Our Hawaiian Adventure: Kauai (Day 2)

Thursday morning, we woke up on the island of Oahu bright and early at about 5:30. It still felt like sleeping in to us since Hawai'i is 3 hours behind Utah. We enjoyed a nice breakfast and Craig got his (first of several, I'm sure) Loco Moco. It's a pretty simple dish: huge pile of steamed rice, a ground beef patty, two eggs over easy and a generous serving of brown gravy over all of that. I had something a little more heart friendly.

The airline that put us up and fed us also had a shuttle from the hotel come and pick us up right around 8:00. We spent more time waiting at the airport than we were actually on our flight. The terminal was really fun/ny. Just a line of doors that went straight out to the tarmac. Yes, we got to walk out and climb in our teeny tiny little island hopper. 

Here are some other highlights of the rest of our day-

Apparently this is a true
tempura sushi roll. The
whole thing is dipped and very
lightly fried.

When we got our car on Kauai, Craig refused a map (no tourist-y stuff for us, thanks), saw all of the wild chickens- in case you're wondering, they are NOT an endangered specie, went to Walmart and saw more chickens. (I bet dad would love having wild chickens getting in his stores). We drove by one of the church buildings which had a huge gym that was larger alone than the entire Canton ward building, got to our hotel- interesting and very 1960's- then shared a “$6 foot long” for lunch, drove around the south side of the island, saw a gorgeous waterfall, saw a pretty beach and stopped to play for a while- hardly anyone there. Amazing. Drove around some more and saw some of the taro fields, went to a farmers and local artisans market topped off the evening by going to a Japanese & Sushi restaurant. 

FRESH unagi and tuna.
Ooh, yum. See how beautiful?

We prefer places that have good reviews but aren't tourist attractions. We were the only fair skinned people in there and we didn't hear much English. The review Craig read said, “little ambiance, always full of locals and amazing food.” We were sold and the review was completely correct. We got a variety of sushi rolls and each was fresh and simply amazing. We watched the catches of the day walk in the door and then watched it prepared for us. Wow. Really, just wow. On our way back to our hotel, we stopped and went walking around a little village, hopping into a tiny local bakery and getting a real rum cake and a hot out of the oven macadamia honey tart. Made with fresh local nuts and organic honey. Delicious. We topped off our evening by taking a nice moon lit walk along the beach. (Any notice how ominous the breaking waves can look and sound in dark shadow?)

Taro fields. SO pretty. 

We tucked in early since we were pretty tired and had another fun day planned. Every been out on a raft with 2 engines in the open ocean? More to come!