Kauai is on of the best tropical vacation spots in the world and has so many places to explore, things to do, sights to see, where do you start? That’s where we come in. In the pages that follow, we’ve compiled everything you need to know to plan your ideal trip to Kauai: information on airlines, seasons, a calendar of events, how to make camping reservations, and much more (even how to tie the knot).
If you are thinking about seeing another island in addition to Kauai, we strongly recommend that you limit your island-hopping to one island per week. If you decide to go to more than one island in a week, be warned: You could spend much of your precious vacation time in airports, waiting to board flights and for your luggage to arrive, and checking in and out of hotels. Not much fun!
Our second tip is to fly directly to Kauai; doing so can save you a 2-hour layover in Honolulu and another plane ride. So let’s get on with the process of planning your trip. We fully believe that searching out the best deals and planning your dream vacation to Hawaii should be half the fun.
Kauai’s three main resort areas, where nearly all the island’s accommodations are located, are all quite different in climate, price, and type of accommodations offered, but the range is wide and wonderful. On the south shore, dry and sunny Poipu is anchored by perfect beaches. This is the place to stay if you like the ocean, water sports, and plenty of sunshine. The Coconut Coast, on the east coast of Kauai, has the most condos, shops, and traffic it’s where all the action is. Hanalei, up on the North Shore, is rainy, lush, and quiet, with spectacular beaches and deep wilderness. Because of its remote location, the North Shore is a great place to get away from it all but not a great place from which to explore the rest of the island.
LIHUE & ENVIRONS
Lihue is where most visitors first set foot on the island. This red-dirt farm town, the county seat, was founded by sugar planters and populated by descendants of Filipino and Japanese cane cutters. It’s a plain and simple place, with used-car lots and mom and pop shops. It’s also the source of bargains: inexpensive lodging, great deals on dining, and some terrific shopping buys. One of the island’s most beautiful beaches, Kalapaki Beach , is just next door at Nawiliwili, by the island’s main harbor.
THE POIPU RESORT AREA
POIPU BEACH On Kauai’s sun-soaked south shore, this is a pleasant if sleepy resort destination of low rise hotels set on gold-sand pocket beaches.
Well-done, master-planned Poipu is Kauai’s most popular resort and a great tropical vacation spot, with the widest variety of accommodations, from luxury hotels to B&Bs and condos. It offers 36 holes of golf, 38 tennis courts, and outstanding restaurants. This is a great place for water sports and a good base from which to tour the rest of Kauai. The only drawback is that the North Shore is about 1 to 1/ 2 hours away.
KOLOA
This tiny old town of gaily painted sugar shacks just inland from Poipu Beach is where the Hawaiian sugar industry was born more than a century and a half ago. The mill is closed, but this showcase plantation town lives on as a tourist attraction, with delightful shops, an old general store, and a vintage Texaco gas station with a 1930s Model A truck in place, just like in the good old days.
KALAHEO/LAWAI
Just a short 10- to 15-minute drive inland from the beach at Poipu lie the more residential communities of Lawai and Kalaheo. Quiet subdivisions line the streets, restaurants catering to locals dot the area, and life revolves around family and work. Good bargains on B&Bs, and a handful of reasonably priced restaurants, can be found here.
WESTERN KAUAI
This region, west of Poipu, is more remote than its eastern neighbor and lacks its terrific beaches. But it’s home to one of Hawaii’s most spectacular natural wonders, Waimea Canyon (the “Grand Canyon of the Pacific”); and farther upland and inland, one of its best parks, Kokee State Park.
HANAPEPE
For a quick trip back in time, turn off Highway 50 at Hanapepe, once one of Kauai’s biggest towns. Founded by Chinese rice farmers, it’s so picturesque that it was used as a backdrop for the miniseries The Thornbirds. Hanapepe makes a good rest stop on the way to or from Waimea Canyon. It has galleries selling antiques as well as local art and crafts, including Georgio’s surfboard art and coconut grams. It’s also home to one of the best restaurants on Kauai, the Hanapepe Cafe´.
