It seems to be that every other year we rent a house and stay at an amazing place. The kinds of places that are so beautiful and so peaceful, that it becomes a spiritual experience. Two years ago we celebrated Dexter's first birthday in Twin Peaks, Colorado. This year, a week after his third birthday, we went to Hanalei, Kauai for a week. This was my first time to Hawaii, but it won't be my last.
We rented a house because it was in town and right by the beach, but wasn't expecting how nice it was. The entire back of the house was windows looking out at an amazing backyard that had so many fantastic flowers and plants. There was a banana tree, some citrus trees, hibiscus, heliconias, coconuts, orchids and tillandsia - simply amazing. We discovered huge snails and watched the chickens run around. It was such a nice place to stay even if it didn't have AC. It was warm, but not too bad. There were shutters to let in the breeze, and with the huge windows, it felt like being outside. We were serenaded by so many songs from birds and bugs, and every night it rained. I couldn't have been more happy.
We visited 3 beaches - Hanalei, Lydgate and a more remote one on the Eastern side of Hanalei Bay that we had to climb down to. The last was my favorite and also the last we visited. The water was so calm and shallow. It was so warm that I dipped Brixton's feet in the tiny waves and Dexter splashed for hours. We could stay there longer because it had palm trees to shade us even as we waded in the water. Hanalei Bay, by the house, was nice but pure sun. We went there the first full day we were there. Lydgate we visited midway through because there was also a really unique playground by it for Dexter to play in.
The food in Hanalei is superb. We visited Postcards the first night and it was a great introduction to the local fare. Other favorites were The Polynesia Cafe, and Bar A Cuda. Everything seemed to have mango, papaya, guava, pineapple or coconut in it. We ate seafood everyday, but pork is what they do best. The thing I'll miss most and will spend too much time trying to re-create is a Maui Mocha - a mocha with coconut milk. I had one every single morning.
We also grilled kabobs at the house for a day - with fresh shrimp, steak and chicken with veggies. Dexter was so excited to actually see a grill in action! He helped as much as he could, and he ate as much as he could too.
We didn't really plan anything too rigorously. We knew there were a few things we wanted to do, but when we did them didn't really matter. That was nice, but we had some issues when we forgot things, or it was raining. One of the best days started out being the worst. I'd forgotten the kids' hats at the house and we needed them in order to be outside for the 2 hours we were about to spend at a botanical garden. Mike drove back to the house to get them - it took over an hour to get back and then Dexter had fallen asleep. Instead, we ate lunch and came back. It worked out well and we walked through the Limahuli Gardens. It was one of the highlights of the trip for me and Dexter loved hiking it so much that I think he's ready to do a real trail. I can't even begin to list all the cool things we saw there, so I'll just post photos to Flickr and say - Spider Lilies!
We spent a day driving around the island. We saw a waterfall. beaches, Dexter and I went across a swinging bridge, we ate at a Hawaiian steakhouse, which served probably the best steak I've ever had. We had a really great rental car too, a 4 door jeep with t-tops. It was so fun. Dexter loved the jeep so much he was sad when we had to leave it.
It was awesome to walk to town everyday. The shops there had some unique things. We of course came home with a treasure trove of tikis to add to my collection and a super cool hula girl lamp. They have a lot of jewelry there, but it's all from shells and things from nature - wood, bone, shell, pearl. It wasn't touristy even though it was obvious that most of the people there were visiting. Hanalei is a really cool, laid back little town.
There are a ton of chickens in Kauai. They are the real jungle fowl that domesticated chickens as we know them are descended from. These chickens weren't fat and they could fly up into trees. They are everywhere, like pigeons in a city. A really funny thing happened the first couple nights was that when Brixton woke up to eat at 2am is that it set off all 10 or so roosters crowing within a mile radius. So hilarious, but they caught on that she wasn't a rooster pretty quickly.
The kids did awesome. Dexter had some moments, but sometimes we just stripped him down to his diaper and let him run wild in the backyard since we could see him from nearly every room in the house. That worked well. He did great transitioning to the new place and sleeping in a different place at a different time. Brix did okay, but stopped sleeping as well as she has been and has yet to return to the blissful 7 hours of sleep I was getting. She did well being carted around a lot and loved being in the Bjorn so she could see.
All in all it was a fantastic time to spend with the family and one of the few times it worked out well that neither Mike nor I had any major work to do. We had a lot of fun together as a new family of four. It was relaxing and just what we needed to reset and focus on the future. We talked a lot about some changes that need to happen in our lives to get back to a simpler existence. Now it's time to make it happen.
