Kauai Hawaii – Trip Report

[Travel Strong]

Not seen much about Kauai on here, so thought I’d report back from our honeymoon trip.

Being one of those places round the other side of the globe, with no direct routes from the UK – the most expedient way to the state of Hawaii is usually via another USA state, and then a domestic flight onwards to the Hawaiian island of your choice.

Our choice of island was Kauai – a more remote island with activities focussed on hiking the canyons and snorkelling. It’s important to be aware that this is a quieter island, with a slightly less ‘developed’ approach to commercial enterprises, tourism, and nightlife.

As we walked out of baggage claim a rooster stood in the doorway to greet us to Hawaii. This was an appropriate expectation setter: Do not expect street lights and night clubs. Expect chickens in the street and only the stars out at night!

Things in Kauai close early, close randomly, or are not open at all. So you certainly have to be on the ball to get to a restaurant early, as many places will be closed by 8 or 9pm, and most nights our first choice wasn’t actually open at all meaning a swift trip to find an alternative. (It is still America, so there is always a back-up of Uber Eats delivery of McDonalds/Dominos/Burger King – but thankfully we only needed to call upon that once!).

Despite the occasional challenge in finding somewhere, almost everywhere we actually went turned out to be excellent, nowhere required a reservation, and we were never turned away so long as the doors were still open.

Restaurant Highlights:

Keoki’s Paradise
By far the best bar and restaurant environment we encountered.
Very professional operation with no surprises on opening hours, tiki bar style, great service, good food, and a complimentary Hula Pie dessert for our honeymoon!

Hukilau Lanai
Simple traditional ‘meat and potatoes’ american restaurant inside a hotel, with some live music, fantastic steaks, and great service. Everyone here was happy to find us a spot later in the evening and went out of their way to chat and give recommendations for on everything on the island.

The Bull Shed
Another friendly traditional restaurant, focussed on the likes of prime rib, steak, and racks of lamb – and also offered swift service later in than evening than most.

Restaurant Lowlights:

Johnny’s Wingz N Tings
Maybe avoid this one. The service was… weird, and it felt like we were imposing on them by being there / asking for food / asking for cutlery. The food was not good and the service was worse – but we still paid the 18% tip that is expected for surly service, for fear of being chased in to the darkness by a waitress wielding our missing forks.
We should have walked out on arrival, but all other options were rapidly closing around us.

Mamahune’s
This Tiki Bar within the Hilton Garden Inn just didn’t inspire when we arrived, so on this occasion we did have time to make a swift exit! For a brief moment I actually booked the HGI hotel as the price looked excellent… but thankfully I read the TripAdvisor reviews and cancelled. Walking through the HGI grounds to Mamahune’s it is clear that it was built to be somewhere great, and could be amazing, but is currently drab, run down, and attracting a bargain basement crowd as a result.

On the topic of accommodation…

Accommodation Options

This is an island of 3 types of accommodation.
1) High priced resorts; 2) Standard hotels; 3) AirBnBs.

All three categories tend to offer quite old fashioned furnishings – it certainly seems the norm to have dark wood, floral fabrics, and woodchip paper. But if you are selective then there are better options available in each category too. You really have to hunt though!

Our hunt led us to the Kauai Shores Hotel, which falls in the standard hotel pricing category. Initially booked at $225pn, and rebooked twice as the price fell, ultimately going via Agoda instead of booking direct – due to an unbeatable offer of $149pn including all taxes and fees.

I can highly recommend Kauai Shores Hotel after our stay. It has everything – a fantastic beach, two pools, modern rooms all with good showers, fridges, a/c, fans, balconies – and everything was flawless. It is also home to ‘Lava Lava Beach Club’, a restaurant on the sand which offered a convenient breakfast/lunch/dinner option with live music and happy hour pricing. This same shore is shared with other resorts priced at $500pn and higher – and for us there was no justification for the additional price of resorts such as Kauai Coast Resort or the Sheraton Kauai Coconut (both of which look great, but offered nothing more for the $).

The location was excellent, situated amongst a cluster of restaurant options within walking distance; 10 minutes drive from the airport and Walmart in Lihue; and midway between the main hiking and snorkelling ‘destinations’ in Waimea (hiking), Poipu (snorkelling), and Hanalei (hiking).

Due to the hiking days, it was certainly useful to be able to drive to Walmart and prepare picnic foods / sandwiches and keep them in the fridge ready for the next day.

Rental Cars

We got a fantastic rate of $269 for the entire week for the ‘Guaranteed Jeep Wrangler’ option via Hertz on the Platinum CDP (633306). Again, we rebooked this as the price dropped, originally booking closer to $500. This price may not be the norm, but even if it was priced higher – I would recommend the Jeep. Not the most comfortable car, but it gives you the option of driving on the sand or taking a dog out for the day with ease (more on that later!).

