My dad decided that the best way to celebrate his 65th birthday was to take the family to Kauai I had flashbacks to the Hawaiian episode of the Brady Bunch. Fortunately, no one on this trip found a cursed tiki .
While I'm not much for sitting on the beach vacations (thanks to my irish heritage I go straight from white to red to spotted), it is really hard to pass up a mostly-free trip regardless of the destination. So on August 24th I boarded the plane in for a non-stop flight from San Francisco to Kauai.
There is not much to say about this trip other than I completed all of the required Hawaii activites: laying at the pool, snorkeling and of course we went to a luau. I also checked off a few optional activities as well: Kauai movie tour, plantation intertube trip, and eating true Hawaiian shaved ice (served with coconut milk and red beans).
Here are the highlights...
Kauaii Movie Tour: Normally I wouldn't recommend a tour in Hawaii where you spend most of hte day indoors but this was definitely an exception. We drove all over the island in a small bus equiped with a television. In the bus the guide would show scenes from movies filmed on Kauai and by the time the scene was over, we had arrived at the site where the scene was shot. I was surprised not only by how many films were filmed on the island but also by how often the island was posing as another destination all together: Vietnam in Tropic Thunder, Costa Rica and Jurassic Park in Jurassic Park, Peru in Raiders of the Lost Arc, as well as many others.
Snorkeling the Napali Coast: My brother Patrick, Cousin Cecilia and I spent one day taking a boat tour to the Napali coast for a morning of snorkeling. The boat ride was beautiful and educational. We learned all about the Napali coast (just don't ask me to remember) and then had 45 minutes to jump in the water and snorkel. At first I didn't think the snorkeling was going to be all that great. Sure I saw some fish and coral, but not nearly as many varities as I would expect in the tropical waters. But once I got a little further out from the boat (apparently not where we were supposed to be) I came across a lone sea turtle. I looked up to see if there was anyone around that I could share this with but didn't see anyone. I swam back towards the boat until I found Cecilia and dragged her back out with me. Both of us were thrilled when we found the turtle again. I have to say that after seeing him I was that much more impressed with Pixar because he looked just like the turtles in the movies. Unlike the movie, however, the turtle flat out refused to give me a high five.
Plantation Tubing Tour: Sometime int he last 20 years or so one of the last sugar plantations on Kauai closed it's doors. Rather than let the complex irrigation system that was built to hydrate the sugar plants go to waste, some entrepreneur decided it would be a good idea to get gullible tourists to pay to ride down them in an intertube. Well, we were among the gullible tourists that they targeted but it was well worth the price of admission. In nothing but a swimsuit and a hard hat, my mom, dad, brother, cousin and I all hopped into intertubes and leisurely floated down the ditch. Most of the ditch is open to the elements but every once in a while, it flowed through a shallow, man-made tunnel. It was for this reason that we had to wear hard hats equiped with head lamps. When we got to the longest of the tunnels the group was given the option to ride through in the dark.
