Mon, 01/27/25 Kauai

 Day 23  - Monday, January 27th, 2025 – Kauai, Hawaii

I guess the first thing I want to clear up is it dawned on me overnight, in my note above, I might have mixed up the state versus the island versus the city names. I guess when I was writing it, I did not give it that much thought. I will do better here. Hawaii is a series of islands that make up the state of Hawaii. Oahu is one of them. Kauai is another one. Honolulu is a city on Oahu. Today, we are going to a city called Nawiliwili. (I will give you a dollar if you can pronounce that correctly. Actually, you could make any guess, and I would have to say it is accurate because I have no clue how to saying it.)

Instead of eating breakfast on the ship the plan was to get the rental then and then go to McDonald's. We got ourselves ready and we're off this ship by 830. Wait time we got through security and loop our way through to the tour vans it was about 855. Mary had called the new driver so we knew there was about a 10 minute wait. Because he wasn't a real tour van he could not come into the gate. Instead he had to park outside good which meant we had to walk quite a ways to get to him after we figured out where he was. Like the day before, Mary had arranged to rent a van With a ramp. It turns out it's the same company. This was their Kauai location.  The owner's name was Ned. We did our introductions as they put me in the van. It's an identical van to the one we had yesterday, So it wasn't long before we were on our way. There is a McDonald's about one mile from the terminal. The piece that I missed, Mary had said that we would take the van owner back to his house so he would not have to Uber or taxi home. Not a big deal because the island is small. We drove about 20 minutes South to whose home.

After we dropped him off, we drove back to the McDonald's. When we are in Florida or Chicago or Wisconsin and we stop at McDonald's for breakfast we have the same things. I do my sausage burritos and Mary does her sausage mcmuffin. Now we have traveled probably 10,000 miles, but our order is the same. And it tastes the same. As I was eating it, I was thinking we won't see McDonald's for five months. Enjoy it now. (Not that we enjoy McDonald's that much anyway, but you know.)

We had to drive to the starting point of the tour Mary had downloaded to her phone. This required us to drive 30 minutes in the opposite direction. That was OK. We got to see several little tiny towns and views of the ocean. In the category of some things never change, we would drive for a mile or so where the street was wind with cones causing traffic to go slowly only to find at the end five guys watching one guy in a hole. We used to see that all the time in Chicago. Separately, we noticed that, in Honolulu too, there were no speeds above 50 miles an hour. In fact, most were 35 miles an hour. No one seemed bothered by this because even in open areas where you could go 60 or 70 People stuck to the 35 miles an hour. Earlier, Ned said that the people of Kauai are very laid back. This must be part of their laid back-ness.

We made it to the start of the tour. The tour guide picked up and our first stop was the mountain where the movies King Kong and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom were filmed. I included a picture below. Apparently, you can see the outline of King Kong laying on his back. If you have a very open imagination, I guess you can see this.

I don't remember the exact sequence, but over the next couple of hours we visited maybe eight different destinations. We visited a very pretty beach called Secret Beach, although I don't know why it was called that because there were more cars there than there were downtown. We've visited the beach where Gilligan’s Island was filmed. To get there we had to go through this little residential area basically park in front of some guy's house. There were cars parked at quarter of a mile and a half a mile up the road and they walked down. Mary and I double parked for about 20 minutes. Even the tour guide mentioned it, I wonder how many people remember Gilligan’s Island now. I got to thinking about people of Kauai probably never heard of it. Silly Americans.  There were two or three other beaches that were equally pretty. The tour guide did spend some time talking about the local mountains. Of course he covered things like how the island was created. The interesting thing was Kauai is the oldest of the Hawaiian islands. That's a good trivia question. We learned about the political history of the island also. Today we think of the islands as one, but in the past they were all fighting each other at different times.

Just a point of clarity, when I say visited the beach, this really means Mary getting out of the car, walking down some windy trail down to the beach to take pictures. I can't get near any of them. I can see them from the car, so we try to point the car in the right direction. I did see a couple of beaches up close in Honolulu because they were more public beaches. This is not a complaint, just an observation.

We pre arranged a meeting with Ned at 3:00 so we had to watch the time pretty closely. The tour ended so we needed to make our way back down to the ship. We made our way back down to the point where we could see the ship. We then started looking for souvenirs. Yes, we needed T-shirts, refrigerator magnets and postcards. The other thing Mary was looking for was her sweetener. She bought Splenda but that's not exactly what she uses all the time. She uses something called Stevia. I will pretend like I know what all that means but nonetheless we were on the lookout. After wandering around for a while we decided to go to Walmart which was only a mile away. I went into Walmart with Mary. She found T-shirts, Postcards, Stevia, and a few other things that were needed. A few more cans of Monster jumped in the cart, too. By time we checked out it was very close to 3:00. We still needed to get gas in the car. Thankfully there was a gas station only a few 100 feet from Walmart. We gassed up and made our way back to the cruise port. We met Ned where he picked us up. We took a couple of pictures. We said our goodbyes. He headed up the road and we made it back through the cruise port. I would have to say it was a very nice visit to Kauai. I do not have a list of the prettiest places in the world I've visited. If I had such a list, Kauai would be at the top of that list. The beaches, waterfront, mountain landscapes, and horse and cattle filled fields Made for countless perfect pictures. Mary met a lady on board that said we should have taken the helicopter ride. They also had a parasailing ride. Maybe next time….

Back on the ship, we came upstairs and sat around. We waited for the ship to leave at 5:00. I got a decent time lapse of the ship leaving. It looked pretty cool to me. From there, we went downstairs for dinner. I had a glass of pinot grigio. It was pretty good. For my appetizer I had Thai spring rolls. They were good, but not what I was expecting. I would eat them again, I guess. Then I had fish Stew. This is one of those dishes I could eat all day long. It obviously had fish in it, but it also had some shrimp and an assortment of everything else. In my mind stew implies throw whatever's left in the kitchen in the bucket. That's kind of the way this was. Simply put, it was awesome. For my main meal I had scallops and shrimp on polenta. This too was pretty good; I did not eat the polenta. For dessert I had an apple pie kind of thing that was good. Mary decided on the New York strip. Because we were not in the fancy steak restaurant, their New York strip was Joe average, for lack of a better term. I'm sure in the Crown Grill their New York Strip is more what we are used to. I had a bite. It was good, not great by any means. For dessert Mary had vegan ice cream. As always, it was a nice meal.

After dinner, we attempted to go to the theater to watch a comedian. We got there just at 7:30 but the place was packed so we were turned away. I'm sure there will be other opportunities to see this person. So, we made our way to the wheelhouse bar. There was music going on so we thought we would stick our heads in for a few minutes. As Welti luck would have it, just as we sat down the band went on break. Earlier in the day, I tripped across the menu of available whiskeys, scotches and ryes available on the ship. This might turn out to be a mistake. While waiting for the band to come back, I asked for a Woodford rye. In general, I like ryes. This one was not bad. I've had better and more importantly, there were others on the list I have yet to try. They have an extensive Scotch list. I have not been a Scotch drinker, but I might try a few. What does it hurt to try, right? The band came back on, and we listened for a short while before deciding to go upstairs. It has been a long day. It had also been a very good day.