Southside of the island.

On Thursday, (after the Limahuli gardens tour (the best one!)) we moved south from Princeville to Poipu. We couldn’t check into our Airbnb until 4, so it was a long-ish day involving my mom’s favorite chicken lunch (unexpected find after my original option was closed), a drive to a plant nursery where I bought some cuttings cleared to go to the mainland, some donuts and then to our place near Poipu beach.

The next day, I ventured out in the morning on my own for a swim at the beach, and walked around town past all the resorts and shopping.

I watched some turtles swim in the water, this one happily saying hello to me.

For lunch, we went to Koala Fish Market. I want to say – I think i knocked it out of the park food wise on this trip. Save for an overhyped beach Hawaiian hot dog, all the meals were lovely – a mix of restaurant, simple meals at home and a bunch of small, local hole-in-the-walls. Lots of fish for my mom, some local delicacies, relatively high on fruits and vegetables, though still lower than what I usually love – but low on the number of hamburgers and pizza. We also were really good at not over ordering (usually by ordering two meals or even one meal and one big salad) and then also packing up extras to bring home for the next meal.

This was my favorite meal of the week, the lau lau, and piece of pork wrapped in a plant leaf. So tender and delicious!

That evening, we went to the Smith family luau. Pretty cute!

My parents enjoyed looking at an imu (buried oven) where they roast three pigs each evening for the luau.

This was my father’s favorite meal. It was also super cute because soooo many people were here getting married, on their honeymoon or anniversary! A few couples had gotten married that day! I was kind of like…ok? It would not have been how I would celebrate my wedding day, but to each their own.

Finally, the piece-de-resistance! We went to the Allerton/McBryde gardens – my mom has tried to go there twice before, once closed because of a typhoon, the second time, she arrived 20 minutes after it closed. So on Saturday, we went extra early to be sure that we did not miss anything. And we didn’t! We got to see it all!

This was my mom on all the plant tours. Lots of photos of plants.

On the south side of the island, the guides were much more savvy with offering to take photos. They were all much, much better at adding flair to the photos. Kauai is known for being the background for many movies, including Jurassic Park and so this guide added a dinosaur into our photo! On the one on the phone, the dinosaur actually moves and kind of opens its mouth more. My parents were like – how did he do that?, and I’m like – I have absolutely no idea.

After all these botanical gardens, I’ve learned that all my houseplants – if I shipped them to Hawaii and planted them into the ground, would completely grow into an enormous tree, like 4 stories tall and as wide as a half a city block. My fiddle leaf fig, my monstera, my dracena, my ficus trees (2), my pothos, all in my house, just miniature versions of their true selves.

Gorgeous spots all up day long.

I really wanted to find a fruit stand in Hawaii for my mom. They are hard to pin down, the weekly ones are held all over the island only one day a week and usually not corresponding to where we were going that day. I had an entire list that I went through trying to match up our iteneray with the opportunities for fruit. I was not optimistic and I warned my mother about that, but in the end, we did find the perfect fruit stand and we were able to go twice and to get a coconut. Success!

Saturday night, we went to “fancy” dinner – at a restaurant with a view.

Again, the waiter was so kind, taking us out to the edge of the property and setting up this long exposure photo with the moon and the beautiful waves in the background.

Last day, Sunday, boat day! We went on a boat to see the Na Pali coast – not accessible by car – only by boat and/or helicopter. This was really fun until it was not, my mom got seasick while we were bobbing for an hour at our snorkel spot. I will count the dolphin sightings as the highlight of the trip because it was on the boat before my mom got sick. Again, the crew of the boat got a good video of the dolphins, I’ll upload when I get back home as I’m on slightly slow airplane wifi right now. I loved this boat ride – calm and sightseeing-ly on the way out, a bit of snorkling in the middle, and a nice choppy (but not scary!) ride on the way home where I sat in the front hammock so I could barely see anyone and only the front of the boat getting splashed and wet and imagining that I was a dolphin swimming in the waves. So much fun. I do enjoy and miss kayaking of which this boat feeling was adjacent, it is exhilarating. There was also food! Breakfast and lunch.

Headed home to Portland right now! I’m so happy I got to do this with my parents. I’ve not done this before, planned a vacation from head to toe – so I’m super please on how it turned out. Hawaii does make it easy, it’s basically 24/7 vacation, i’m not sure I could plan a trip to Europe or South America as well, so good training grounds for me. I did spend a lot of time thinking about the rhythms of the days and how the activities/restaurants all flowed together. All plants all the time for my mom, a pig roast for my dad (and he also enjoyed very much the nice photos people took for us), and for me, a chance to do something nice for/with my parents. This was not a cheap trip, and normally I’d hesitate to spend this much money on this stuff and many times in the past (or all the times in the past, I’ve tried budget more carefully – but it is true, you pay for convenience; the better flight times, the closer in parking, etc.), but I’m not sure how many more trips of this caliber that can happen, so I tried to spend-out. But not crazy spend-out. I mean, I did not book any private tours or personal guides or luxury resorts, but I tried to not agonize over an extra $150 here or there. I know, so lucky to be able to do this. So lucky to be able to afford it, have the time to go and be in good health. Blessings all around, things I do not take for granted. And Hawaii presented its best self to us, gorgeous weather all week, good food, nice accomodations, great hospitality everywhere we went. And I personally thank the traffic gods who helped me navigate the island smoothly and would present parking spaces when I needed them without too much trouble – thank you for looking out for me – sincerely, a nervous driver – me.