My luck had finally run out.
After completing 106 consecutive weekly analects/blogs, I hit a brick wall.
Every analect posted attracted a raft of reader comments ranging from “Loved it”, to “Couldn’t understand it”, to “Your worst yet”. But each had one component: my heart and soul. Each analect was special. It wasn’t just there to go through the motions of forced writing to meet a Thursday deadline.
Analect 107 completely stumped me.
I had been looking forward to writing about Kaua’i for weeks. I knew exactly what to say. Halfway through it, I stopped. The analect had come out like a laundry list of events. Nothing in it stirred me. What would it do for my readers? I threw away my draft, leaving it alone for a week, hoping the zip and zap would return.
It’s now a week later. Time to begin.
We landed on the “Garden Isle” of Hawaii just after seven in the evening from Honolulu.
NEVER arrive on a Hawaiian island, other than Oahu housing Honolulu, at 7 p.m. or later. Sunset arrives then. Darkness prevails. There are no streetlights. NADA.
We went to the Enterprise office to collect our rental car. “Welcome. We’ve upgraded your regular saloon to a Cadillac SUV.” I wanted something small that I could easily manage, not a minivan. Having gone through all the palaver of signing documents here and initialling there, I asked the fatal question: “How do we get to our hotel?”
“Easy, sir.” NEVER ask a local for directions. They know the place so well that everything is “easy” to them. They then rattle off directions that a speedwriter couldn’t keep up with. Far better to ask a hesitant stranger who knows nothing.
“Take the exit out of the airport. Turn left for five minutes. Your hotel will be on your right.”
Half an hour later, “Hon, I’m sure we’ve passed Enterprise three times already. Are you sure you’re on the right track?” Was my wife kidding?
We learned that Lihue airport stood in front of an oval roadway, like a racecourse track. None of the road signs were lit. Eventually, we found the exit. It was immediately after the Enterprise depot, which completely covered the exit sign. Why couldn’t our car rental rep have advised us the exit was directly in front of us? Locals take everything for granted.
Ten minutes after escaping the airport, Laura said, “Hon, I think we passed our hotel.”
“We couldn’t have done. I didn’t see a sign.” Twenty minutes later, we turned back and discovered the driveway to our hotel, completely camouflaged by giant trees and thick bushes.
Once again, I felt like handing Laura the steering wheel. By this time, our two boys were snoozing in the back.
Somehow, we ended up at the staff entrance behind the hotel. Thank goodness we had wheeled luggage. We blindly traversed sand, rock and marble to arrive at our palatial lobby. It was the stuff that dreams are made of for every travelling American: oversized, bold and brash. But there were perks to this hotel. Free tennis court and racquets for the boys. Our rooms were as large and tall as the lobby. We were five minutes’ walk from the main street, giving access to cheap local and Thai food, groceries and snacks. Food at the hotel was four times the local prices.
The view, the view. Always paying more for a “sea view”, we inevitably butted heads with our welcoming staff. “Sir, ‘sea view’ doesn’t mean full frontal view of the ocean from your balcony. It includes corner views, if you stick your head around the balcony.”
Here, we were given “full view” rooms. Our hotel was planted on a bay. In front of us were baby swimming and paddling pools. Beyond them, the bay of calm deep-blue water, shielded on two sides by mountains. Laura loved being able to leave the lift on the main floor and be on the beach in a few steps. The hotel seemed half empty. All for the good.
Everything we encountered was a delightful surprise, full of unexpected contradictions.
There were no crowds. Having been jostled off the streets in Honolulu, facing a phalanx of predominantly Asians walking five abreast, we could have been in any teeming Asian capital. In Kaua’i, it was different. Judging by their tongue, the relatively few tourists here were French, with a sprinkling of other Europeans. We took our car—sorry, Cadillac SUV—for a forty-minute, air-conditioned drive to the national park overlooking the dramatic cliffs of Na Pali.
On the way, we stopped at a village. While my family wandered through a large barn-like store for cheap hoodies, T-shirts and the usual knick-knacks, I walked around. Behind the store was a beach. At one point, a wooden pier—only two feet wide—arrowed its way into the sea. Beside it, a faded board read: “This is where Captain Cook first landed in Hawaii.” No hordes of tourists ecstatically taking selfies, waving peace signs. Until you got to this wooden walkway, there was no indication of such a monument, let alone a fancy statue.
“Hon, I’m hungry, can we visit that house? It’s selling fruit.” The “house” was a bungalow, its roof thatched with palm leaves. Its concreted verandah beside the front door displayed fruits of every kind. Laura’s eyes lit up. “Hon, they’re fresh young coconuts. The kind we get back home in the Philippines.” From then on, each day, we had to journey the twenty minutes to reach here for her to slurp down the juice and scrape the innards with the chopped-off top of the coconut.
“Boys, look, spring rolls.” Labels described them from savoury to banana fritters. Why spring rolls here, of all places? The tall, elderly, straight-backed white American owner explained. “While serving in Vietnam, I met and married a Thai. If you come on a Saturday, we serve Thai meals in lunch boxes for your trip to Na Pali.” A few days later, we saw husband and wife halfway up the peak to Na Pali. They were operating a stall selling lunch boxes and fruit.
American national parks are some of the best run in the world and spectacular. The road climbed gradually uphill. Almost at every gentle turn, there was a lay-by with a food and drink stall. But everyone’s eyes were glued to the vista of endless sea and billowing clouds. We drove over dramatic plains with wild bushes and exotic flowers. These provided the background to the film Jurassic Park, where you see the dinosaurs and raptors darting along the plain.
Another surprise. Halfway up the mountain, our road flattened. In a few minutes, we met a lush village green, so reminiscent of Old England. Only cricketers were missing. We stopped at an elongated bungalow restaurant and partook of English muffins and sundry morsels. Then we were on our way again. We passed a working observatory, one of half a dozen in its class in the world, its nearest companion in the desert of Chile.
The summit flattened out once again to the edge of the purple-blue, serrated cliffs. We basked in the sunshine as Laura took photos, enthusiastically waiting to drive home to end the day at our favourite Thai restaurant, across from our resort.
No matter the crowds in Hawaii, no matter the proliferation of gigantic, tasteless monoliths of hotels, of all the places I have travelled to, my memories always return to the majestic vistas emanating from the noble, God-sent islands of Hawaii.
Sitting on my balcony in Lihue at sunset, I watched with an almost religious fervour the mountains turning from grey to inky blue to purple, complementing the yellow-orange sun receding into the depths of the dark-blue sea. Shadows of giant, gently swaying palms coronated the view.
It was as though I had died and gone to heaven.
