There are lots of warnings online and in guidebooks about the condition of the road but to be honest, it sort of reminded me of some of the backroads in Saskatchewan – lots of washboard but nothing too bad! Unfortunately, the wind was howling and sand was whipping so we didn’t stay long.
Trivial factoid: this beach is the closest point you can get to Japan while still technically being in North America.
We’re a couple days into our trip and finally over our jet lag and the time change (four hours earlier than home) though Shea and I still find ourselves going to bed around 8pm (midnight at home) and getting up at 4am (8am at home) so far. We’re on Kauai’s east side so that’s okay since we get to watch the sun rise every day (and we’d probably be up anyhow!)
Everything I read about Kauai said that if you do one thing, a helicopter trip, though expensive (~$200/person for an hour) is the way to go. It’s a great way to see the majority of the island which is otherwise inaccessible and, if you do it early enough in your trip, a good way to help orientate yourself as well.
We went yesterday and it was definitely a great choice for my first time in a helicopter (I’m talking “Top Ten Experiences of My Life” good!) The pilot was a local so in addition to pointing out the usual tourist factoids, he was able to speak about growing up on the island. (A couple passenger questions – one about whether he got his flight training in the military and one about the movie stars who have mansions on the north shore, also hinted at some strongly held political opinions as well!)
When we asked how kids tended to do, the lady who checked us in said “To be honest, most kids are wide-eyed for the first few minutes then they tend to fall asleep. I’ve only know a few kids who stayed awake for the whole thing in the past few years.” She was right about the first part – Pace had a giant smile for the first fifteen or twenty minutes but then was pretty bored after that. But luckily he didn’t fall asleep – when we got back, she confided that the employees jokingly call the helicopter ride “The most expensive nap your kid will ever have” when parents bring their kids along! ;- )
Here’s a list, roughly from most to least useful, of the sites, apps and other online resources I used in researching our trip to Hawaii. The links I’ve included are mostly to info about Kauai since that’s our first stop but most of these searches were repeated for Maui info.
Beyond YouTube, its parent company, Google, was the starting place for so many of my searches, whether I was looking for news, images, maps or whatever. Google Docs is also where I created an “itinerary” file where I could collect tidbits, links and other information whether I was at home, on the bus or sitting in the staff room at RPL.
TripAdvisor.com – great for user-submitted reviews of hotels, attractions as well as general comments throughout their forums (eg. “Costco Lihue“)
Kauai Revealed and Maui Revealed are two of the best known (and most disliked by locals) guidebooks for the islands. Written by Hawaii residents who don’t take ads or freebies, they’re written in a fun, informal style. They also have apps that reproduce the entire content of their various guides to each island which are nice because you don’t need internet access for the content to be available. The apps even have a map of the island that you can click to find nearby activities and restaurants, again without needing an internet connection. (Only issue I have with the apps is that Kauai lets you mark “Favourites” as you work through the book but the Maui one doesn’t for some reason.)
MetaFilter and AskMetafilter had a wealth of information as did Reddit. Quora is another curated Q&A site that provided decent info. and it was fun to click through StumbleUpon sometimes too to get really random but relevant info.
Surprisingly, I didn’t look at Wikipedia as much as you might expect – maybe because most of what I was looking for was opinions, not “neutral point of view”.
Similarly, Facebook wasn’t as useful as you might think. Most attractions/hotels have web pages but they tend to have generic promotional information rather than true insight. I did post about our trip, maybe a month or more ago, and did get quite a few suggestions from my social circle but again, I’m not sure if I didn’t get anything I hadn’t already come across.
Flickr was great for photos of the islands and all they contain, especially flicking through them (er, no pun intended) with my 2011, App of the Year, Flipboard.
Most of the sites I’ve listed have iPhone apps that allow me to continue my research on the bus or wherever. I’ve also downloaded numerous apps to do with specific topics – from a wifi hotspot finder to an app that provided a variety of ready-to-use coupons for Maui to one that was an app for the local weekly alternative newspaper in Kauai (disappointed that their web site and/or app don’t seem to have a working link to their annual “Best of” awards which is often the easiest way to figure out where to hit when you visit a new city. We used this approach visiting St. John’s earlier this year and it was great!)
TripIt is a helpful site that allows you to forward all your travel info – flight, hotel and rental car bookings – and have it automatically entered into an itinerary along with maps, weather forecasts and so on for your destination(s). If your info isn’t in a supported format (eg. the rental condo or the helicopter charter we’ve booked in Lihue), you can manually enter it.
The public library has an ever-improving e-book collection. For example, they had a Maui guidebook available when I started looking (though the two they have now have long wait lists) and, the beauty of working at the library is that when you notice a gap (eg. Kauai guidebooks), you can fire off a quick e-mail to the relevant collections coordinator and the missing book is on your iPhone within hours! 😉
Although the selection isn’t great, I’ve also had fun looking for anything that was either shot in Hawaiior had some sort of Hawaii/tropical/south pacific connection on NetFlix whether that was a mainstream Hollywood movie like Blue Crush or a documentary like School of Surf.
Although I would never endorse this, I suspect bit torrent sites also have a wide range of movies – from Tropic Thunder to Blue Hawaii – as well as Hawaii-themed music collections and even e-books about the islands that you could download to help build your anticipation prior to your trip!
Other than those opening lines about it being “cold, cold, cold” (today was +5), I think this is my theme song for the next couple weeks.
Oh, and there’s also the line about “You’re caught up in the Internet/You think it’s such a great asset/But you’re wrong, wrong, wrong.” Not sure how much I’ll be blogging when we get to Hawaii – if I do, I do and if I don’t, I don’t. (I know the consensus of my Facebook friends was not to stress being without iPhone access in Hawaii but it’s just such a part of my life – looking up facts, checking in on FourSquare, finding highly rated restaurants, having GPS coordinates on photos, even being able to track my walks on RunKeeper – I just love how it augments my life.)
Oh, and no offense to my friends in Saskatchewan but I hope that +5 turns into -30 until about the end of the month and then winter’s over. Most speculation is that our incredibly mild winter will lead to us being absolutely hammered by bad weather in February and March. I hope that’s just Saskatchewan reverse psychology at work!
Pace and I made what will likely be our last visit to the park by our house before we leave for Hawaii next week. Then, when we got home, we found Shea cooking a tropical feast of shrimp and fish. So I poured us all OJ’s and 7-up (and coconut rum for the adults) and we’re having a pre-departure Hawaii party!
Just kidding but seriously, this isn’t that hard. Having daycare spaces for everyone makes for a better work-life balance? No shit. People not working a lot of extra hours makes a better work-life balance? No shit. Low child poverty makes for a better work-life balance? No shit.
