KAUAI DAY 7

Beginning the night before, it started raining hard up on the North Shore. I woke up in the middle of the night and it was still raining. When we woke up in the morning, more rain. We had talked about going to Secret Beach but between the weather, the likely muddy hike, and my sore right thigh, we decided instead to drive down to Poipu to check out the beaches there. I'm not generally a fan of Poipu, mostly because the few times we've been there I've found the beaches to be crowded, not as nice, and somewhat dirty. On our 2008 trip, I cut my foot on a rock at the main Poipu beach and got kicked in the face - twice - but some careless snorkelers. It's just very sardinesque down there, or so has been my experience. Still, being our last day and all, I wanted to get some beach time in and crowded was better than none. Before we left I read up on South Shore beaches and decided to try out the beach fronting the Kiahuna Plantation condos, which is apparently also the Sheraton Kauai beach. I was really nervous the whole way down there because it wasn't until we got into Poipu proper that it didn't look like rain.

Unfortunately, reading on the Kindle app on the iPad in direct sun is really quite challenging. I gave up after the first day. Thankfully our condo has a library so I was able to find a (pretty terrible) romance novel I hadn't read yet to keep me occupied. I felt so old school.

I give Poipu a lot of crap (see above), but this beach was stellar, not terribly crowded, and the Kiahuna Plantation was a beautiful condo resort. Alas, not a timeshare so we can't ever exchange into it, but I wouldn't mind renting one of the remodeled units that have an ocean view. Given the cost differential between an ocean view room at the Sheraton next door, and these condos, it's a much better deal.

We left the beach around 4:30 p.m. so that we could get back to Princeville for dinner at 8 p.m. The drive home was crazy - the sky was constantly filled with one rainbow or another. A couple of times there were full double rainbows across the ocean. Stunning. 

Before going to dinner we sat out on the cliff edge again to watch our final sunset of the trip. I also got eaten by mosquitos again ... just when the last set of bites had stopped itching.

It was very relaxing to sit there and watch the sun set behind Bali Hai. We also saw a cruise ship come around the bend with all of it's lights lit up - I imagine the folks on board were captivated by the sunset. Most people like the skies to be crystal clear when the sun goes down, but I love when there are some moody clouds in the sky because it gives the scene depth and throws a bunch of different colors.