Nearby,at Salt Pond Beach Park, Hawaiians have dried a reddish sea salt in shallow, red-clay pans since the 17th century. This is a great place to swim, snorkel, and maybe even observe an ancient industry still in practice.
WAIMEA
This little coastal town, the original capital of Kauai, seems to have quit the march of time. Dogs sleep in the street while old pickups rust in front yards. The ambience is definitely laid-back. A stay in Waimea is peaceful and quiet (especially at the Waimea Plantation Cottages on the beach), but the remote location means this isn’t the best base if you want to explore the other regions of Kauai, such as the North Shore, without a lot of driving.
On his search for the Northwest Passage in 1778, British explorer Capt. James Cook dropped anchor at Waimea and discovered a sleepy village of grass shacks. In 1815, the Russians arrived and built a for here (now a national historic landmark), but they didn’t last long: A scoundrel named George Anton Scheffer tried to claim Kauai for Russia, but he was exposed as an impostor and expelled by Kauai’s high-ranking alii, Kaumualii. Today, even Waimea’s historic relics are spare and simple: a statue of Cook alongside a bas-relief of his ships, the rubble foundation of the Russian fort, and the remains of an ancient aqueduct unlike any other in the Pacific. Except for an overabundance of churches for a town this size, there’s no sign that Waimea was selected as the first landing site of missionaries in 1820.
THE COCONUT COAST
The eastern shore of Kauai north of Lihue is a jumble of commerce and condos strung along the coast road named for Prince Kuhio, with several small beaches beyond. Almost anything you need, and a lot of stuff you can live without, can be found along this coast, which is known for its hundreds of coconut trees waving in the breeze. It’s popular with budget travelers because of the myriad B&Bs and affordable hotels and condos to choose from, and it offers great restaurants and the island’s major shopping areas.
KAPAA
The center of commerce on the east coast and the capital of the Coconut Coast condo-and-hotel district, this restored plantation town looks just like an antique. False fronted wooden stores line both sides of the highway; it looks as though they’ve been here forever—until you notice the fresh paint and new roofs and realize that everything has been rebuilt since Hurricane Iniki smacked the town flat in 1992. Kapaa has made an amazing comeback without losing its funky charm.
THE NORTH SHORE
Kauai’s North Shore may be the most beautiful place in Hawaii. Exotic seabirds, a half-moon bay, jagged peaks soaring into the clouds, and a mighty wilderness lie around the bend from the Coconut Coast, just beyond a series of one-lane bridges traversing the tail ends of waterfalls. There’s only one road in and out, and only two towns, Hanalei and Kilauea—the former by the sea, the latter on a lighthouse cliff that’s home to a bird preserve. Sun seekers may fret about all the rainy days, but Princeville Resort offers elegant shelter and two golf courses where you can play through rainbows.
KILAUEA
This village is home to an antique lighthouse, tropical fruit stands, little stone houses, and Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge, a wonderful seabird preserve. The rolling hills and sea cliffs are hideaways for the rich and famous, including Bette Midler and Sylvester Stallone. The village itself has its charms: The 1892 Kong Lung Company, Kauai’s oldest general store, sells antiques, art, and crafts; and you can order a jazzy Billie Holiday Pizza to go at Kilauea Bakery and Pau Hana Pizza.
ANINI BEACH
This little known residential district on a 2-mile reef (the biggest on Kauai) offers the safest swimming and snorkeling on the island. A great beach park is open to campers and day-trippers, and there’s a boat ramp where locals launch sampans to fish for tuna. On Sunday, there’s polo in the park and the sizzle of barbecue on the green. Several residents host guests in nearby B&Bs.
PRINCEVILLE
A little overwhelming for Kauai’s wild North Shore, Princeville Resort is Kauai’s biggest project, an 11,000-acre development set on a high plain overlooking Hanalei Bay.
