It was sort of sad to leave Kauai. I was really enjoying the island, even with all of its chickens, but it was time to explore Kona and the Big Island. We got to the airport and followed the same procedure for getting on the plane as we did last time. I follow the advice of the security officer from previous airport when going through security. She said to stand with my legs apart; so, I assumed the sumo wrestler pose and it worked! I wasn’t dinged this time. But for some reason Linda H had to have her shoulder padded down, just one shoulder.
We landed in Maui for a 2 hour layover and boarded the next plane. We reached the Kona Airport at around 3:30 in the afternoon, then headed off to find the rental car. The directions we were given, at the Alamo station, were to go to the minivan section and choose the one we wanted. After carefully checking over everything, including the tires, we chose one. What happened next nobody could have predicted. We hit a big snafu with the rear lift gate. It would open and then shut immediately never staying open for even more than a second. Unfortunately at that time Linda H. was standing underneath it. As the liftgate came down it really clunked her on the head. This gave her a temporary headache and neck pain that lasted well into the evening. Alamo gave her an ice pack and took down an incident report. The manager seemed very sorry that it happened--she’s probably waiting for a law suit. The workers took that van off the lot immediately. We chose another van.
The drive to the Outrigger Resort Hotel took about 30 minutes. The GPS directions took us into the wrong parking lot, and the only way out was to go out the in gate. When we finally found the front desk, we were given a box of chocolates for each room from our travel agent. It was good chocolate. We settled into our rooms and had dinner in the hotel restaurant.
After dinner Linda C., Victoria, Mary Ellen, and I went to the viewing area to watch Manta rays. We stood and watched the water for a while. I was excited to see at least three manta rays swimming all together.
As we were sitting in the airport earlier in the day I asked the group what they thought about Kauai. Here are some of the thoughts that they had.
- The island is known as the Garden Island because it is one of the wetter islands.
- There are feral chickens running all over the island. This was due to two hurricanes that hit in 1982 and 1992 that destroyed chicken farms, so the chickens got loose. Because Kauai has no natural predators for these chickens. they’ve been allowed to run hence the feral chickens. (Other islands brought in mongeese to get rid of the chickens-which then has other consequences, but there are NO feral chickens.)
- There are no skycrapers on this island. Nothing is allowed to be built over three stories high.
- Kauai is less congested more green and beautiful than Honolulu, Oahu. It appears to have beaches all around it.