Mid-Hawaii Trip Update

Sorry for the long delay, but we have been busy! Despite the poor weather the first few days we were here, we did find a lot to keep ourselves occupied.

After coming in really late after our delayed flight, we hit the hay and had a pretty good sleep. The next day we had our work cut our for us though. With Roland's luggage still missing, we needed to go get him some clothes that he hadn't been in for 36 hours straight. Westjet was only going to cover him for $100 for the first 2 days, so he was gunna start off getting clothes and survive on sharing hygiene stuff with us, hoping that his bag arrived before long. I was also in the market for some jean shorts for Rosalie, but no luck.

The great thing about Hawaii I discovered this day is that it loves me, or at least the air does. I woke up with human hands! And by that, I mean that I went to sleep with dry, crummy, crocodile skin, and I woke up with nice, beautiful, hydrated, soft, human skin. This was literally over-night. *KAPOW* Mind-blown.

On Friday, we we're rained out again, so we went out shopping again for things that we hadn't found on Thursday, stopped and had our first Puka Dogs of the trip, and then went with Erin and Rob to Hanapepe for their monthly street fair. It was a pretty fantastic experinece and something that we probably wouldn't have done had the weather not been crummy all day.

Saturday we decided to go out for breakfast, unfortunately our first choice of location was closed on Saturdays, but we headed to the local Tropical Burgers and had a great experience there. The birds were a bit pushy though. They were ready to clear our table before we were done eating. We also popped into Kapa'a to the Ice Cream shoppe that we got our marriage licence at to see our picture up on the wall. Unfortunately, they renoed the whole store and had placed all of the photos in albums. They offered to pull them out for us, but we declined. It wasn't the same. I was FINALLY able to find some jean shorts for Rosalie at Macy's but they are one size too big, I bought them anyway, but she really has to wear a onsie with them to keep them up. With just a tshirt or tanktop they either fall right off or show off WAY too much diaper, but that's ok, they work. Once we got home Roland called westjet again about his luggage and were told that they still had no clue where it was, but that after 48 hours, Roland is entiteld to get a maximum of $250 worth of stuff reimbursed. So YAY more shopping, but BOO still no luggage. This made Roland start taking stock of all of the things he packed and consider things that he won't be able to replace.

Hawaiian Realization on Saturday: Frozen Perogies are basically unheard of in Hawaii. This is something I had just never considered before. I meantioned it on FB, and it seems that the strong mennonite communities in Western Canada may be the reason that perogies are a total norm there. Who knew?

We started to slow down a bit by Sunday, the crummy weather was starting to wear on us all and we were wondering if we were going to get any beach days while we were here. Went for a nice supper at Keoki's with Erin and Rob, and had some delicious Hula Pie. That was seriously the highlight of our day by a longshot.

Monday was a bit better. It didn't rain all day, but it was cloudy and warm. So it could have been a [lame] beach day, but we just kinda hung around the condo. We went to our first Luau with Erin and Rob in the evening. The Smith Family puts on a great party! The Smith Family Garden Luau comes as one of the highest recommeneded Luaus on Kauai, despite the not very Hawaiian name. (Our host explained that though, his grandfather came over from Europe and fell in love with his grandmother, a native hawaiian woman... so the Smith Family began!) It was a beautiful evening for it, the food was fantastic and the show afterwards was really fun! The dancing was amazing! It is a total recommend for anyone that comes to the island!

At the Luau (Photo courtesy of Erin, all of mine are still on my camera and I didn't bring the cords to transfer them)

Yesterday was a relief as the sun came out in full force and gave us a fabulous beach day! We started out our day going to the Waimea Canyons to show Rob one of the Rainiest spots in the world, then it was back to the condo for lunch and right out to the beach. It was so fun watching Rosalie's first time in the ocean. She really wasn't sure what to make of it. She REALLY wanted to go into the water, but didn't particularily like getting too wet or being completely out of control. So when I took her out initally, she was egging me to go in further, but I held her back.  But when Roland took her in, she got a little more than she bargained for and after getting wet right up to her head, she came running back to mom for comfort. Then she was more than content with my conservative ways after that! We all got a little burnt (including Brayden! which is a first), but were happy enough to get at least one beach day.

Rosalie alternated from wanting to go deeper in the water to wanting to be pulled out immediately. I don't think she really knows how she feels about the ocean.

Today was Erin and Rob's last day, but they were nice enough to take care of Rosalie for a few hours while packing up a checking out of their condo so that the three of us could go and do Kauai Adventure's Tubing Tour, which was really fun! You float down a stream (well, ok, it's basically a ditch, but really clean and not along roads!) that was a manmade irrigation system for the sugar plants back in the day, and you go through tunnels and over little teenie rapids... it was pretty fun and we learned a lot about the sugar plantations that used to be the island's primary industry. After that we came back to Poipu and had Puka Dogs again for Erin and Rob's last Puka Dog chance, and then Roland and Brayden headed to the beach with them while Rosalie and I took a nap. It was a bit of a shame to miss out on another fabulous beach day, but I was already burnt and didn't want to push it. Plus the forecast make it look like we will get more in the next week...

OK, so the water doesn't look that clean, but it was surprisingly clean considering it was basically a ditch.

Sorry this is a really choppy post, it's almost more documentative than plot driven, but frankly, I'm not much in the mood to write. I mean, who would be when they're on vacation? I promise my next one will be far better written, and I will actually care if it's good and entertaining or not...

But it's been a really great first half of our trip! Even with the rainy weather and lost baggage. Let's hope that the next week will be just as fun if not better! (although that will be tough without Erin and Rob here! They were basically our fun-stuff wingmen. ;) ) Stay tuned for the second half of our trip!