Kauai: Beach days, flight disaster

Our last few days on Kauai were spent mostly at the beach.

Sea turtle @Poipu beach

Poipu beach, named America's best beach by the travel channel.  It's a great place for kids.

Brennecke's Beach, adjoining and just to the East of Poipu.  M and I spent quite a few hours body boarding here.  Heaps of fun.

Poipu Beach

Monk seal @ kiahuna plantation beach.  Just chillin.

Spouting horn blowhole.  It's a fairly unremarkable tourist trap, complete with tacky souvenir places.  I'd skip it.

Lydgate Beach.  Another super-kid-friendly beach.

Lydgate Beach Park playground.  This thing is huge, and strangely deserted when we were there.

Kapaa coconut festival

Kapaa coconut festival

Kapaa coconut festival

Our final day in Kauai was a disaster.  We had a taxi screwup that made B+M miss their flight (they managed to get a later one), then rushed ourselves out of the house, returned our hire car, took the shuttle to the airport and arrived at the airport about 6 hours before our flight was due to leave.  We had a timezone fail due to the calendar reminder we created for the flight in PST :(  There was nowhere to wait outside the airport except on the kerb in the heat, and check-in for our flight wasn't going to open for hours.  So I got back on the rental shuttle, picked up the car again (lucky it was available), loaded up kids and bags, and we went for breakfast followed by a few hours in a cool local toy shop.

When we got back to the airport and returned the car for the second time our flight was delayed because of a landing gear brake failure (there was apparently smoke coming out of the wheels when it landed in Kauai).  After 3.5 mind-numbing hours waiting in the airport it was declared cancelled, and we'd either need to get rescheduled to fly via LA or come back tomorrow.

We picked up all 9 of our bags for the third time that day and waited with the kids outside in the brutal heat for another 2.5 hours or so, just for them (United) to issue us vouchers for a hotel (rebooking was just as slow) and put us on a shuttle bus.  The hotel was pretty decent, but being stranded in Hawaii in this way was definitely not fun.  Both of us were exhausted and the kids were understandably tired and upset :(  Thankfully the trip home the next day was fairly uneventful.

The pool at the hotel courtesy of United.  Looks a lot more fun than it was.