big lunch, but alas we had to stuff ourselves silly at dinner as well!

Hawaii Day 5, 1st January 2020

Happy New Year’s Day!

After a very lazy start to the day we skipped our hotel cafe for breakfast and went around the corner to a place called Basalt. It was an unusual mix on a plate. I had bacon, scrambled egg, fried potatoes, fresh pineapple, fresh watermelon, toast and jam all on one plate and a decent coffee.

Our morning was spent wandering Waikiki and doing a bit more shopping. I did get Lance into Nordstrom Rack where he made a purchase, but I had to leave him at the check out for a quick and urgent trip back to our hotel room. 

Lance is recovering from some knee surgery and is finding it a bit tricky when we walk too far, but the last couple of days have been much better. So we continued to wander and he actually did more shopping than me! I know, hard to believe it.

A leisurely drink was had on the beach at the Mai Tai Bar, it really was a lazy day, and then off to the Maui Brewing Company for dinner on the balcony.  The food was good, and they had NZ wine served in proper wine glasses, which was great after two nights drinking out of plastic cups. Lance had a tasting paddle of beer and we took our time before we waddled off home.  

On the way we passed a guy on the street performing magic. He was awesome! Lance was asked to name a card and he chose 2 of hearts.  Magic Man had a sealed deck of cards, he opened them up and the 2 of hearts was the only card around the wrong way. He continued to perform all sorts of tricks, making small balls appear from under a hat seemed a simple trick until he asked me how many were under there and when I said 4 he lifted the hat and a large coconut was there! Now I know that we had, had a few drinks but he really was clever and funny as well. I hope we catch him again.

And that was NewYears Day.
Some more about our hotel. Whilst our room is pokey the aircon is great and we get free water each day. In the lobby they have large urns with cold water with fresh fruit floating in it and it is really refreshing. When you go to the beach you get not only a towel but also a small beach chair. This seems to be the norm as we see people everywhere carrying their chairs to the beach. Today the whole hotel had no hot water! And they couldn’t get anything done because it is New Years Day. They said that we could go across to another hotel for a shower but we just had a kick and a flick in the basin after boiling the kettle. It was a bit tricky because the plug was leaky so you had to be fast. The pool is on the roof and is not flash but adequate. We would stay here again but would ask for a larger room. The bespoke feel is cool and the location is just great. 
Lance in the hotel elevator. 

The hotel stairwell 

Hotel pool
View from the hotel pool

Something funny that I forgot to talk about on our bus trip to the non existent Pear Harbour tour is that there was a guy on the bus talking loudly on the phone for most of the trip. At different intervals an announcement came over asking people to refrain from having loud and long conversations on their phone, and the whole bus load of people would glare at him.  He had a loud accent and was from Indiana, yes we did find out all sorts of information about what was happening in his life and how much he was gonna pay for something blah, blah, blah.  About forty five minutes into the bus ride he finally finished on the phone and bellowed at the driver “When do we get to the Honda Dealership?”

The driver replied, “Buddy we passed that about three weeks ago.”

Indiana guy put his hands on his head and yelled “OH NO!”

He had to get off the bus and the driver told him to wait on the other side of the road for a bus to go back the other way. He also said “Well you been on the phone the whole time buddy, you shudda paid more attention!” The whole bus was snickering.

Hawaii Day 4, 31 December 2019

Even though our room is small and noisy I am managing to sleep quite late for me.  This morning I awoke at 7:30, Lance is an early riser and wakes much earlier. He quietly gets his iPad out and tries not to move around or make any noise so that I can sleep. That is how small our room is!

Today was another shopping day but this time at the Waikele Outlet mall. We hadn’t worked out how to get there and tried to check Uber prices. They started at $86 and went down to $38 which is not too bad for an hour’s drive. So we went down to the lobby before we ordered it.  As Lance was checking the price again he heard a guy come in to pick up some people who were going to Pearl Harbour and Waikele Outlet centre. So he moggied in on the ride even though we hadn’t booked and we paid $18 each for the ride. So for the second time in two days we were in the Pearl Harbour car park, but quickly moved on to the mall.  

There are not a lot of food places there and we hadn’t had any breakfast but we managed to find something reasonably healthy and not fried before setting off on a shopping extravaganza!  Lance did as well as me in the shopping department and managed to go the distance without having to leave early. One of our last stores was Tommy Bahama which had things for both of us, so we shared a large changing room.  I tried on a dress that had small splits up the side and said to Lance "What do you think?" "No", he answered, "I don’t like it."

"What? I really like it." Said I.

"I don’t like how it has two different levels of hem" Lance replied.

