QTR in Poipu Beach Kauai

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The world of destination leisure marketing has a new buzz word: QTR, for “quality time remaining.” We don’t exactly know how much time we have left on this big, beautiful blue ball, but Lord knows we’d prefer it to be on the quality side of the scale, as opposed to say, the stinky side. With this in mind, lifestyle resorts and property developments are springing up to ensure that those of us who’d prefer our remaining days to be as smooth as a golf green can now do so in ease. By those of us, I mean 55+ boomers, and specifically very, very rich ones. That being said, there’s no reason we all can’t squeeze in some quality time on an island as lush and gorgeous as Kauai, along its warm and sleepy Poipu south coast. Quality time exploring the oldest island in Hawaii, a meringue-shaped world of mountains, canyons, beaches, old plantations, reef, rivers and waterfalls. Quality time with people important to you, like friends, family, or a new husband/wife. There’s not a lot of quality time remaining on my laptop battery as I fly 30,000ft above the Pacific Ocean back to the US mainland, so slip on a lei, bust out the ukulele, and lets find the shade of a coconut tree to explore a little further.

It’s my first visit to Hawaii, and according to the travellers I polled beforehand, I had started with the best island of the chain. Big Island is big. Oahu packs in a million people. Maui can seem a little overdeveloped. But Kauai is the Garden Island, green and dense, with dramatic mountain spires, sweeping sandy beaches, eucalyptus forests, and an ancient cultural legacy. Although its population is only 65,000 today, it once thrived with a half million native Hawaiians, cultivating terraces and massive fishponds. Disease imported by Captain Cook’s men put an end to that, and after a short-lived occupation by the Russians, the island joined Hawaii as the 50th state of the United States, becoming the union’s most westerly point, some 2000 miles from the mainland. Most of the population live in the East, in the cities of Kapa’a and Lihue. The north coast has resorts and big houses belonging to celebrities like Julia Roberts and Oprah. The west Na Poli coast is a barricade of dramatic mountains. The interior houses the massive Waimea canyon (known as the Grand Canyon of the Pacific), along with a spot claiming to be the wettest place on earth. Our destination is in the south, a region known as Poipu Beach, benefitting from a rain shadow that all but guarantees gorgeous weather year-round. After Iceland and Alaska, we deserve a little sunshine.

Aloha! It’s a word you hear often in Hawaii, meaning more than just “hello”. It can also translate as love, peace, joy, and goodbye, a Polynesian shalom, as it were. We arrive late afternoon in Lihue airport three hours behind Pacific Time, literally as far west as you can travel without crossing the international dateline. The Budget rental office is packed with couples, mostly honeymooners, aglow in love and anxious to get to their waiting love shacks. The sun has set and the sky is a deep purple by the time we turn off the highway into the Tree Tunnel, a spectacular road framed by tall eucalyptus trees. You can’t help but feel like your car is making its way down a uterus, ready to be born into paradise. The GPS runs us in circles around Poipu looking for our rental apartment, but the air is warm, the stars streak against the sky, and the sound of waves act like balm for our urban souls.

You don’t have to be a millionaire to enjoy your QTR, which is how we found the Nihi Kai apartments, and the Parrish Collection. Jonathan Parrish gave up a gig in finance to move to Poipu, taking over an apartment rental agency in the area. Hawaii is not cheap, so it makes plenty dollars and sense to rent a fully furnished right on the beach, equipped with wi-fi, kitchen, laundry and ocean view. In unit 700, we felt like we had the keys to a friend’s holiday home, tastefully decorated with thought and care. We drop our gear and head off to the newish Kukul’ula shopping development, to feast on fresh mongchong and superb mahi-mahi at Merriman’s, slugged down with orange-wedged Blue Moon wheat ale. A quality tone had been set.

“I never thought I’d be on my honeymoon and be asleep by 8pm,” says a bride from LA, to the nods of agreement from a half dozen other couples on the boat. There’s so much to do in and around Poipu, and with hot muggy days, much of it gets going around sunrise. By the time evening rolls around, after feasting on the French-Asian tapas at Josselin’s, or the mouthwatering table—prepared guacamole at TortillaRepublic, you can’t help but want to pass out in blissful exhaustion. 6am first morning, we drive over the Kauai ATV, where Ana and I strap into a mud buggy to rip around the muddy tracks of a former sugar plantation. Once Hawaii’s primary source of income, sugar production has all but vanished across all the islands, leaving rusted post-apocalyptic mills. Steve Case, a Hawaii native and founder of AOL, bought 40,000 acres of land and leases it to adventure tours. In a convoy of buggies and ATV’s, we make our way amongst the dirt roads, snaking along overgrown sugar cane, journeying through an impressive tunnel carved out by a former plantation. We lunch at a waterfall, and within 12 hours of arrival, I can see Kauai’s appeal beyond its beachfront resorts. It’s an adventure island for romantics.

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