Kaua’i
Text Box: Remember what it was like as a kid when you went to see the Fourth of July fireworks? The wait between when the sun went down and when the fireworks actually started seemed interminable! Well, I’m experiencing a weird sense of déjà vu here. As I type this, it is 4:39 in the morning, local time (that would be 10:39 for all y’all back home on the East Coast). I’ve been up for about an hour – I woke up twice, but was able to get back to sleep before lying there wide awake on the third time. So now, here I sit on our balcony in the not-so-romantic glow of my laptop. There is the constant sound of the waves crashing about fifty yards from our room and the wind rushing through the coconut trees right in front of me. I’m waiting for the sun. I’ve experienced some beautiful sunsets in our travels. There were lots of sunsets as a teen in Florida on the beaches, the sunset in Northern California just as we arrived on the Pacific Ocean, and my personal favorite memory, the sun setting in France’s Loire Valley that looked like an explosion of light because of the thunder storm that was just finishing. But beautiful sunrises have been few and far between. This is mostly because I’m usually a lazy git and can’t drag myself from bed (I think most of my sunrises were actually in college when I had been up all night studying or in the French Quarter!). But I figured this would be the perfect scenario for me – I’m wide awake on the ocean in a resort that faces eastward. With only a few clouds visible in the sky, the potential for a beautiful sunrise is quite good! Now I just wonder if I should wake Kathie and Victoria if it is particularly beautiful! Details to follow…

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Our First Day In Paradise

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Well, it’s some time later.  The sunrise was quite pretty, but not earth-shattering or stunning.  Much softer.  What it did reveal to us, though, was just how beautiful our resort is!  Wow!  The Grand Hyatt Kaua’i is an amazing resort on the southeastern corner of Kaua’i.  Stretching for about ½ mile in either direction, it has been written up in many guide books and travel magazines as being one of the best resorts.  We’ve only been here a short while and I can readily testify that these reports are dead on!

 

← Unfortunately, our room faced more south than east

By around 5:30 AM, Kathie and Victoria had made it out of bed to join me as the sun came up.  After a delicious breakfast, we set out to explore our home for the next week.  We’ve stayed in some nice hotels in our travels, but this place was simply amazing.  It truly looked like a hotel carved out of the Garden of Eden!  If it wasn’t the beautiful swan swimming amidst a school of koi, it was the massive open air front lobby that stretched into an incredible tropical garden area, complete with parrots! 

The water area is a kid’s dream-come-true!  The adult’s have their own swimming area is quite nice, but the kid’s simply blows it away.  First is the swimming pool, with its islands and meandering “river” stretching across a couple of acres, and capped off with an impressive water slide.  Next is a huge man-made salt water lagoon with its own beach.  Lastly is the resort’s own beach with stunning cerulean waters!  Before we left, we kept reading comments about how great the pools were and that people had trouble getting their kids out of them.  Now we could see why!

We made our way back to the room to change into our swimsuits and ended up spending the remainder of the day at the pool, with a break thrown in for lunch.  By around 3:00, though, we were toast.  Well, Kathie and I were.  Victoria probably could have gone on for another hour or so, but Kathie and I definitely weren’t up for it.  The main problem of the day was that we were totally baked like a piece of toast by the end of the day!  Both Kathie and I failed to put on enough suntan lotion, so our skin resembles a nice piece of are roast beef, especially my head!  Man, I’m going to look like I have the worst case of dandruff in a couple of days!

Our beach on the Pacific—unfortunately it was usually too rough to swim in…

… so we usually swam in the man-made lagoon instead!

The slide was definitely the coolest part of the swimming area!

Since we still had some time before dinner, we decided to take our convertible out for a spin and explore some of the island.  The neatest spot was the Spouting Horn.  This really cool spout happens every twenty or thirty seconds when incoming waves rush under the lava shelf and burst through a small opening like a geyser (it’s easy to take pictures of because it always happens moments after you can see the wave go through one of the openings).  When the water spouts out, it pushes anywhere from ten to thirty feet into the air, accompanied by a groaning/gurgling sound. 

The Kaua’ian tradition says that this coastline was once guarded by a giant female lizard (Mo'o) who gobbled up any intruders. One day, along came Liko, who wanted to fish in this area.  Mo'o rushed out to eat Liko. Quickly, Liko threw a spear right into the giant lizard's mouth, but Mo'o chased Liko into a lava tube. Liko escaped, but legend says Mo'o is still in the tube, and the moaning at Spouting Horn is her cry for help!  Neat story!

After returning to the Hyatt, we stayed on-site for dinner, opting to dine at Tidepools, a restaurant in the resort featuring a Pacific Rim cuisine.  The menu was quite good and the service was excellent, but what sets it off is the ambience of the restaurant, built on one of the lagoons and set amidst a number of extensive koi ponds.  The resulting impact truly carried the feeling that you were in Polynesia.  Even though the dinner was delicious and we’re planning on going here again later in the week, the evening was ended early as Victoria was hit hard by her jet lag, meaning were back in the room and asleep by 8:30 PM. 

 

A quiet, but nice way to start our week in Paradise!

 

TOMORROW: Tubing in the tunnels!