Our last full day dawned with clouds and the sound of raindrops, again. Damn it rains a lot here. Every single day, but not all day every single day. According to the weather notifications I’m getting on my phone from back home, they’ve had a ton rain – all from the remnants of a tropical depression. I’m so glad we missed that. I’ll take these brief showers anytime over the flooding they’ve had. We had to check into the airport (10 min away) at 7:30 for our 8:00 helicopter tour over the island. My Nene joined us for coffee again this morning. These birds are so beautiful and I love their docile, friendly personalities. When they eat from your hand, you know they’re tame. Before we left some beautiful eye candy popped up by way of an amazing rainbow, a perk from all the rain here …


This copter ride was pretty exciting for me. As many times as I’ve flown, it’s only been in an airplane (and a hot air balloon once). Surprisingly, I really wasn’t nervous. We chose Sunshine Helicopters because they were the only ones flying out of Princeville. All the other companies fly out of Lihue, almost an hour away. Of course Sunshine knows they have a monopoly and you pay extra for the convenience, but it was worth it. My chauffeur has logged a lot of miles on these two islands over the last two weeks. We checked in, got our safety lecture and were shortly shuffled out to the Tarmac. Trevor was our pilot. His dad owns the company. He was a great pilot, had personality and since he was born on the island knew all the ins and outs. Our copter, we were told, is a Cadillac of copters – at a price of four million (yes dollars). I guess there’s a reason it was so nice and comfy. When we took off it was so cool, almost like floating. The whole flight was simply amazing. I loved every minute of it. We flew over the Hanalei Valley, Waimea Canyon, the Napoli Coast and finally the Hanalei Bay. The flight was way too short, only about 45 minutes. I could’ve stayed up there for hours. Bob and I got some decent pics but with the reflection on the glass (next time we do this it will be with open doors!!) a lot of them aren’t frame worthy, but that’s ok. They provide us with the memories.




We had planned to go back to Ke’e Beach and snorkel some more this afternoon. Riiiiiiight. If I had known how much traffic we’d run into, I would’ve videoed it. For one thing, the beach is about 8 miles away. And it takes a good 30 minutes to get there without traffic. That sounds so funny – talking about traffic jams on an island but I swear you wouldn’t believe it. When we got there yesterday it was before 8am. Today it was close to noon. We sure expected the lots to be fuller but dear lord … We could barely get through just to turn around. Cars were parked on the side the the road, and have I mentioned how narrow these roads are (not to mention all the one lane bridges you have to stop for)? So these cars parked on the side of the road? They park anywhere they can get, and places they shouldn’t get. I’ll bet there were cars pulled off the road for a good 3/4 of a mile from the beach and trail. I tell you it was like a Black Friday Sale going on. Crazy! So we turned around and kept trucking – went back to Anini Beach (the one where the W fell off?). We knew we wouldn’t be snorkeling there but at least we could sit on the beach. More driving for Bob – Anini Beach is about 6 miles on the other side of the condo. Doesn’t sound like much it it took us way over an hour to drive to Ke’e, turn around and park at Anini. There’s a reason Anini is the place for kite boarding and wind surfing. The surf is protected by a reef so the water is much calmer closer to shore but it really windy. Plus both of us had gotten more than enough sun yesterday so we were looking for some shade. Between the shade and the wine we lasted a couple of hours.

Back at the condo we enjoyed our last beer on the patio, fed my Nenes and chilled. I’ll miss these gentle souls. Video


Hanalei Gourmet was our choice for our last dinner on the island. Another little local dive (hell, that’s all there is here – which suits us fine). I got their crab cakes (3 of them) and Bob ordered their local fresh catch, Opa. We could’ve split one of those plates. I don’t know why they give you so much food. With it being our last day, there was not point in taking the leftovers home. So sad because it’s such a waste of food, but we just couldn’t finish it.


We did, however, manage to make room for a little cup of ice cream on the way home. 🙂


Back at the condo we were greeted with our new upstairs tenants. We have been so blessed. Not sure what we’d have done if we’d had to deal with this kind of crap all week. The tv was blaring. I mean blaring. You have to have your windows and doors open because, remember, there is no AC. We’ve had the tv on twice these last two weeks, both times for football. To us, the view and the sounds were our tv. So I pulled the baby Bose out and cranked up some Zac Brown to start our “Back to Reality” routine. We don’t have to leave early in the morning but I can’t leave stuff like that until last minute. I have to get organized. We both ended up completely packing instead of leaving the bulk til morning. Then we looked through our Kaua’i book to see what we could do in the morning on the way to the airport. We had this window of time we needed to fill. But it was too small to do much with (had to check out by 10:00) and too much to not do something. Would you believe we really couldn’t find anything to do? I think we’ve done this island. Not that we wouldn’t come back, but we’ve pretty much done all the quick things and seen all the sights we can see from a car. Oh yeah, and the sunset? Yeah, we’re so over the cloud over that mountain. After seeing that same sunset for 5 nights we are over it. Not that it wasn’t pretty, but some different clouds and color would be nice. It was like the sunset was on repeat. I didn’t even both snapping a digital shot tonight. I guess that’s it. G’night Kaua’i for the last night.