This resort community includes a luxury Sheratohotel, 10 condo complexes, new timeshare units around two championship golf courses, cliff-side access to pocket beaches, and one B&B right on the golf course.
HANALEI
Picture-postcard Hanalei is the laid-back center of North Shore life and an escapist’s dream; it’s also the gateway to the wild Na Pali Coast. Hanalei is the last great place on Kauai yet to face the developer’s blade of progress. At Hanalei Bay, sloops anchor and surfers play year-round. The 2-mile-long crescent beach, the biggest indentation on Kauai’s coast, is ideal for kids in summer, when the wild surf turns placid. Hanalei retains the essence of its original sleepy, end-of-the-road charm. On either side of two-lane Kuhio Highway, you’ll find just enough shops and restaurants to sustain you for a week’s visit unless you’re a hiker, surfer, or sailor, or have some other preoccupation that just might keep you here the rest of your life.
HAENA
Emerald green Haena isn’t a town or a beach but an ancient Hawaiian district, a place of exceptional natural beauty, and the gateway to the Na Pali Coast. It’s the perfect tropical escape, and everybody knows it: Old house foundations and temples, now covered by jungle, lie in the shadow of new million dollar homes of movie stars and musicians like Jeff Bridges and Graham Nash. This idyllic, 4-mile coast has lagoons, bays, great beaches, spectacular snorkeling, a botanical garden, and the only North Shore resort that’s right on the sand, the Hanalei Colony Resort.
THE NA PALI COAST
The road comes to an end, and now it begins: the Hawaii you’ve been dreaming about. Kauai’s Na Pali Coast (na pali means “the cliffs”) is a place of extreme beauty and Hawaii’s last true wilderness. Its majestic splendor will forever remain unspoiled because no road will ever traverse it. You can enter this state park only on foot or by sea. Serious hikers and we mean very serious tackle the ancient 11 mile long trail down the forbidding coast to Kalalau Valley. The lone, thin trail that creases these cliffs isn’t for the faint of heart or anyone afraid of heights. Those of us who aren’t up to it can explore the wild coast in an inflatable rubber Zodiac, a billowing sailboat, a high-powered catamaran, or a hovering helicopter, which takes you for the ride of your life.
Niihau: The Forbidden Island
A Tropical Vacation Spot Not to Miss
Just 17 miles across the Kaulakahi Channel from Kauai lies the arid island of Niihau, “The Forbidden Island.” Visitors are not allowed on this privately owned island, which is a working cattle and sheep ranch with about 200 residents living in the single town of Puuwai.
However, you can spend a couple of hours on the beach in Niihau. Niihau Helicopter, the only helicopter company to offer tours of Niihau, has half-day tours, which include a helicopter ride to Niihau, an aerial tour over the island, and landing on the island at a beach.
Niihau’s history of being forbidden dates back to 1864 when, after an unusually wet winter that turned the dry scrubland of the small island (18 miles by 6 miles) into green pasture, Eliza Sinclair, a Scottish widow, decided to buy Niihau and move her family here. King Kamehameha IV agreed to sell the island for $10,000. The next year, normal weather returned, and the green pastures withered into sparse semi-desert vegetation.
Today, Sinclair’s great-great-grandson, Bruce Robinson, continues to run the ranching operation and fiercely protects the privacy of the island residents. From the outside, life on Niihau has not changed much in 140 years: There’s no running water, indoor plumbing, or electrically generated power.
The Hawaiian language is still spoken. Most of the men work for the ranch when there is work, and fish and hunt where there is no work. The women specialize in gathering and stringing pupu Niihau, prized, tiny white seashells (found only on this island), into Niihau’s famous leis, which fetch prices in the thousands of dollars.
The Kauai Visitors Bureau is located on the first floor of the Watumull
Plaza, 4334 Rice St., Suite 101, Lihue, HI 96766 Phone 808/245-3971; fax 808/246-9235