There’s No Place Like Home for the Holidays… Yeah Right!
Ok so, on January 3rd, I started to write this but then I got sidetracked and I’m just now coming back to it like a month later…
Its Jan. 3rd and its 10:15 pm in Honolulu, Hawaii. We left the island of Kauai at 4:40 pm and landed on Oahu around 5:15. We were expecting our connection to take off for Dallas around 6:30 and yet, here we sit in the admiral’s club. It could be worse, ok it could be so much worse and I have nothing to complain about, so I won’t. Just to state the facts though, apparently, our plane’s generator failed during its flight to Honolulu and is now here on the ground being repaired. The ever elusive “they” have informed us that we are expected to leave around 11:45 (assuming they can fix the thing). As I have said, I have nothing to complain about. The fact of the matter is that this delay has afforded me more family bonding time in the beautiful city of Honolulu. The last time I was here was a decade ago when I was 15 and holy crap it has grown. We took a taxi downtown and perused the various shops and watched the sunset on Waikiki beach to the sounds of a hukilau in the background.
These past 12 days have been great. Who could ask for anything more than spending Christmas and the start of a new year with their family. Especially when the rendezvous is the Garden Island of Hawaii, Kauai. The trip began at 4:30 am on a sunday morning. It had just snowed and the little widget on my Windows Vista sidebar said it was 17 degrees outside. My brother John and I were flying home to St. Louis to spend Christmas with the family before we all departed for a much warmer climate. Being home is always a good time, hot tub, big screen, Sam-dog, the kitties, pool table, all you can eat buffet (refrigerator). When I am home, I generally forget to sleep because I have to catch up on the use of all these goodies since I haven’t seen them in so long. Usually it isn’t a problem, however, this time, my lack of sleep resulted in being run down by the rhino virus. He definitely used that big horn on the front of his face to tear me a new A-hole. It wasn’t pleasant. I’m just now getting over it, which is good because having a cold on an 8 hour flight just isn’t fun.
Christmas was good but it didn’t really seem much like Christmas. My brother Will is in Idaho serving his mission and my older brother Joe and his wife live in Portland and were going to be meeting us in Los Angeles. Plus, the Christmas gift this year was the trip to Hawaii and because we were going to be gone, we didn’t really go all out on the decorations and stuff. The day after Christmas we jumped on a plane and headed for the Islands.
Lodgings
We spent 9 days/8 nights at the Sheraton resort in Poipu on the south end of Kauai.
Weather
It wasn’t bad but it wasn’t 9 days of fun in the sun. It rained most of the time and was pretty windy. The rain came in bursts. It would be sunny and then out of know where, it would start to pour for about 10 - 15 minutes, then it would be sunny again for anywhere between 10 minutes to several hours. It was like that until these last two days of the trip. The lowest temperature I saw was a balmy 71 degrees and the highest was in the low 80’s. The water stayed around 74 (according to the locals).
Now to pick back up tonight, January 28th…
I can’t remember anymore the exact chronology, but here is basically what our trip consisted of:
We drove up to the north shore to walk around the Princeville resort and the Hanalei beach. Princeville is a huge luxury resort. It was ridiculous inside and out. Then, we drove past Princeville to the northern-most spot we could drive. This is where the road ends and the Na Pali coast begins. It was raining and muddy otherwise we would have hiked some of the trails up into the Na Pali coastal cliffs. The Na Pali coast is the northern coast of the island and is made up of some amazing cliffs. Some of these cliffs are as high as 1300 feet. The only way to reach most of the Na Pali coast is by helicopter or boat. We went zip-lining through a part of the jungle on the island. It was absolutely amazing. We put on these harnesses and attached ourselves to these zip-lines that spanned this canyon. We were suspended hundreds of feet above a rushing river just flying through the air. It was amazing and beautiful. Apparently the area on the island that we were zip-lining, Mt. Wai’ale’ale, is the “wettest spot on the planet“. Wikipedia validates that but whatever, all I need for proof is the word of the locals.
