Frommer's Kauai - Jeanette Foster [63]
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, 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 watersports, and a good base from which to tour the rest of Kauai. The only drawback is that the North Shore is about 1 to 11⁄2 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 Café. 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.