Renting from the airport is as easy as anywhere else in the USA, but a little weird upon return as nothing at all opens until 5am… despite the first flight taking off at 6am. So be aware: If you are on the 6am departure like us, you will need to hustle from the rental car drop off over to check in quite quickly!

Flights

It’s a ~6hr flight from West Coast locations and the vast majority of options are going to be in an economy seat, so I’ve always felt the best way to get there is to split it up and take a few days between flights.

Our chosen flights were therefore London to Las Vegas, with an onwards trip to Kauai…

– 4 nights in Las Vegas (not covered here)
– LAS – LIH Direct on Southwest Airlines
– 7 nights Kauai Shores Hotel
– LIH – HNL – LAS on Hawaiian Airlines
(the direct Southwest flight at this time of year was overnight which we weren’t keen on)
– 1 night in Las Vegas (not covered here)

The flight with Hawaiian Airlines was better than Southwest in many ways, despite not being direct.

Southwest quibbled over being 51lb instead of 50lb on the checked bag (we had to transfer 1 t-shirt to the other case).
Hawaiian let it go at 52lb without comment.
Southwest handed out two small cups of coke/water and a packet of mini-crackers on a 6 hour flight.
Hawaiian offered an extensive drinks selection, full sized cans, complimentary rum punch, and hot food (which was of excellent quality and suitably filling!).
Southwest didn’t give you seats together, pitting you against your fellow passengers to fight for seats upon boarding.
Hawaiian gave seat selection for free from the moment of booking – certainly preferential for a honeymoon!

There are other threads on the forum covering options for flying to Hawaii, so I’ll just talk to my own choice. I was very happy with our choice of avoiding overnight flights, and stopping in LAS – it couldn’t have been better as a combination overall.

The only oddity came with Lihue (LIH) airport only opening at 5am, despite the 6am departures. Never before have I returned a car at 5.01am, and checked a bag at 5.20am, for a 6am flight – but it worked out OK!

Activities

Probably the most important bit, is the highlights of what to do on the island!

The stand out activity is undoubtedly the Dog Field Trip.

Kauai Humane Society have over 100 dogs in their shelter who need walking, and every day except Thursdays you can turn up and take a dog out for a walk between 10am and 5pm.

You advise them where you are thinking of going out that day (we went to the arboretum), and they pair you with a dog. Our boy Coconut could not have been sweeter, and loved every minute of the day out – riding in the car, exploring in the woods, eating his lunch whilst we ate outside at a restaurant – and they provide you with everything you need for the day.

They also run a ‘puppy hour’ once every other month at a local café Hale Lihue (and a ‘kitten yoga hour’ once every other month!). We went to this too.

Next up in the highlights is the Rum Safari.

Koloa Rum Tours take you around their property on a tour of the plantation, with a group for a rum tasting. This was a great way to spend an evening, and I’d highly recommend it.

We concluded there is actually quite a concise list of ‘must do’ activities for Kauai:
– Dog Field Trip
– Rum Safari
– Poipu Beach Snorkelling
– Hiking
(e.g. Waimea Canyon (no permits) and Ha’ena State Park (needs permits)).

Plus probably some things we didn’t get around to this time (Surf lessons and boat or helicopter trips probably being the most popular activities).

There’s a wealth of information out there on the snorkelling and hiking, so I’ve left the details of that out of the trip report… but take some shoes and hiking clothes that you don’t mind ruining with red mud dust!

Overall if we were to do it again, we wouldn’t change any of the itinerary or activities. But we might hire some of the beach kit for the week (chairs/cooler/umbrella) if spending more time on the beach in the future. For this trip we didn’t need them though and made do with taking a snorkel mask, beach towels, and a lightweight backpack for hiking with plenty of water.
… oh and a lint roller for removing evidence of the dog walk from clothes and the Wrangler!

[davefl]

Great report, thank you. Noted a few things for my future second and final trip to Hawaii.

Chickens – They get everywhere. I was amazed to see them pecking all over the back streets of Miami, and then most recently a mother and chicks just wandered past me on the 1st floor outdoor lounge area of my hotel in St. Johns, USVI, and hopped up to the second floor via the stairs.

[Man of Kent]

Thanks for a great report. I haven’t shown it to Mrs MoK as she will insist we go just for the dog walks.

In the past in the US we have bought cheap and cheerful beach chairs from the likes of Walmart / Target as sometimes it can work out cheaper and we just carry them in the car ready to use then pass them on to someone else or donate them when we leave.