Kauai March 2025 Day 5

 Chocolate farm tour and rum tasting

In the AM, we met Kristen (Bob and Meg) friend who gave us some great mangos frozen from last year, with tangelos and lemons. Yum. The mangos in Hawaii is the best!

We had a chocolate farm tour followed by Koloa rum tasting. Before the start of the day, we went to Passion bakery and got some massaladas, peabody cookie and muffin. It's a good place

Passion Bakery

After that we went to the Lyndgate chocolate farm to do a 3 hours tour. Before you ask, 35 mins of that was just tasting chocolate and comparing different types of chocolate. 

10 pieces of chocolate to compare

Chocolate and more chocolate

The tour begins with an apple banana followed by 1 piece of dark chocolate and 1 piece of milk chocolate to give us an idea of they offer, followed by pieces of chocolate covered macadamia nuts that's all grown in the local farm. 

The tour started with the cocoa trees where she plucked a nice red one for us to try with the yellow one she had on hand. There's some history of cacao explained of how the Mayan and Aztec followed by Conquista realized the healing and energy of Cacao. Cacao fruit was traded as money during that times.

Alexandra is our guide who started with tasting before showing us the farm

 

The farm also has vanilla beans and that's the first time that I realized how difficult it is to populate vanilla beans  

Vanilla beans and honey tasting

They have to pollinate all the vanilla by hand in a very short window of 8 hours and leave the parts touching and hope for the best. So the flowers are marked by tape to ensure they keep an eye out for the time the flowers are ready to pollinate 

They also gave us a few tasting of honey kept by bees in the farm, followed by tropical fruit. First time that I tasted Sugarloaf pineapple which is a very low acid pineapple. It is pricy but it's so sweet and not fibrous at all. We also tasted longan and papaya. 

The interesting part is when she break out the cacao and we tasted the pulp of the cacao fruit. It is like a citrusy sweet/sour pulp, that covered a bitter purple seed. Both the red and yellow fruit yielded slightly different taste too! 

First time tasting a cacao fruit

She also told us about how the chocolate is fermented over a long period. First they put the seeds and let it get to nice and bubbly, followed by drying it and roasting. So they are trying to find the biome balance of yeast to get to the right fermentation time. So tasting their chocolate has a very bright red fruit tone that's unique. 

Huge bamboo in the plantation

Cacao everywhere 

Popsicle made of cacao pulp and nectar

A bird in the plantation that hangs out at the papaya tree on demand

After eating loads of chocolate, it's time to wash it down with rum. We went to Koloa rum tasting that's practically free. What was interesting was during covid, the rum folks got cacao seeds from the chocolate guy. So they soak them in rum, then gave the cacao seeds back to the chocolate guy who made it into rum chocolate. Then the rum folks made chocolate rum too. Guess what, we bought both as they are really good! The chocolate mellow out the rum and the rum caused the chocolate to taste like milk chocolate! 

Rum tasting at Koloa rum 

Again , the rum tasting got more structured. I remember 10 years ago they just kind of randomly poured rum to taste =) Now every day has a few rum with no more than 0.25 oz pour total with no sharing. But it's definitely safer for drivers! 

oh.. some light rum, dark rum and chocolate rum!

At the end of the rum tasting, the bar is filled with bottles

After that we head back to Princeville and went to shrimp paradise for garlic shrimp. It's in the parking lot of Wyndham resort and totally unexpected place. But good garlic shrimp 

Good garlic shrimp

The next day we went for breakfast at Hanalei before heading to the airport.

View of Hanalei from the lookout

Another beautiful sunset

The breakfast place is recommended by Kristen and it's really tasty. What is also priceless is the view from the seating area. Hanalei craggy mountains! 

Kalua pork and smoked Ono cream cheese bagel 

This trip we keep seeing rainbows probably because of the sun after a spurt of rain. But it feel really special. Felt very rested after this trip and ready for next challenge! 

The beautiful land of mud will always hold a special place in my life

Rainbow from the ocean

Rainbow in land

Where to find jurassic park car? In Kauai of course! 

Kauai March 2025 Day 4

 Day 4 Rest day 

We initially had a Hanalei food tour planned but it got cancelled due to lack of people. It's also Sunday where a lot of things is closed. To top it off, it was a very rainy day that just kept raining for the whole day. So we opt to stay close to the hotel for the day and rest. Since I'm still recovering from the hike, I was happy to drink rum and prosecco in the room =) 

In the morning we had the marketing pitch that we had to attend but we didn't join the timeshare (it was tempting but Bill held fast!) 

After that we tried to go to Anini beach in the morning but decide it's too cold and windy to snorkel. Sorry, no picture as it's too wet to take out my phone. We did see lots of windsurfers at the beach

We tried to sit at the pool for a while

Main pool in Hilton

Got too wet to sit the the pool and escape to the room. We did walk to the Princeville night market at 330pm to see some local crafts and art. 

Princeville night market

We picked up some poke from foodland to add to our steak dinner that night. With some Lappert ice cream for dessert. 

Lililoi ice cream from Lappert

Kauai March 2025 day 3

Waimea Canyon Tour

Waimea Canyon

Another view point with Waimea river below us

one more photo..

