Nearly five years since my last trip home, June brought me back to Kaua’i for the anticipated (or dreaded for some…most?) high school reunion. My friends and I took our short visit to return to some of our favorite spots. Here, the first in a three-part series on my Garden Island’s must dos.
Wide open spaces at Polihale beach, Kauai.
Polihale, West side
Typical breakfast back home; Portugese sausage, eggs and rice.
Whether I’m deplaning at Kauai’s airport or Honolulu International, where my sister now lives, homecoming always feels the same and I hope that will never change. It starts with the slow creep of damp air that seeps through my half-day-old travel wear as I wheel my carry-on toward curbside pick-up and ends with a bittersweet sense of appreciation and longing for the islands that raised me.
At Honolulu’s arrival terminal several weeks ago, I smile when I hear it: the familiar island twang of Hawaiian pidgin, which is today a product of the ethnic groups imported to till the sugar cane fields more than 150 years ago. The Filipinos, Chinese, Portuguese and Puerto Ricans did their best to find a cohesive way to communicate with one another and thus, the inverted grammar of the creole vernacular is one of the few remains after the industry collapsed in the ’90s.
The next morning I pop into Brue Bar off Bishop Street in Downtown Honolulu. I’m in a slight daze and need one more cup to activate the brewed drip my brother-in-law made for my sister and I before they both shoved off for work. Blank faced, I placed an order for a Chai latte.
What Kauai usually looks like.
As my sister and brother-in-law prepare themselves and their Honolulu apartment for Hurricanes Iselle and Julio, which are expected to hit the Hawaiian islands in the next day or so, I reflect back with a bit of melancholy on the last (and only) hurricane I’ve experienced. It was 1992 – I was five, and I remember Iniki in pieces. The hurricane was serious; it destroyed a few thousand homes, killed a handful and left the island with millions of dollars in damage, but I was so young I was blissfully ignorant.
the curious passport 