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4981 Aliomanu Road, the place we stayed in Kauai. It is a rather largish property of about 2 acres which contains the main house, a garage with a small house and a cottage. The main house is used by the owners when they visit, the garage house is used by the caretaker and we stayed in the cottage. It’s a small place, maybe about 400 sq ft with the main room including kitchenette, living and dining room, a bedroom and a bathroom. There’s a wraparound deck which can be used to sit out in the cool evenings or to watch the startlingly beautiful and crowded night sky. “Oh my god, it’s full of stars”, that famous line from Arthur C Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey can be used here quite appropriately.

Aliomanu Road was apparently a single road that’s been broken by the Aliomanu stream into two discontiguous parts. We’re at the south end of it. It is a very secluded street with mostly local residents though there are signs that a few more places are available as vacation rentals. Around the bend from the road is the Aliomanu beach which connects to the Anahola Beach at low tides and is separated from it by the Anahola stream during high tide.

Quite a few beaches in Kauai have a stream emptying into the ocean which makes the whole place look more scenic, at least to me. It also has the added advantage of providing a safe place for kids to play in the water during low tide. It reminds me of Varkala, that magical beach in Kerala that we visited when I lived in Kerala for a few years of my early childhood. There is a famous temple that is 3500 years old in Varkala that attracted my parents and the beach attracted me. It was probably the only holy place that I enjoyed going. The beach wasbeautiful and uncrowded, and a stream emptied into the Arabian Sea there, which provided a safe harbor for me to wallow in without getting my parents worried sick.

Aliomanu and Anahola beaches are a locals only beach and so are quite secluded. On a weekday, there’s hardly anybody though a few folks gather in the evenings, while on a weekend there are a few more families relaxing and having a good time at the beach, but still quite uncrowded. The waves seem quite rough though we saw quite a few surfers one day braving the ocean. Using an unmarked and hidden trail, we can get to another part of the Aliomanu beach from where we can hike past the Aliomanu stream to the northern part of Aliomanu Road, and continue walking all the way to Papaa Bay.

The property where the cottage sits is mostly grassy with a few coconut, a few betel nut and some banana trees. Cattle egrets and some Hawaiian moorhen (Alae’ula) are a constant presence on the grassy property. There are lots of hibiscus plants as well. Wild chicken which are a constant presence throughout Kauai have also made home on this property. Rising behind the main house, but partly hidden by trees is the famous Kalalea mountain, made famous in the starting scene of “Raiders of The Lost Ark” and which was the location for the shoot of the first King Kong movie. Though the property is on the mountain side, the ocean is across the street. You can hear the surf pound quite loudly and see the ocean from the cottage. From the upper deck of the main house, you can apparently watch whales in the appropriate season.

I befriended one of the locals when I went running one morning and he showed me the lay of the land as well explaining the different flora and fauna around. One of the houses that sits behind our cottage has been beautifully landscaped by its owner, Rene, who has even been contacted by Martha Stewart to profile the place. Rene has the place open for everyone to come and visit as long as they don’t disturb the people living there. She has a small hen house where she nurses injured chickens and roosters back to health or lets them live them till they die. She also has a few friendly cats one of whom paid us a visit a few minutes after we first arrived at the cottage. He appeared at the door and meowed loudly as if to say, “Open the door, I want to see if everything is OK after you guys have moved in”. We opened the door and he walked in calmly and proceeded to sniff and slink his way through the entire house ensuring that we had not damaged anything. He then demanded to be let out and he sat sunning himself on the deck, allowing us to pet him for a while before disappearing.

The place is far enough from the nearest town, Kapaa, to feel secluded, but close enough that you can drive there for eating or groceries. It’s also perfectly located to explore both South and North Kauai as it’s midway between the two. Only Waimea Canyon is on the opposite side of the island from here. Kauai itself is a fairly small island, smaller than its famous brethren of Big Island, Maui and Oahu. It still has a rustic and laidback feel to it, though we have not yet visited Poipu, the most touristy part of the island. When we went for dinner last night at Kapaa, there were even fewer people than usual. I was surprised to see so few people on a Saturday night.