I wanted to do a Waimea Canyon tour this trip as I remember it being really nice. 

It's nice to be driven around after the big hike yesterday and take it easy for the day, although we had to get up early at 6am to get to Waipouli as Princeville is too far for the pickup. Another homemade spam sandwich breakfast day! 

Rosario is the guide and driver who is quite good.

He reminded us that Kauai is one of the oldest island and made of 1 crater (not 2). And the crater collapsed on itself that form Waimea Canyon. 

Most of the island are not accessible by car (>80%). As the car rental lady said, there's only1 road with 1 lane. If you go up the mountain, come back to the ocean to go home by plane =)  

Bill, Rosario and chickens

The chickens are let loose during a hurricane and they were somehow never caught by locals for food. I think the locals have decided to keep them as tourist attraction and made up some stories of them being too tough to eat. Ask any local and they have jokes like boil the chicken with rocks and eat the rocks and throw out the chicken. 

One of the spot we missed last year is the spouting horn in Poipu. The guide told us the banyan tree at the back of this spot is the mother of the Banyan tree in Lahaina Maui. 

The mum of the Banyan tree in Lahaina

Pretty sunflower field along the way

Beautiful safari-like trees

It was raining too hard that I didn't get a good picture of the spouting horn. It made a sound by another lava tube while more than 1 lava tubes made up the spout. 

Spouting horn

We went to the swinging bridge at Halapepe. The town is very cute and background for the cartoon for Lilo and Stitch.  

Swinging bridge at Hanapepe

Lilo and stitch town! 

Next stop is Kauai coffee which was a re-visit from 10 years ago. Difference is it's much bigger and more developed now. They used to just put out coffee canisters and you do your own refill. Now somebody is metering the coffee! 

Coffee making appliances

Cute coffee cups and signs

Then we went to Waimea Canyon for the lookout followed by lunch at Kokee lodge. Lunch place was a total tourist trap but to be expected. 

I don't remember going to the Waimea museum but it turns out to be very interesting. They have an old map of Kauai in 1891 showing the documentation of the parts of the island. 

Kauai old map at the museum

We ended the trip with a walk to Waimea town and went to the pier. There's a cute seesaw there with 4 people willing to demonstrate how unstable it is!

Waimea town Pier

Part of the 19 miles of beautiful white sand beach in Kauai

We had a steak salad in our room with some poke and musubi from the Musubi food truck 

Musubi food truck

Homemade steak salad in our room

Complete with a beautiful sunset

Kauai March 2025 Day 1&2

Kauai Trip 2025 

Got another Westin resort deal and off to Kauai we go! I have forgotten how beautiful Kauai is. Everywhere is a postcard view. Going during March which is winter season is also cooler. We got lucky that only one day was too rainy to go out. Most of the days it just have sporadic rain that clear out in 10 mins. 

Waimea River at Waimea Canyon

The Westin at Princeville is great. Arrival day usually involves grocery runs and setup for the next 5 days. Did a Costco run to get steaks, produce and booze to last us 5 days. We are supposed to have an Island view room but we can see the ocean from our patio and whales sighting for the whole time. Find myself perching in the balcony whenever we are in the room during day time to watch for whales =) 

View from the room with whales spouting periodically

View of our balcony with the mountains behind

Westin studio apt

Day 2 Waterfall Hike

10 years ago Bill and I failed to conquer the trail to the  Hanakāpīʻai Falls. 

This time we did it!

https://g.co/kgs/zruxD6V

It's a 300ft waterfall that is about 4 miles from the start of the trail head. So 8 miles round trip. But it took close to 7 hours as half of the time it's on non-maintained trail. 

This time we are better prepared and the weather is cooler.  

Homemade Spam sandwich before the hike.. yum

The waterfall is spectacular but I never understood that as a destination to be honest 😁. Why do people hike to waterfall just to eat some trail mix and walk back? hmm.. 

Putting a human being to give the perspective of how large this fall is

The parking lot to the trail head is no longer open to public easily. So we have to meet at a parking lot to get a shuttle ride to the trail head. So if you are not back by 530pm, be prepared to hitchhike!

Shuttle to trail head

Alrite.. let's do this

this is same trail head as Kalalau trail

But it's still a very grueling hike with lots of slippery mud and treacherous rocks. 

There's 6 stream crossing with relatively fast water. But I love the stream as it allowed me to clean my shoes and hands which just gets sooo dirty in the trail (I know, I have OCD)

One of the stream crossing

Are we really doing this again? hmm

Loads of mud and sharp slippery rocks that takes a lot of balance and concentration to navigate

Mud and more mud..

But the view along the way is still one of the best in my life and reminder of why it's done by everyone all the time

View of Kauai craggy coast behind us 

The beach where the trails split

Peekaboo of the waterfall .. so near yet so far

Craggy mountains

Streams along the way

I was glad that we made it and check it off our list. 

yes.. we didn't die.. just all muddy

Before and after! muddy shoes!

After the hike, we went back to the room to clean all the muddy stuff and had dinner at the Bistro. This is a nice restaurant at Kilauea area that has a good pork chop and local shrimps. They also have a fried croquette that's quite tasty.  

Bistro dinner