Canyon in the clouds, a temple and a fort – a packed day on the South Coast

This picture is taken right now (Thursday morning) out of our apartment's window. Rain coming down horizontally. Don't mind too much since, 1., we have to catch up with work, and, 2nd, we had a long and interesting day yesterday. We drove "only" about 180 miles (300 km), but we were in the car for over six hours. Slow moving traffic and traffic jams around Lihue and Kapaa all the time. There are not too many highways to choose from, and, Princeville (where we stay) is almost on the northern end of the main coastal highway (which circles the island up to about 2/3) , which means it's a lot of driving back and forth on the same road. The back country of the island is, with the exception of a couple of dul-de-sacs, e.g. to the Waimea Canyon and the Wailua River Valley, undeveloped.

We started at 7:15 am yesterday to get to the West Coast and to the Wailea Canyon summit in time to avoid the clouds. We arrived there at 9:30 am, but were only partially lucky: The first overlook we stopped at, the Waimea Canyon Overlook (pics above) at 3,400 ft., still offered great views, but when we drove up the curvy, pot-hole-covered road to the summit (Kalalau Lookout) clouds got denser and it even started to rain. On top: no view at all.


Back to the previous outlook where clouds where also slowly moving in, the atmosphere was almost "mystic":

Back down to sea level, where the sun shone bright and hot. We explored the South Coast of Kauai with the Russian Fort Elizabeth at Waimea Bay, which was occupied from 1815-1864, as our first stop. The fort was built in the early 19th century by the Russian-American Company and what's left is just foundations of the star-shaped stone construction.

Hanapepe was a a pretty pleasant little town, not too touristic, and we even found a bookstore - our first one on Hawaii! - and another great bakery. There we bought dark whole-grain bread and a flaky macademia-nut-roll for lunch. Also, we went to the Aloha Spice Factory and admired the swinging bridge in town.

Port Allen - next stop - is a harbor town, had a couple of stores, among them a chocolate store, and another brewery (too early to check that out!) in former warehouses. Didn't see a whole lot of boats, no fishing boats at all. Seems like most of the fish on the islands is coming from Honolulu caught on a larger scale.

Kauii Coffee Company in Eleele (pics below) was the first coffee plantation we ever visited. Good thing was, too, that they offer free tours and tastings. So we got our fill of their Estate roasted coffee, watched a film, looked at exhibitions and did the self-guided tour over the plantation with some historic equipment explaining the process from growing the coffee to roasting and packaging. This company is the largest coffee plantation in the U.S. (4 mio. trees!) and is nowadays owned by the Italian company Massimo Zanetti (e.g. "Segafredo"). The property occupies the grounds of a former sugarcane plantation and was transformed into a coffee plantation in the late 1980ies.



From there on the beaches became more populated, more resorts and condominions around famous Poipu Beach. It was no the right weather to swim, we had a couple of rainshowers during the day, but we went to the beach and looked at the "Spouting Horn".

There was an interesting place closeby, called "Ke Kahua O Kaneiolouma", a historic settlement and ritual place of Polynesian settlers from the 15th century on. Foundations were excavated and show buildings of all kinds, fish ponds, a spring and a hula dance podium as well as a ritual building.


The National Botanical Gardens in Koloa consist of two parts: Allerton and McBride Gardens. They are horrendously expensive to visit, but around the Visitor Center they have sort of a Botanical Garden, too, which we explored. Again, found a lot of unknown tropical plants (left to right, top to bottom): Pink Ginger, Palm called "Loulo", Noni or Indian Mulberry (Maulbeerbaum), a Papaya tree, a "wiliwili" (Korallenbaum) and a Plumeria tree (Frangipani), which blossoms (pic) are used for the typical Hawaiian leis.

After another stop at the weekly Gourmet Market in Poipu - where we bought strawberry papayas and apple bananas, the little tasteful ones they grow here - we headed back north, in the rain now. But, again traffic jams and it took us a while before we were able to enjoy our Hawaiian Bratwurst with fresh bread and tropical fruit in our apartment.