Morning was 5:56, 11 minutes later than yesterday! Good morning sunshine.
Today we decided to head north to Hanalei, which is this idyllic little town in the rainforest of the Na Pali coast. It was a favorite place to go during our honeymoon – so we thought we'd share the experience with a 15 month old... In order to get there, we had to go through this place called Princeville. Princeville is tantamount to the “hills” vs. the flatland in Oakland – hella ritzy, with 6 million dollar homes dotting the landscape with their priceless views. We stopped at a Chevron station for some food at 7:30 or so, because they supposedly had some good food there. Tell that to Isla, who threw up some bacon and cheese breakfast burrito all over the front steps of the realtor office across the street. She's either a very political little kid, or the burrito sucked. I personally think it was both. Since we were in Princeville, we decided to see what it had to offer in terms of free stuff to do – and it turns out that there is a short trail to a lava tidepool called “Queen's Bath” here that is pretty amazing, according to the books. Off we went.
The path to this place started off of a golf course – not too promising. Throw in the fact that there was a parking lot for the trailhead, and a ton of people piling out of another rental car to our right, and we have the recipe for a retarded venture. Oh well, we aren't ones to back down from a fiasco, so we hopped out of the car and began the iditarod that is trying to put her into the ergo-baby baby carrier. We had finally latched the penultimate latch on this behemoth when the skies opened up and it began to pour, to pour like a true monsoon. Of course, right. We ducked back inside our PT Cruiser to see if we could wait out the downpour – after a little while we started to feel stupid, I mean it wasn't ACID rain or anything, what the hell... so we went out... no problem, the rain even quit as we made our way down the first set of stairs cut into the rock of this hill. However, the red clay stuff that is everywhere gets really, really slippery when it's wet, and I, who have the aforementioned reflexes of a cat, fell first thing I could, probably pulling every muscle in my back on the way down. Whatever, though, I'm still a trooper, so we carried on down the path, past a beautiful waterfall that I filed away for a place to swim on the way back up, and onto the lava rock beach below. There were several signs on the beach saying how extremely dangerous an undertaking it was to swim in the tidepools because of rip currents and large waves and sharks and dinosaurs and stuff, but we were determined to do this... onward we went. Finally approaching the pool itself required a bit of rock climbing with baby – which should be a new sport for parents, in my opinion – but we made it down, and it was pretty awesome. There were about ten people milling arou
nd or snorkeling, but everyone was nice, and a kid even brought over a box of peas for Isla. I thought they were for her to eat, and I was thinking that this kid was weird to bring a box of frozen peas anyway – but his mom told us to have her throw them in the water – she did, and a myriad of colorful fish immediately made their way over to us, enthralling Isla, and even nibbling my toes when I jumped in myself – it's a pretty phenomenal experience to be swimming in a calm lava pool with fishes while waves crash all around you and your daughter watches. On the way back up, I couldn't resist trekking through the mud to the 
waterfall and standing under it for a few minutes – if for no other reason than to wash off the salt water. This adventure turned out to be far from retarded.Driving further to finally get to Hanalei, we realized that it was only 10:00, and none of the food places would be open – so we decided to hot foot it to the northernmost beach on the island, Ke'e beach (another calm beach, since it is protected by reefs all around it), and get some beach time in for Isla. I can't stress how beautiful this drive is... if you haven't come to Kauai before it's not like anything else in Hawaii – it's ridiculous. Anyway – we got to the beach and found out that about 75 million other people had the same idea today – or at least there were that many cars there. The beach is also the trailhead for a famous overnight hike, so a lot of people park there for that too. We had to park HELLA far from the beach itself and walk to it, past this creepy cave where every thing is silent except for a drip, drip, drip sound from the ceiling into its deep pool below. Last time we were here, I actually swam in this pool, feeling like Gollum from the Hobbit – but this time Tegan specifically forbade it – citing the various nefarious diseases I would and probably had contracted from such a foray. At the mouth of the cave there we
re these chickens that weren't afraid of anything at all – Isla finally got to catch her chicken, as they ate goldfish crackers from my hand. Then she promptly got scared and gave up chicken hunting for good.At the beach it was gorgeous. For about 20 minutes. Then the rain started again, hard. We kind of laughed for a second, but it started to get ridiculous – everyone on the beach was running for cover under trees, umbrellas, towels, chickens, whatever they could grab. Isla and I just stood in the rain, enjoying ourselves with a couple of spearfishermen who were washing off their gear... I don't know, maybe it's because I come from a place with such little rain – but if I can be outside in it, I will – and this rain was warm...in all, not so Hawaii-like this time, but fun nonetheless.
After the beach, in Hanalei itself, we got what are called plate lunches at this little deli we had been to before, inside the place, the TV was on with no sound, and all there was on the screen was a huge picture of Michael Jackson – I thought: “Damn, Hawaiians sure love them some Michael,” and then we went to eat blissfully on the lawn outside. It wasn't until a couple hours later that we got back to the hotel and I heard that he had died. Now, I know Michael Jackson was a big deal to a lot of people – he sold gajillions of copies of Thriller, so it must have been many other kid's first real album too – but damn. He's dead. No more weird stories, no more possibility for redemption – good thing that music is recorded, though – because we'll always have stuff like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_hz2am90Hk
Ok, back to vacation – maybe it was this unexpected news, or maybe fate – but the day took a real nose dive after that. We came back to the hotel, where Tegan wanted a rest, so I took Isla to the pool by myself to swim. She was cool for a few minutes, either in her little starfish floaty, or jumping off the ledge into my arms – but then neither of those were good enough – she wanted to do everything RIGHT NOW!!! and I couldn't keep up with her changing whims... was it jumping NO! Splashing? NO! Running around the grass? NO! Jesus, it was like trying to calm a hurricane. It got to the point that she was so frustrated with my lack of entertainment quality that she just lay down on the pool patio and screamed. This was disconcerting to say the least, and I don't think the cute little honeymooners or the old ass couple in the hot tub when it was 80 degrees out liked it either – so back up we went to the room. Then, I wanted to get sushi for dinner, I had been craving sushi – I love sushi dammit... so we decided to go to a place close by that was really good. We forgot that we had a baby, however – as we arrived with her screaming in her carseat, saw the line out the door, remembered it was a sit-down place, we realized that there was no way this was going to happen. So we got back in the car, drove back to the hotel and went to the little cafe next door. It was in this cafe that I met my arch-nemesis – the beef teryaki from hell. It tasted like shoes and socks with a little bit of ass thrown in for good measure. WTF? This is Hawaii – everything is supposed to be good. Not only that, but Isla thought it would be hilarious to A. throw ketchup, mayonnaise, and relish packets around like they were dollars and she was Lil Wayne at a strip club, B. pick up a piece of bird poop and give it to me, and C. scream like we were kidnapping her all the way back to the hotel room. We
finally got her to sleep right now, after tricking her by turning off all the lights, and fake sleeping next to her... she finally just got tired of being awake, I guess. At least we got to eat another shave ice (#4 of 7) -------------------------------------------->Moral of this story is: don't try and have fun when Michael Jackson dies. It doesn't work.
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