I had accidentally caught the back of the dress in my undies and he thought that it was how the dress was made. Well we screamed with laughter, we had to hold our hands over mouths so we were’t too raucous. Anyway, I got the dress, but will be very careful when wearing it not to catch the back in my undies.

As we were leaving the mall I spotted a whole pile of shops in the distance that I hadn’t seen. "Oh, they are just furniture shops", Lance said. Nice ploy, husbands unite on that one. 

Our timing was perfect for the shuttle bus home and once we were settled I took out my travel hand sanitiser that is shaped like a credit card. As I squeezed the top it shot out of my hands and flew through the gap in the seat and onto the man’s lap behind us. As I write this Lance has had to come out of the bathroom to see if I am alright as I have tears of laughter running down my face once again and am wheezing like an old boiler.

Then the young man in front of us who had a particularly long neck and a round balding head started to nod off. He was such a bobble head that it was like his head was made of rubber. At one point I thought that he might do a sideways head butt onto his wife (she was sleeping too). Backwards and forwards, left and right. In the end I had to look out of the window with my hand up so that I couldn’t see his bendy neck waggling his head around. And so that I could stop giggling.

A hint pertaining to shopping when overseas that I will share with you is that I take every label, tag and receipt and throw them out when I get home. With this amount of shopping all of that paper can add up and it could be the difference between excess baggage or not!

Today being New Years Eve we had previously looked at some options but had found none that suited. Fortune works in a funny way because when we arrived in Hawaii some friends that we know through Dillon messaged us to say that they were here for New Years Eve and would we like to meet up. 
And that’s haw we ended up with Kelly and Dianna and their friends Rob and Kirsty in the Buho Cocina y Cantina for New Year’s Eve. We had a primo spot on the balcony and enjoyed a great Mexican meal. We decided that we would stay there for the evening as the beach would be packed and we were very happy where we were. At about 8:30 our waiter came to let us know that there was a NYE function and if we wanted to stay we would have to pay $50 each and buy a bottle of something for $150 (remember we are talking US dollars here). We asked him to give us more details and he came back and said that actually the $50 fee was if you booked online and we would have to pay $80 each! Lance said to him that he need to go and talk to his boss about some sort of deal because we were not going to pay $80 each. (we had already collectively agreed to the $50 per head charge to stay). The boss comes over and said we can stay for free as long as we don’t leave and come back, and he talked about the $150 bottle fee. He said that we had to buy bottle of something like Moët or tequila for $150 if we were at a table and that we couldn’t stay at this table and all the tables were booked. If he got a cancellation he would get us a table. So long story short, we stayed for free, with no table but still had seats, drank reasonably priced alcohol from the bar and enjoyed the Latino band. It was a great night, we could see a little bit if the fireworks, but were told later that the beach was mayhem and a good place not to be.

Happy New Year! A little later than most of our friends!

 

Hawaii Day 3, 30 December 2019

Pearl Harbour?

The pre-booked Pearl Harbour tour informed us that our transfer was on a bus at 8:45am from a hotel just around the corner. And as always we were there before time waiting patiently. At 8:45 a large bus pulled up with Pearl Harbor on it so we climbed aboard and paid $11 for a round trip. Early into the journey we realized that we were in a public bus! Well at least we knew that we were heading to Pearl Harbour we foolishly thought. We could connect with the tour when we got there. Just over an hour later, after driving through every industrial area in Honolulu we arrived at Pearl Harbour. Of course our tour had left by then but great person of the year award goes to Westin who is Pearl Harbour employee who phoned the tour company for us and lent me his phone for at least 25 minutes whilst we sorted the problem.  And so now we are rebooked for the 12th when we are back in Waikiki.  Fortunately the bus ride home was more direct and we had cheered up and enjoyed the ride through different parts of town. Enough said, let’s move on. 

Back at Waikiki we wandered down the beach to Duke’s and had a great burger and beer. And I managed to squeeze in a cocktail.  Everyone who has been to Waikiki has told us that we needed to go to this bar which is located right on the beach. In fact I was a little embarrassed that I had sand on my feet, but it is called the barefoot bar so I guess it was okay. The food was great, and if you get a table out front you could easily while away the day there. 

Lance made his way back to the hotel and I went for a wander down the eastern end of Waikiki to walk off my lunch. The beach was packed and very entertaining to sit and watch people. I haven’t had a chance to have a dip yet!

Back in our room we decided to have a light meal. Almost next door to our hotel is the Japanese Food Court and at first I was not keen to eat food court food. But on inspection Lance had found that it was almost like a wee village of small restaurants. Our meal at Izakaya Kai was outstanding. Sushimi that was fresh and melt in your mouth, tempura prawns with crisp batter and fleshy inside and lava cooked steak. This arrived raw with a little pottery cooking device that heated up extremely fast. We cooked our steak in seconds and it was superbly tender. All washed down with beer and house wine. 

