Coffee and Saimin

We built our day around an uncertain plan -- we knew we had to be in Lihue to meet up with Roger and Gail (our hunter friend from Virginia and his partner) sometime in the afternoon. So we headed toward the only part of the island we haven't toodled around in yet -- where the resorts and tourists are bunched up.

We stopped at the Kauai Coffee Company, the biggest coffee plantation in the US. It doesn't say anywhere that it is the best coffee in the US (Kona gets that distinction) but it is a 3100 acre operation, transitioned 30 years ago from sugar cane and rice. There is a tourist-friendly visitors center with lots of samples, a movie, a self-guided walking tour with amusing signs. We learned about current day coffee growing technology (so much irrigation, so much harvesting -- 28 million gallons of water a day, four million trees -- their figures, but is it possible that they put 7 gallons on each tree each day?) and how they decide what is premium and what is just every day coffee.

Coffee Harvester straddles the whole tree and yields one pound of processed coffee per tree. (LC)

Then to our daily beach stop (Becca is dismayed that we are not doing anything that we couldn't do in Delaware -- we just keep going to the beach and eating...she wants adventure).  As always, the setting was gorgeous, with white sand and palm trees and flowers and all the usual beach stuff.  The most crowded of all our beaches so far, due to its proximity to the hotels.  But I was disappointed to find that  under the water was all rocks.  No way to walk around in the water. Why did this beach become such a focal point, just like Waikiki?  These are substandard!  But apparently there was good snorkeling in that little spot because there were dozens of snorkelers floating around together.

Even the most crowded beach on the island is beautiful.

We got a text from Gail, letting us know their tour bus was coming back from Waimea Canyon and they would be back at the ship in half an hour. We bustled into town, identified a lunch spot, dropped off Laura and Becca since we only have four seats in the car and went down to Nawiliwili Harbor to find our tourist friends.  It would have been absolutely impossible to miss that ship. It filled the whole space, vertically and horizontally.  Fourteen decks high, a Princess Cruise ship: I have never seen one before and it is a sight to behold. (I now have a much clearer appreciation of the work that Laura's husband Stuart does. He is a pilot who gets those cruise ships and tankers through Puget Sound. Yikes.) Roger and Gail, sunburned and happy, were sitting on a bench at the security gate, waiting for us.  We whisked them away and went to lunch at a local saimin shop. Lunch counter service, small menu, truly a neighborhood establishment. Perfect.  We all got saimin and then we got a whole lilikoi chiffon pie.  HEAVEN. We gave the two leftover pieces to some local customers who came and sat at our table as we were leaving, and they were bowled over with joy.

Saimin for all. Roger, Gail, Hana, Laura, Rebecca.

Gail wanted to put her toes in the Pacific, since she had been cruising about 150 feet above the surface for a week, admiring it from afar.  Laura and Becca walked to a local museum and Jon and I drove our friends to a nearby beach.  Considering we didn't have a plan at all, this all worked out perfectly.

Gail and Roger finally feel the sand between their toes.

The rest of the day was normal:  shave ice, a brief stop at our own personal beach (I saw one more whale and Jon and Laura went in the water one last time), a delicious dinner on the lanai, and hours of storytelling after dinner. Luckily Laura doesn't know all our stories yet, and we don't know hers.

Daily shave ice stop. Note that bench is made from a pick-up truck tailgate.

Sunset at the beach within walking distance of our apartment.