Category: Hawa’i

With just three months left to go before we set off on our Big Adventure, I figured this was a good time to check our Kaua’i bucket list and see how we’re doing.

Experiences:

• Rent a beach cottage for a couple of nights at the Pacific Missile Range Facility, to enjoy the beach and experience the gorgeous sunsets. We have reservations for a two-night stay in early July. We have a two-bedroom cottage, so YaYu is going to bring a friend along.
• Hike Waimea Canyon. Brett, YaYu and her friend will hike somewhere in the canyon while we’re staying at the PMRF cottages.

  

• Hike the Wai Koa Loop/Stone Dam trail. The trail and the dam were destroyed during the April flooding, and are currently still closed. I’m not sure whether I’ll be able to do this or not, but I’ve heard rumors the trail may be open again later this summer, but I doubt it will be as beautiful as it once was. Even if I don’t get to go, I’m grateful that Brett and the girls had the opportunity.
• Take an ATV tour out to Kipu Kai Ranch This was so much fun – Brett and I did it in April with our friend Denise, and it lived up to the hype.
• Get up early and hike out to watch the sunrise from the Pineapple Dump. We’re going to do this after we move over to the condo in late July.
• Take the tubing adventure tour. I did this with my grandson and daughter-in-law, and it was very fun and total worth going. I highly recommend!
  
• Visit the Kaua’i Museum in Lihue. Another activity we plan to do after we’re staying at the condo.
• Tour the Limahuli Gardens & Preserve. The garden, located on the north shore, was severely damaged during the April floods and remains closed. Actually, I don’t even think anyone can even get there any more because of damage to the roads.

  

Food:

• Celebrate our anniversary this year at Duke’s Kaua’i. Brett and I thoroughly enjoyed our dinner here: great food, a terrific view and a HUGE complementary slice of their famous Hula Pie!

  

• Have a lunch date at Brenneke’s Beach Broiler. Another nice outing earlier this spring, and we enjoyed our lunch.
• Have dinner at The Eating House 1849. We are planning to take YaYu with us to eat here the night before we depart Kaua’i – we think it will be a great ending to our time on the island –  and at Bar Acuda in Hanalei. We’re currently undecided about this. Not that it isn’t good, but will we have the time and $$$?
  
• Try breadfruit. Glad we got to do this with WenYu – she loved breadfruit! We all thought it was delicious. WenYu ate hers with butter and syrup.

Off-Island:

• Make an overnight visit to the Big Island to visit Volcanoes National Park. We have flight reservations over to the Big Island for late June, and a reservation at the Kilauea Military Camp, but the camp is closed indefinitely due to volcanic eruptions, and the whole trip could end up being cancelled depending on what’s going on with the volcano at the time of our trip. If we go but can’t visit the park, we’ll drive from Hilo up the east side of the island and around the top and down to Kailua-Kona for the night, making stops along the way, and then go back the same way the next day.

Out of fourteen items on our list, we’ve accomplished five of them, have reservations and/or dates for six, one has had to be cancelled because of the floods, one is an unknown, and we’re undecided about one. Not bad!

Last Saturday morning, YaYu came home from her service project and handed Brett and I a bag: “I brought these for you.” Inside the bag were two still-warm and fluffy malasada, or as they are sometimes called, “Hawaiian doughnuts.”

I avoid most carbs and can say no to a doughnuts, but I will not say no to a malasada. First of all, they are delicious. Second, we don’t see them very often because they sell out very quickly here.

Traditional egg-shaped and sugar-coated malasada may look like a regular doughnut on the outside, but their appearance hides the deliciousness inside. They’re way more rich and flavorful than a regular doughnut. Yeast-raised and fried, malasada dough contains egg, usually one egg to every cup of flour, and they’re also made with either evaporated milk or cream.

Malasada came to Hawai’i with the Portuguese workers who were brought to work on the sugar plantations. The Portuguese were mostly hired from Madeira and the Azores, considered highly desirable because they were skilled from working on sugar plantations there. Like other plantation workers they brought recipes from their home country with them, including malasada.

The most famous place to buy malasada in Hawai’i is Leonard’s in Honolulu. Leonard’s claims to be the original malasada bakery in Hawai’i and they are well-worth a stop. While a traditional malasada is plain, they can also be filled with custard or coconut-flavored haupia, and Leonard’s carries a wide variety of filled malasada as well as plain. They make the doughnuts all day long so fresh ones are always available. That’s a good thing – allowed to cool for too long, a malasada becomes dense and more like a fat bomb than a doughnut.

Here on Kaua’i, malasada can be somewhat tricky to find. You have to know where to go and be willing to get up early to get them because they sell out quickly. Malasada are traditionally associated with Mardi Gras and the Lenten season, so a few more places around town recently had them available, although we abstained then. They are definitely worth searching out though if you are visiting, and nothing goes better with a hot cup of coffee!

One of the joys of living on Kaua’i is the abundance of vibrant, beautiful flowers everywhere, all year round. Every day here we’re treated to an amazing array of colors and blossoms. Some of the flowers, like plumeria or gardenia, have intoxicating aromas, but even if they don’t smell I’m still drawn in by the stunning colors on display. Whether we’re at the weekly farmers’ markets or just walking around the neighborhood or wherever, the abundance of flowers provides a daily feast for the eyes.

Hawaii’s most famous flower is the hibiscus (the yellow hibiscus is the state flower). Hibiscus bloom year-round, and come is a variety of colors and petal arrangements.

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The most common flowers for sale at farmers’ markets are Hawaiian ginger, bird-of-paradise and heliconia, which can be seen year-round. Other flowers, like gardenia, can be found when they’re in bloom.

Many trees on the island also get into the act and have striking and colorful flowers. Perhaps the most well-known is the plumeria, with its beautiful, fragrant flowers, often used for lei. At night, when they’re in bloom, we can sometimes catch their sweet aroma on the breeze. The royal poinciana tree is also a delight, with its giant red blooms. More of a shrub than a tree, bougainvillea can be found everywhere on the island, typically covered with  purple flowers but sometimes orange can be found. There are other exotic trees as well with interesting and unusual flowers.

The pictures above show only a fraction of the flowers we’re treated to here all year long, and I have yet to get tired of them, or fail to notice them whenever we’re out and about. Sometimes we even get lucky, and find something truly unusual, like the white bird-of-paradise we spotted a couple of weeks ago when we were out for a walk – we had no idea they were in any other color than bright orange!

Although it does not snow on Kauai, there is a marked seasonal change that occurs sometime after Halloween, and may linger past St Patrick’s Day. The grass is often greener, the surf a bit rough and choppy all day long, and the sky a deep gray as it appears a little closer to the beach before it engulfs the mountains.

We frequently carry sweatshirts or sweaters when we go out in late afternoon because the trade winds gust up as the sun goes down. Really, it takes no time at all to acclimate to the warmer summer weather, and begin shivering as the mercury dips below 70 degrees Farenheit (21 degrees Celsius) on wintry evenings and early mornings.

Throughout the non-hurricane season, we make fewer trips to the beach, and umbrellas are more frequently seen at cocktail bars. And, occasionally it rains like it’s never going to let up. Great masses of saturated soil slump and creep, and big things fall down the mountains with a rumble or roar. On the other hand, this is the best time of year for watching migratory marine life from the shore.

A few weeks into this season, flash flood watches and warnings are issued by the National Weather Service for days on end. Roads are temporarily flooded and closed, and tragedy strikes more often in rivers and streams due to the heavily silted and rapidly rising water.

Winter is different here, but it’s still paradise, still home.