The temperature is just perfect 27 or 28 degrees with not a lot of humidity, well that is by an Aucklanders’s standards where humidity can be very high. With this beautiful climate it seemed a shame to go back to our room, so we set about looking for an outside bar, preferably roof top. Hence we arrived at the Rooftop Sky Bar which is on the 19th floor. The place was packed and all tables were reserved so we stood and admired the view, both inside and outside the building. There were a lot of ‘pretty’ people there but everyone was friendly and we chatted to a few people. A glass of Moët was only two dollars more expensive than a cocktail so I had two (not at once). 

We decided on an early night and strolled back to our room, but were lured into the Cuckoo Coconuts Bar by the sound of live music. This was quite a contrast to the previous bar, and I felt like I had dropped into a movie. A country band were playing and a couple had their cowboy hats on. Middle aged women were dancing by themselves and drinks were served in plastic cups.  We asked for a table as we thought we might have something to eat and she asked us to wait at the bar. It was lucky that we had eaten earlier because no one bothered to find us for a table. I ordered a cocktail that sounded nice but tasted like mouthwash mixed with coconut cream. So I switched to the house red, which was not too bad but did have a hint of a hangover with every sip.  

From our seat at the bar we had a great view of a table with an old man (80 plus) in a fedora hat, a couple of large young men (not in a muscly way) and some young women in what I would say were quite skanky clothes, but then that’s what many young women are wearing these days. Lance asked me what I though was happening at that table and I said that maybe it was a family celebration. HA!!! In capitals because I was sooooo wrong. Lance said that he thought that the girls had been purchased for the night. How naive I am, as the evening played out it became obvious that his scenario was correct. It was sad but fascinating at the same time. I could go on about my thoughts around the men’s egos, in particular grandad who thought he was kingpin, but this is not the forum for that discussion.

We chatted to a nice couple from Canada and toddled off home to hit the sack. 

Hawaii Day 2 , 29 December 2019

Happy Birthday Lance and shopping, shopping, shopping!

Breakfast is in included at our hotel so we wandered down to the adjoining cafe Heavenly Island with our vouchers only to have to wait in a line at the door. This place has a line outside all day, so should be good.  Our voucher entitles us to a choice of: a loco moko with a burger pattie, beans an egg and more. Unfortunately included in the more is lentils which make me seriously bloated, so that is out for me. French toast which looks devine and is what Lance ordered, eggs benedict, which is a favourite of Lance’s but since he has had his gall bladder out 8 weeks ago he sometimes has urgent reactions to high fat food so he is reluctant to give it a go here. When I say urgent reactions it’s not like he needs an epi pen or anything, all he needs is a vacant bathroom. And the last option is an omelette in true American style, egg on the bottom and salad, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, avocado and mushroom loaded on top. The coffee is extra but is decent filter coffee and it all comes with cold iced tea.

Our bus pass from yesterday was still valid for another day so we decided to travel to the Ala Moana shopping centre. Arriving just after opening we took a leisurely stroll around the mall which has inside and outside shopping.  Every top of the line shop is in this mall, and we could smell the money as we strolled past, eyeing the immaculately groomed security guards. My best score was at the fossil bag shop where the three items that I purchased were all on sale with an extra 30% off. The young guy apologised to me that the wallet that Lance had chosen was full price. “Oh well, its his birthday so we better get it”. When he found out that it was Lance’s birthday he gave me 30% off!

It wasn’t long before Lance had, had enough so he caught the bus back to Waikiki and stopped in for a beer and chips at the Mai Tai Bar whilst I pounded the pavers at the mall. I didn’t buy much more, I just wanted to see the whole place, and I did!

Toilet report

My question is: why do they have signs with arrows that you keep following and then all of a sudden there is nothing! And then when you have backtracked several times you find a tiny sign on the wall behind where people are standing that says restrooms. Obviously designed by someone with a bladder like an elephant. 

Dining for the evening was at the Azure restaurant in the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. The Hotel is very grand and we sat at the bar where I had a cocktail followed by some bubbles (French not NZ).

We were delighted when we were shown to our table right on the beach! Well there was a small wall between us and the sand. This was just the most amazing setting with food and service that was outstanding. All accompanied with a bottle of Craggy Range Sav Blanc (NZ for you foreigners). We indulged in seafood that was fresh and dressed in a variety of sauces, all delicate but bursting with flavour. After desert wine and some of their own lemoncello we staggered home.  An excellent birthday dinner indeed!