The weather forecast had promised rain to return Wednesday, and it most certainly did. I woke in time for the sunrise, but heard the constant dripping of the gutters outside and knew that the morning would be sketchy at best. I had some coffee and sat on the porch for a bit, waiting for the rain to pass. There was a break a little after sunrise, so D wandered out with his 360 camera. I walked with him a bit and then decided to go back and get my Clunky pinhole, since I still had plenty of film left in my bag. On my way back into the room I got distracted by this cattle egret hunting on the top of the bushes. Most of them had been flying away for a majority of the trip, but this one wasn't bothered by my passing at all, so before I hit the beach I grabbed my DSLR and 300mm and came back outside to follow the egret.
I probably have about 3 dozen photos of him, these are just a couple from different angles.
I managed to get a roll of pinhole shots just as the rain began to roll back through, so I headed back to the room.
This is one of the shots I got that morning (on the left) the photo of me on the right is from earlier in the week, but has my clunky pinhole in the shot. That's the camera I used to take the photo on the left.
While we were sitting on the porch, D spotted a couple of whales breaching. I grabbed my DSLR and we went out to the beach to watch. They didn't fully breach again, but I did catch a fin and a spout in this picture. The rain picked up to the point where I couldn't keep my gear dry, so we headed back in without getting another good shot. Still... whales from our lanei!
Our property manager had stopped by earlier in the week and gave us an avocado from the tree on his property. This is the most massive avocado I've ever seen... it took a couple days to fully ripen. I decided to try "avocado toast" - which is apparently a popular savory breakfast option for vegetarian/vegans that I'd not heard of until they mentioned it on the Splendid Table. I don't know why this inspired me to try it, but I have to say... it was good. All I did was smash the avocado on the toast and sprinkle it with a bit of Hawaiian pink salt.
We sat at the table with the camera light fixture.
The tables have drawers. I opened the drawer and found this note inside.
The note made me smile, I thought it was a nice way to start the new year after having had such a sucky 2016... ironically I ended up having an allergic reaction at the end of breakfast. I don't know how the cross contamination happened, I ordered the same breakfast I've been having at this place, but it was swift, to the point where I took the key and drove back to the condo to throw up and D and G had to walk back home. *sigh* I hate having allergies.
Thankfully, after I was over the reaction and breathing fine and the albuterol anxiety wore off, I was able to re-eat a breakfast of avocado toast.
We started packing and doing loads of laundry and organizing what was staying and what was coming home as the weather outside continued to waiver from rain to sun back to rain. We decided to head down to Lihue for lunch and some shopping. We'd considered having Duke's for dinner, but also weren't sure how packing would affect our dinner time, so we went to Duke's Barefoot Bar for lunch.
Duke's is one large restaurant, the Barefoot Bar is downstairs - which is open all day - and the dinner restaurant is upstairs. The menus are different though... the Barefoot Bar is more casual while the upstairs dinner menu is expansive but more expensive. Since upstairs wasn't open for lunch, we took a beach-side seat downstairs. I ordered the fish tacos, which were grilled swordfish today.
18 bucks for these, which is more fish than you get on a typical $32.00 dinner plate. These are my new favorite fish tacos on the island.
The interior of Duke's has a massive waterfall/koi pond in the center, which can be viewed from the restaurant above as well.
Outside of Dukes is Kalipaki Beach, which was practically abandoned this day as the rains were nearly relentless all day. The gardens surrounding the hotel and along the beach have numerous statues.
After lunch we did a little shopping in the mall nearby, picked up a few Crazy Shirts, and poked around at a couple other shops but nothing else really grabbed us. We headed back to Kapa'a, where we went to a little local grocery store so I could get some locally roasted coffee for my dad. We went back to the condo where G headed back out to the pool for her last swim and I began packing and cleaning.
Our lunches were so filling, and we had so much food left in the condo, that we voted to not go out to dinner at all, and instead had a very relaxed time packing up, organizing our stuff, and snacking as we felt like it. We were completely ready to go by 9, so after double checking all the locks on our storage and taking photos of our inventory we loaded up the car and headed to the airport.
The plane boarded early and took off on time - 11:50 p.m. Since they were serving us snacks I stayed up and watched a movie on the little player they loaned us, then tried to settle in to sleep. Unfortunately there was a medical emergency (someone passed out and had low blood pressure) so they got on the intercom and asked for a medical professional to help. D was talking to the woman who was seated next to him, so I woke up and turned around to talk with them and keep them updated on what was happening with the medical emergency. We weren't sure if our flight would be diverted to another city (are there even options on a trans-pacific flight?) but the passenger was stable and a nurse switched seats to sit next to them for the rest of the flight, and everything settled back down again. I think I slept for an hour, at best, before we landed. Our shuttle driver met us at baggage claim, our bags came out first, and we were walked out into the 18 degree morning - quite a shock! Once I warmed up inside the car I fell fast asleep for most of the drive home, woke up enough to get our bags in the house, then tried to go right to sleep. According to my fitbit I slept for 3 hours and 45 minutes that morning. I'm still a little disoriented with time, though my odd sleep on Thursday had me skip 2 meals so at least my stomach went back to west coast time by the time I ate dinner Thursday.
But it is good to be home and to feel settled and to know I'm not planning to pack and head out of town again anytime soon.
I've already gotten my pinhole color film back and done my preliminary scan, and I developed the one black and white roll that I shot. I'll be running through my trip shots soon, after I catch up on some other pending editing... hopefully I'll remember to come back to this blog and link to the trip shots this time (I didn't remember to do that last year, and I didn't realize it until I went to log in and start this blog for this most recent trip.)
Thanks for coming along on the journey with me, I hope you enjoyed it, and if you ever visit Kauai please don't hesitate to ask me any questions you want!
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