Kaua'i!

Saturday morning Ron, Jeannie, Stephanie and myself did some island hopping from the Big Island to Oahu. Next we flew over the isle of Molakai and on to Kaua'i.  I've been extraordinarily lucky enough to visit the Big Island three times now, and now, beyond my wildest dreams I was going to get to visit another island for a week - Kauai'i. 

Hope I get down there onto Molakai someday

Ron tells me, each island has a different subculture and feel to it, and now I am experiencing it for myself. My first impression is the Big Island of Hawaii is the baby island. It's fresh and new, still a hot bed of volcano activity. In contrast, Kaua'i is the oldest of the Hawaiian chain of islands and like it's inhabitants, has seen it all. There are no vast fields of lava on Kaua'i that I've seen so far, but maybe I just haven't seen enough of the island yet.

Right off the coconut, we got a rental car at the Lihue airport, then drove up the Kaua'i coast a bit, to Waimea. Did we go to Waimea to view spot where Captain Cook once set foot on the magical isle of Kaua'i? Were we hankering to explore the range where Hawaiian 'Paniolo' - cowboys - round up the lanky long-horn cattle? Uh... no. We wanted to visit 'Jo Jo's' for a nice big helping of shave ice. Hey, having shave ice is practically obligatory while on the islands.

What the heck is shave ice? I assumed it was just what, when I was growing up in New York City, we used to call 'Italian ices'. Shaven ice fluff, with a super sweet flavored syrup drooled over the top. Nope! Shave ice is so much more. There were oodles of flavor options, 60 in fact, but we unanimously opted for the most interesting sounding one, the 'Halo Halo'.

Halo Halo is a mix of, get this, it's amazing - coconut curls, coconut gel, Azuki beans, pineapple gel, sweet fruit mix, sweet palm fruit, purple yam jam topped with Haupia cream. We could have had ice cream added to all that. Was it good? Just check out Step's smile on the right here.


After our shave ice adventure, we returned to Lihue Airport where I picked up my rental car, then we caravan-ed east and north to Princeville and our Gi'normous time share where each of us had our own bedroom with bathroom. The apartment also had a beautiful & back balcony, with a view of tropical rainforest. So far I'm liking Kaua'i but I can't wait to see what I can discover on my big Hawaiian Birdie Hunt tomorrow.