The Adventures of Quickstride & Shambler: Garden Isle

“Do y’all wanna go to Kauai?” Blaine and Bo asked us while out to dinner one night. “We reserved a cabin over Memorial Day weekend.”

“Absolutely,” was Jenny’s emphatic reply, and a couple weeks later, we met Blaine and Bo in the Honolulu Airport to catch an inter-island hop to the Garden Isle. The flight was short, and we found ourselves in Kauai’s small airport and sending Jenny off to grab our rental car in the mid-afternoon.

Bo had lived in Hawai’i for over a decade, and had traveled to most (if not all) the islands in the archipelago. As the only one who had visited Kauai before, she served as our small group’s tour guide. One of the first things she told us was that Kauai is a much slower-paced island, especially compared to Oahu, and that meant that many of the restaurants, stores, and attractions closed pretty early in the evening. As we drove from the airport in Lihue, another factor became apparent: it was high school graduation weekend.

With that in mind, Bo guided us to a restaurant that she knew between the airport and our cabin. Situated across the street from a supermarket, Wrangler’s provided us the opportunity to fill up on steaks and burgers, and then head across the street to stock up on supplies for the trip. The meal was quite good, and after stocking up on the necessities, Jenny fired up our rented Jeep and headed out of town to our cabin.

Or at least that was the plan. The sun sets quickly in the tropics, and by the time we left the grocery store, the last little bits of daylight were fading beyond the horizon. The main street we were on was well-lit by streetlights, but as soon as we left town, we were plunged into darkness. It was pitch-black, save for the flashing red and blue lights behind us.

It turned out that the “auto” setting on the rented Jeep’s headlights didn’t really work as advertised. While we struggled to figure out the lights under the annoyed glare of an impatient Honolulu County cop, he took that opportunity to inform us the Jeep’s safety inspection and registration was overdue. Jenny explained the car was a rental, to which the cop told us that over 50% of the cars on Kauai were rentals, and that it was still our fault.

Jenny braced herself for a ticket with a hefty fine, but the County Cop apparently decided it was more satisfying to lecture us about road safety for what felt like an hour. After we promised to contact the rental agency and get a new car, the cop let us go with a stern warning. It could have been worse.

Our little Bo-guided tour group made it to our sea-side cabin well after dark and exhausted. We did take a moment to peer upward at the sky, taking in the sky full of stars. Kauai has very little light pollution, so the star gazing was pretty peachy. When we had enough of that, we crashed out for the night. Our adventures required an even earlier morning, now that we had to trade out our rental back in Lihue in the morning.

We were up when the first tendrils of light started creeping over the beach. The steady crash of waves mixed with the crowing of roosters and clucking of chickens while we took a morning stroll on the beach. Feral chickens are Kauai’s most prevalent wildlife, and without natural predators, they roam freely all over the island. Kauai’s chickens and roosters are probably more akin to the ancestral jungle fowl than your typical barnyard chicken.

Bright and early, we headed back toward Lihue. We weren’t going to let a little thing like a rental swap keep us down too long. Jenny and Bo planned out a spot to get breakfast, Kalaheo Cafe, which allegedly has the best French toast on Kauai. I am unsure about that claim as I did not order French toast anywhere else to compare. It was packed when we arrived, but we got lucky with a parking spot as a family left right as we pulled into the small lot. The food was good, I got a turmeric cappuccino because someone told me turmeric is good for your joints. Turmeric might be good for your joints, but a turmeric cappuccino just makes my tongue numb and turns my gums yellow.

Jenny drove us back to Lihue and we swapped our rental Jeep for a rental Subaru, this time double checking the safety sticker and registration in the glovebox. By this time, it was already close to noon, so we went straight to our first stop: the Koloa Rum distillery.

The Koloa distillery is situated on an old sugarcane plantation, and now boasts a rum tasting room, swanky restaurant, and shopping center for hippies to sell their artwork to tourists and wealthy hippies. We signed ourselves up for a rum tasting, where I rediscovered that I don’t really like rum, but I really like rum drinks. Especially the fruity, island drinks. We bought ourselves some rum and some pre-made rum drinks for later, then headed to our next stop.

Our first full day on Kauai had been overcast and sporadically rainy. Kauai does receive a significant amount of rain, Mount Waialeale on the island is regarded as the wettest place on Earth (aside from just being, you know, underwater). The weather led us to not mind being cooped up inside and driving all over the island to see what we could see from the car. By dinner time, however, the rain had largely stopped and we made our way to see Hanapepe, the town that inspired the Disney classic, Lilo & Stitch.

Bo’s memory of Hanapepe was of a small, bustling tourist trap of a town with a bunch of shops to peruse and food trucks to try. We pulled into Hanapepe and discovered that it was indeed a tourist trap, but most of the shops had signs in the window announcing they were closed for the evening. Our timing was inopportune, it was the night of the local high school’s graduation ceremony.

Even so, we gave Hanapepe a good chance. There were still throngs of tourists wandering around, so we joined them in wandering around. I got to visit Talk Story, the Western Most Bookstore in the U.S.A (they did not carry Frozen Reaction or Retrograde Absolution) and bought two books. One was a worn, hardback copy of Robert Ludlum’s Bourne Identity (good!), and the other was a book of poetry by a local poet (not good!).

Darkness was setting in as we left the bookstore, and we jumped into the long line at the only food truck who apparently either did not have a high school senior graduating, or did not love them like the other shop owners loved their kids. After securing some Thai food, we piled back into the rented Subaru and headed back to our cabin.

Once at the cabin, we cracked open our Koloa Rum, imbibed in some drinks, and played some card games. Bo and I played three hands of cribbage, of which she won the first game handily and I squeaked out two consecutive wins to close out the night. Satisfied with my overall cribbage series victory, Jenny and I got ready for bed. We needed our rest for the remainder of our adventures on the Garden Isle.