We spent a lot of time at the beach right next the pool at our resort. On one day, we went out to the beach to find that half of it had been roped off because a monk seal decided to take a sun nap on our beach. While the monk seal is on the endangered specie’s list, that is not the primary reason for roping them off. Apparently, even though they look all cute and fuzzy and cuddly, they are mean and vicious. I learned this first hand when my brother threw a football at me while I was looking the other way and I was forced to chase it to within approximately 1 foot of the seal. As I got closer to it, it started to rear up and show me its teeth and make some kind of “angry” noise. But I got the football and quickly retreated.
Right off this same beach on a different day we all got together to try our hand at surfing. This was a first for me, but it was awesome. Extremely tiring for someone who hasn’t exercised in over a year but still it was a blast. I was surprised how easy it was to stand on the gigantic board once you struggled to your feet. The hardest part was catching the wave. That was insanely difficult, especially after two hours paddling around in the water. My neck, back, shoulders, arms, chest, abs… you name it from the waste up and I can affirm that it was sore and unable to move. As I sat in the water on the board, I could see the waves coming and when I saw a good one, I couldn’t manage to do much with my jello arms so the wave would just pass on by. 
But hey, it was still amazing. I now know why every surfer you ever see on tv has ripped arms and a six pack. Its not cuz they hit the gym everyday…
Ah, New Year’s… Now, New Year’s Eve is also my father’s birthday so, by default, we had all pulled double celebration duty. To satiate the need to party, we had arranged to attend a Luau. It was supposedly the ONLY beach-side, outdoor, Luau on the island of Kauai, but because it rained and rained and rained, we had to move it indoors to this convention center area. It was still amazing though. The food… oh THE FOOD! Wow, I don’t even know what it all was but it was meat (Kalua Pig, steak, chicken). The open bar made it interesting as well because it was community seating and we had a few people with us at our table who grabbed two drinks everytime the waitress came around (and the waitress came around often…). It was fun though. You’ll just have to check out the pictures cuz man, there is just too much to describe. After the Luau, we all adjourned to the beach to watch fireworks light up the ocean and usher in the new year. Now, being that it is also my father’s birthday, I have spent my entire lifetime’s worth of New Year’s Eve’s at home with fam eating cake and watching the ball drop. It was pretty much the same thing this year only Hawaii, a luau, beach-side fireworks, and all the other things attached to the word “paradise”. We still watched the ball drop but it was weird cuz by the time we watched it, it was already 5 am in New York City!
Amongst all these activities, we explored the island and took a ton of pictures. Kauai is known as the “Garden Island” for good reason. Words like ‘breath-taking’, ‘beautiful’, ‘gorgeous’ do not even do a tiny bit of justice to what your eyes behold when you’re there. There are no words, you’ll just have to look at the pictures.
Now, the grand finale of our trip was the absolutely perfect ending to a wonderful 9 days in paradise. As we were getting ready to go to the airport, the phone rings to inform us that our flight has been delayed 6 hours. Now, we are supposed to fly from Kauai to Honolulu, Oahu and then from Honolulu to Dallas and then Dallas to Salt Lake. So it was the flight from Honolulu to Dallas that was delayed. For most people who were on that flight it was horrible news. I was lucky because my dad has all the perk packages cuz he travels so much. We got to Honolulu around 5:30 pm went to the Admiral’s lounge and dropped off our bags and then jumped in a cab and hit Waikiki Beach in time to watch the sunset to the sounds of a beach-side Hukilau and then walk around and do some shopping in downtown Honolulu. While we were out and about, the people in the Admiral’s lounge reconfigured all of our flights for us and made sure that we were all taken care of. It was great. We got back to the airport around 10 pm and sat in the lounge until they came and told us the plane was finally there and ready to board. We got on the plane around 12:30 am and got to board in the first-class group cuz of dad’s frequent flier status. I felt so bad cuz 90% of the people on our flight had been sitting at the gate since 6 pm and didn’t get on the plane until 12:45-1:00 am.
All in all, even the bad parts of the trip we great. So kudos to my father for such a successful family vacation and also for all of the perks we get when travel with him! 