Kauai - December 2008

Our original plan for a December vacation had been to go to Thailand. Protests and a takeover of the Bangkok airport put an end to that idea. We quickly put together a trip to Kauai and 5 days later, off we went!

We arrived Thursday afternoon, picked up our rental car and then drove north to Princeville where we checked in at the Westin. We had a very nice 1 bedroom villa with it's own kitchen. We put on bathing suits and headed down to the pool to jump right in to relaxing. After a short nap back in the room, Rick made sure to arrange the lights and curtains for 'maximum' gecko attraction. We had dinner at the restaurant by the pool and were amused to find that one of the drinks was called "gecko hunter", how appropriate! We had started re-watching the second season of Lost on the plane ride over and continued with an episode before bed.

Friday morning we had an early breakfast and then headed north to the end of the highway. There we began a hike along the shore to a secluded beach. The trail was actually fairly treacherous as it was very slippery in spots and had quite a bit of elevation change. After about an hour we arrived at the beach and had lunch, marveling at the huge waves crashing against the rocks.

That night we took a cab down to Hanalei and had a tasty tapas dinner. In the morning we packed up and headed south. We stopped at the Kilauea lighthouse along the way and had lunch at Dukes in Lihue.