Category: Kauai: The Garden Island

For my final night of camping before hopping a flight to Los Angeles, I chose the driest place on the island — knowing I would probably need to dry out my tent before packing it up. The main perimeter road around Kauai dead-ends at either side of the northwestern Na Pali ranges. One side is very wet (near the YMCA where I camped), and this other side was very dry. In fact, it reminded me a bit of Australia and even had one of the nicest beaches I had come across in Hawaii with broad banks of white sand running for miles along the coast. The drive into this area, known as Polihale State Park, was pretty far off the beaten path. There were miles of dirt roads to traverse to get to the very end of the line where the Na Pali Cliffs started, but it was a very serene place to camp for the night, and my neighboring campers all actually seemed to be travelers themselves. It was a very nice was to spend my last night of camping on the island.

One interesting characteristic of this most western point of the most western inhabited Hawaiian Island was all the secret U.S. government installations. Along the cliff tops and along the sand there were mysterious installations for NASA, the U.S. Military, and the Hawaiian National Guard.

After a number of days dodging rainstorms, I was looking forward to seeing the sunny side of Kauai. I made the long trip half way around the island (about a 45 minute drive) down to Salt Pond Park on a Sunday afternoon. Well I blessed my lucky stars that I didn’t schedule a Friday or Saturday night at this place because it was party city. Sunday afternoon was still pretty busy, party-wise, but things finally simmered down in the late evening as families packed up their celebrations and went home to rest up for the coming workweek.

Salt Pond was a pretty nice little spot with a nice sandy beach and a nice calm surf (something hard to find in Kauai this time of year). Like just about every Hawaiian campground I came across, you were expected to park your car far away from your tent. I suppose this is all part of their efforts at discouraging long-term campers, but I found it a bit unnerving to park in dark isolated places late a night without being able to stay near your car. I had a dream sleeping here about repeated car crashes down the road from my office in a city office building only to wake up and realize I was listening to the sound of the surf crashing just meters from my tent. I think I slept closer to the crashing surf here than anywhere else. High tide must have just missed me by ten feet or so.

Not being one to hang around on beaches for very long, I woke up early, packed up my stuff and headed up into Kokee State Park for a day of muddy hiking and exploring. I have to say that up until this point, I was not all that impressed with Kauai. I hadn’t really seen anything on Kauai that I hadn’t already seen on The Big Island. Kokee State Park was definitely different, and really quite spectacular. 4000 feet up in a rain forest, Kokee State Park had lots of nice hiking trails, a grand canyon, and a spectacular view out over The Kalalau Valley, where the Na Pali Trail ends up.

Although the canyon wasn’t nearly as big as the Grand Canyon in Arizona, it was much greener and very beautiful. And while the region was known for its persistent rain, I happened to luck out and see the Na Pali cliffs overlook with anything but deep blue sky. This place even had really nice individual campsites, carved out of the rainforest undergrowth. The only problem I ran into was with the jungle chickens and roosters (known as Moa) that insisted on cock-a-doodle-doing all night long. The Moa were introduced by Polynesian visitors ions ago and have been removed from all the other Hawaiian Islands but this one.

Spending a few nights in Kapaa allowed me to get the rest of my accommodation organized for my week on Kauai. I did my research before descending on this place and learned that camping was really the only option for budget accommodation. And like The Big Island, the state and county (island) parks required you know exactly where you want to be and when. I spent my first afternoon cruising around to visit the various beach parks to see what the camping was like. Afterall, the island really isn’t that big.

What I hadn’t anticipated was the amount of rain this place gets. The rainiest point on top of Mount Waialeale averages more 40 feet (12+ meters) of rain a year! And I thought Milford Sound in New Zealand was wet! Fortunately the coastal areas aren’t THAT bad, but they are still very wet on the eastern and northern coasts. My strategy was to camp where it’s wet first so I could use the camping where it’s dry (in the south and west) to dry out my tent before I have to pack it up for another flight.

My first night of camping started out very nice. I found a beautiful spot right on the beach under some pine trees at Anini Beach Park. The swimming was very nice, but as with most of Kauai at this time of the year, the sea was a bit too rough for good clear snorkeling. There was a brief shower after I got my tent set up, but no other precipitation problems until around 6AM. I wouldn’t have minded a downpour overnight while I stayed nice and dry in my tent, but to have an 8 hour downpour start at 6AM is no fun at all — especially when you are expected to pack up your tent and head for your next destination by 10AM.

