Page 73 - WINE DINE & TRAVEL MAGAZINE DISCOVERING ENGLAND

to feel even more like locals. We shopped
for dinner at the tiny family owned Ko-
loa Fish Market (fishers deliver their daily
catches around 4 p.m.) and stocked our
freezer with Lappert’s Kauai Pie ice cream,
a super-sinful addictive mix of Kona cof-
fee ice cream swirled with fudge, macada-
mia nuts and coconut flakes.
“It feels like it’s our island,” said Cindi
Lambert, my San Diego friend. “It’s so
easy to fit into the small-town neighborly
ambiance. You don’t feel like a tourist
– unless you want to.”
Exploring Napali
Cindi is an experienced hiker and once tack-
led the Napali Coast’s Kalalau Trail, a treach-
erous 22-mile roundtrip. “You’re on slick
red clay on a trail that might be onlyw as
wide as your pack,” she recalled. “The wind’s
blowing – and then it starts to rain – and
you’re cautiously tip-toeing along. You’re
on the edge of cliff that’s 1,000 or more feet
above the raging sea. You’re lucky to do a
mile an hour. It’s absolutely fantastic.”
This time we opted to check out Napali’s
staggering emerald-meets-sapphire beauty,
its razor-edge cliffs and isolated beaches,
from the air (in a helicopter) and from the
sea (in a catamaran).
In 2010, AOL Travel labeled Kauai helicop-
ter tours one of the 10 most dangerous
tourist attractions in the world. Scary?
Darn right – from the moment we booked
our reservations when an agent asked how
much each of us weighs, to the harrowing
truth-or-flee scene at base when we were
ordered on to a scale.
“It’s an FAA rule,” Shanda Gallagher at Blue
Hawaiian Helicopters explained. There
were seven of us – and loading the copter
was orderly, according to weight, so that the
big bird’s load was evenly distributed.
Once airborne, we skimmed the Waimea
Canyon, a two-mile-wide, 3,500-foot-deep,
cloud-frosted gorge dubbed the Grand Can-
yon of the Pacific.

Opposite top: Bird’s eye view of Kauai from a helicopter
tour. Top: A local inspecting a tropical flower at Allerton
Garden. Right: The Kauai shoreline.

Winter 2014 winedineandtravel.com 73