After our lovely sunset at Baby Beach we went back into Koloa Old Town to find something to eat. We strolled into the Garden Island Grille which was promising live music. However, by the time we got there (8-15) the music had finished and everyone else had left. However, lovely Sophie greeted us warmly and assured us it was fine. She was absolutely lovely and so was the owner lady giving us lots of hints for our stay. We also had a little pet Madagascan Gecko for company at our table who was very much enjoying licking his glacé cherry. And our burger was good too! So all in all it was a good night.
I was phaffing about with our itinerary for the next few days trying to see how we could fit everything in but in the end we stuck to plan so the next day we were off upto the North Shore to visit Hanalei…or the land where Puff the Magic dragon lived! It is also the place where more recently George Clooney and his pretend family stayed in the film The Descendants. Watching this film had in fact re-inforced my desire to come to Hawaii because the scenery was so lovely, particularly at this spot.
We drove all the way up their without stopping to see other scenic spots along the way, because I knew that we’d be visiting some of these on our Movie Tour on Friday. However, the Movie tour doesn’t go as far as Hanalei anymore and we’d soon find out why. When we arrived the road beyond Hanalei was indeed closed as the lady in the Garden Island Grille had told us. This was becaus back in April they had devastating floods here as a result of exceptionally heavy rain. It has swept away some of the single lane bridges so my idea of going to see ‘Bali Hai’ from Kee Beach was a no go.
Instead, we parked up in Hanalei and bought some coffee and banana bread and sat and ate it with the wild chickens. We then had a little wander around the shops which were a mixture of tourist tat and very nice galleries. Then we found another parking space and wandered over to the beach. It’s interesting, this place is the stuff of dreams with its lush mountainous backdrop and gentle surf but in comparison to some of the beaches in Oahu it seemed a little scruffy.
We decided to walk along the beach towards the famous pier only to find that this was all cordoned off as was this end of the beach. As we got nearer we could see why. At least two of the beachfront houses which must be worth multiple millions , had collapsed- again as a result of the April rains. There were also diggers doing repair work to the pier. Crikey, thank goodness this poor island didn’t get badly affected by the more recent hurricane.
I tried looking for George Cloonies house but couldn’t find it, but it is a very very long beach! We then both decided that we wanted to go back to our lovely place at Koloa. It is so lovely in comparison so that’s exactly what we did.
We stopped on the way to eat late lunch at the Olympic Bar in Kapaa which looked quite interesting but was not v good at all. Mainly because they actually forgot to serve my meal. No tip there then…well apart from the obvious.
When we got back to our place we just sat on our balcony enjoying a bit of a rest and deciding what we would do the next day. Odd really, this was a day I’d really been looking forward to and for the first time this holiday, it didn’t quite match up to expectations. Ah well tomorrow is another day!
Where shall we go to next? 