Spending about ten days on the island of Kauai during the middle to latter part of April, the so called Garden Isle of the Hawaiian island chain, we obviously spent little time following the political activities in the United States and worldwide. After all, we did not fly to Hawaii to monitor the President’s trips to Mexico and Trinidad-Tobego and other events. We wanted to relax and enjoy the warm climate and slower lifestyle on Hawaii which we had experienced many times before. Our favorite locale on the island has been for a long time the Poipu Beach area on the Southern shore of the island, and we found it pretty well unchanged since our last visit six years earlier.
Well, that’s actually not quite true: Global warming has apparently avoided Hawaii, the temperatures were considerably lower than normal and the ‘locals’ told us that this had been the case for the past several months. It was windy and rainy (unusual for the Poipu region), the weather changed from day to day with highs in the lower 70′s. There were maybe two or three days with full sunshine. This we had not expected.
We were prepared to witness the fallout from the current bad economic conditions but to our pleasant surprise, this was not the case. While the top of the line hotels were not filled with tourists from the mainland and other countries, the hotel prices were still very high (up to $800.00/room/nite) and the beaches were still filled with sunbathers and visitors. The Marriott chain was still ‘pushing’ time share units starting from nearly $50,000/week and the restaurants filled up and required reservations. This was, considering that this was not high tourist season, a pleasant surprise. Meal prices at the restaurants were by no means reduced, there were no bargains (‘two for one’ etc) to be had. In fact, we were amused to see that the Subway $5.00 foot long sandwich cost $7.29. Gasoline prices were around $2.53 to $2.60/gallon for regular, not unexpected actually since all oil is being transported to the islands. All in all, Hawaii’s tourism industry appeared not to be suffering any major setbacks. Interesting to say the least, when this is an industry that is one of the first ones to feel the pinch when an economic recessions starts or exists.
The Hawaiian motto (and sign) of ‘Hanging Loose’ is still very much visible everywhere. Even the younger people are not driving fast in their trucks, they observe the speed limits (sometimes to the frustration of us mainlander tourists) and one evening we witnessed a young man on a skateboard with a twelve pack of beer on it being pulled by his dog. It was a funny site and we soon found out what he was looking for: Girls! Needless to say, he found some. The Hawaiians also appeared to be very proud of their ‘native son’ and current President Barack Obama. It was reflected in the vast number of Obama paraphernalia being offered from T-shirts to hats, pictures, books, ceramics and many other things.
Anyway, these were some of our impressions. All in all, Hawaii is still a wonderful place to visit and relax and enjoy life. The one thing that has in our opinion remained the same over the many years of our visits was the friendliness of the local population, they were polite, offered to help and always did it with a smile. We think that living in Hawaii year-round makes people be that way and they are to be envied for that.