One of the (many) perks of my job is the opportunity to travel to some pretty amazing places. When our December meetup destination was announced, I was excited for two reasons:
- We were going to Hawaii (yay!!)
- My husband and I honeymooned there and have wanted to go back ever since. Since we are nearing our 20th anniversary, we decided that this was just about perfect timing for a second honeymoon.
The plan was to spend about a week on Kauai with my co-workers, and then meet my husband on Maui for another five days or so. Getting from Florida to Hawaii is no quick trip. I woke up around 3am EST for my flight and after three flights, two layovers, twelve hours in the air, and being up and traveling for almost 24 hours, I finally got to my resort at around 9pm HST (which is 2am EST).
My last flight was late, but the views from the plane made up for it.
We spent most of the week working, but spent our last two days at play. Honestly, spending the week with people I like and with views like this, it hardly seems fair to call it work:
The foliage and tropical atmosphere reminded me quite a bit of home, but the Polynesian culture creates an more exotic environment—at times, I had to remind myself that I was still in the US. The beaches were also quite a bit different than Florida beaches. With rocky coast lines and black lava rocks lining the beach and forming tide pools, the beaches are distinctly unFloridian. Even the vibrant golden orange hue of the sand is different than the white or beige and tan shades I’m accustomed to seeing.
In some places, the soil takes on a reddish orange tint, apparently as a result of volcanic activity. They even use the dirt as a garment dye (and yes, I bought several Dirt Shirts while I was there).
We stayed at the Villas at Po’ipu Kai – our group of about 40 somewhat took over the resort. One thing we all noticed right away were the groups of feral chickens that roamed the island. I confess that I got a silly amount of enjoyment out of spotting chickens out and about everywhere. In Cyprus, we had cats. In Kauai, it was all about the chickens.
I’ll wrap up this post with some pics of the resort. Stay tuned for more posts and pics!
Next Hawaii post: Hawaii on Horseback
wendy {dot} blog 
Hawaii is on my bucket list, looks beautiful!
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I highly recommend a trip there if you can swing it. It’s hard to capture the beauty of the islands in pictures, but I sure tried! I took a ridiculous amount of pictures on this trip and I’ll be sharing many of my favorites in a series of posts over the next week or so.
I’ve been to Maui, Kauai, and Oahu so far and each island is pretty different. Some day, I’d love to see the Big Island (Hawaii) or at least fly over the volcano there. Kauai is the least-developed/touristy island I’ve visited, with Oahu (home to Honolulu and Waikiki) the most developed. That said, I’d love to go back to Oahu some day too.
Hope you get a chance to visit someday and mahalo for reading my blog! 🙂
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Enjoyed reading your post about Hawaii. The Big Island is worth a visit for sure. It’s all the other islands in one. I could be a bit biased though ~ it’s where I’m from!
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Lucky you to be from such an amazing place! I would love, love, love to see the Big Island some day. We almost went there instead of Maui this trip, but changed our minds. Too bad we didn’t have a few more days to spend on vacation so that we could have visited both. Thanks for stopping by and reading. 🙂
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