Having a nice lightweight freestanding tent, I worked out a strategy where I could pull up the stakes that were holding it in place, carry it into the men’s room, and pack it up out of the rain in there. It seemed to work okay and I got the tent and the rest of my gear back in the car. Good for the time being, but the thought of attempting to set the tent pack up in the continuing downpour at a dodgy-looking park didn’t thrill me. I was confined to my driver’s seat, where I tried to read papers and pass the time waiting for the downpour to finish.

And then I remembered something about a YMCA camp being available if it wasn’t hosting any groups. I found the deserted place, knocked on all the doors I could find, and as I was just about give up, a woman came walking across the lawn (in the rain) with her dog. I saw a big pavilion on the far side of the grass on the edge of a beautiful cove and asked whether she’d mind if I pitched my tent under there. It was cool with her and it turned out to be one of the best spots I found to camp on this island. I could set my tent up out of the pouring rain, sprawl out on the picnic tables and read the paper, cook my meals, have lots of privacy, darkness, dryness, and quiet when it came time to sleep. I decided to stay there two nights while I explored the area. It was the perfect spot for the rainy climate.

For my last few days on the northern wet coast, I explored the area around Hanalei, Princeville, Haena (where I camped) and the rainforests of the Na Pali Coast. There was a hike I was hoping to make along the spectacular northern cliffs (known as “Bali Hai” in the movie “South Pacific”), but I was advised by the state park service that it was very slippery, very wet, and closed in many sections due flash flooding. Instead I did some short hikes instead and a bit of snorkeling on Tunnel Beach that turned out to be okay.

After spending a week on Hawaii’s newest island, I hopped a flight from Hilo to Lihue on Hawaii’s oldest and western-most (inhabited) island: Kauai. Kauai is known as “The Garden Island” for its greenness, but all I saw my first few days there was traffic. Kauai is just a fraction of the size of The Big Island with a population of only 58,000, so there aren’t as many places for tourists to spread out. Basically there is just one major road that doesn’t even make it the whole way around the island, and everybody seems to be driving on it. It’s also the wettest place on earth, so there is lots of rain to contend with.

I decided to head up to the town of Kapaa on the east coast as soon as I hit the ground. Although half way up the island on a map, it was actually only 8 miles from Lihue (where I landed), the biggest town on the island. I found a groovy beach house hostel overlooking the ocean in Kapaa. I later realized it was the only hostel worth staying at on the whole island.

On the one hand, the laidback hostel owner, a purported chiropractor (who never seemed to tend to any clients) had done nice job setting the hostel up with mosquito nets and drapes around each of the beds for privacy. There was a nice constant sea breeze flowing through the premises to cool things down in the evening. On the downside, it quickly became apparent that most of the tenants were long term.

Most of the hostels I visited in Hawaii seemed to be deserted, perhaps because of having a restriction on the length of time a visitor could stay. I witnessed two people being kicked out of a HI hostel in Honolulu for overstaying their welcome. This one hostel in Kapaa was about half full, but most of the tenants seemed to have had menial jobs in the area and old clunker cars parked out back. They had no real ambition other than to live in Hawaii. The showers were full of old half-used shampoo bottles, just like you would expect to find in someone’s private bathroom. These are the kinds of things you wouldn’t find in most hostels. And the long-term tenants also seemed a bit flaky. You would ask someone why he or she chose to live on a particular island and they would respond with phrases like, “I didn’t choose this island. It chose me!”

The problem I find with allowing long-term tenants is they’re not interested in what they perceive as transient tenants, like myself. They’re only interested in networking with other mainlanders with the same lame ambitions as themselves. The whole fun of staying in hostels is meeting other travelers from around the world with similar interests and comparing notes on what’s worth seeing and what’s worth skipping. This policy of allowing long-term tenants made my stay at this hostel somewhat awkward after a few days.

One thing I found different about backpacking around Hawaii was the tourists. Where in most countries you would find about half local tourists, lots of other people from all over the world, and a smattering of American visitors, Hawaii seemed to be 99% Americans and hardly anyone else. And while most Americans seemed to end up in resorts as part of package deals, the low budget places were full of not tourists, but mainlanders trying to make a go of it in Hawaii.