Kauai is not only the Garden Isle, but also the Hiking Isle as there are lots of mountain ranges. The mountains of Kauai look more dramatic than those on either the Big Island or Maui. The mountains of West Maui do look spectacular, but imagine the same thing but spread all over the island instead of being concentrated in only part. There also is nothing like Mauna Kea or Haleakala that overpoweringly dominate the landscape. The tallest mountain is Kawaikini at 5243 feet is little over a third of Mauna Kea and about half the height of Haleakala. But Kauai does boast of the second wettest spot on the planet, the summit of Mt. Waialeale.

We spent much of our time in Kauai in this cottage or in its environs, walking on the beach, catching the sunrise, listening to the surf or watching the clouds and sun frolic behind the Kalalea mountain. It’s probably the most “just chill” vacation we’ve ever had.

Every place has its set of what appear to be strange customs and habits to an outsider. One that we discovered during this trip to Kauai is the operation of the farmer’s markets on this island.

Some background first. We’re serious farmer’s market shoppers, buying everything we want from there except for milk and some Indian vegetables such as chillies. We shop at the farmer’s market because we want to encourage local farmers, because it’s an environmentally conscious choice (maybe even more so than organic) since the average food in a supermarket travels anywhere from 1300-1500 miles before it hits the shelves and finally because it’s fun and helps engender a sense of community. In our travels too, we look for them and buy from there as much as possible.

Kauai has a farmer’s market, in a different part of the island, every day of the week. There are two kinds of farmer’s markets in Kauai, one called the Sunshine Farmer’s Market which is government run and is the larger of the two and the other is the Private Farmer’s Market. Yesterday we visited one of the latter that was held in Waipa, near Hanalei and today we went to the Kapaa branch of the former. The Sunshine versions are larger and better organized.

In the Bay Area, shopping at the farmer’s market is a relaxed experience. The atmosphere is convivial, even carnivalesque with free tasting at almost every shop, live music by some local musicians and even a clown is typically present to entertain the kids. The food ranges from fresh organic and non-organic produce such as vegetables and fruits to fresh fish, free range chicken eggs, meat of free range cattle, from baked goods to stalls selling fresh cooked food and even cosmetics such as mositurizers made from bee’s wax and real flowers, hand made soap etc. The market is quite large and makes for a good stroll. Forget all that in Kauai.

Given that the resident population in Kauai is about 60,000, the farmer’s market is quite small compared to the California equivalent. They’re open typically in the afternoon and last about two hours. The wares are almost exclusively fresh produce of vegetables and fruit with a slightly hefty tilt towards fruits. For mainlanders who have not been to exotic places such as Tahiti or SE Asia, the fruits are almost all excitingly new. The colors, the shapes and even the names seem to conjure up the romantic, the exotic. Longan, Rambutan, Mangosteen, Durian, Noni and Jackfruit sell alongside incredibly sweet pineapples, coconut water, bananas and tangerines. Even the bananas are flavored differently and go by the name of Apple Bananas. The produce is mostly non-organic except for the one at Kilauea.

Now for the strange customs. At some markets, the entry to the market is barred until the specified opening time. A rather large crowd mills around, with the gathering beginning anywhere from 15-20 minutes before the doors open. Once the doors open, everybody rushes in, trying to purchase very quickly before the wares vanish. Come twenty minutes late and most of the excellent quality exotic fruit is gone. Come an hour late and be prepared to find nothing. There’s little tasting before the purchase. While they do supply plastic bags (which seem to be recycled many times), the regulars come with their own. At some of the other markets, you can browse around before the specified hour, but no money can exchange hands. However, it is acceptable for you to decide what you want and have the vendor set aside the produce with your name on it. At the specified hour, there is either a loud yell “OK” or a car honks and money starts exchanging hands rather rapidly. So in these places, stuff can go even sooner since people have been buying before the specified hour. So, it’s always wiki hour (wiki means fast in Hawaiian) at the farmer’s market.

We’ve been feasting on the exotic fruits. Some such as Longan and Mangosteen were new to even us. We also got fresh coconut water with the shell being split after the drink is finished to feast on the delicious coconut meat. It brought back such happy memories, of growing up in India.