A New Look for Old Kauai

“Welcome to the Sheraton Princeville,” the big guy said, opening the door to my rented Toyota.

He wore a starched white uniform with gold buttons and a pith helmet and in that outfit he looked as if he’d been passed over when the British pulled the Camel Corps out of India.

The confusion grew as I was ushered into a room with mints on the pillow and a bath loaded with imported soaps and perfumes. In the closet were slippers and a robe, and from the bed a teddy bear stared across the room.

A teddy bear in Hawaii?

The girl from the hotel’s hostess service asked if I’d been to Kauai before. I told her yes, but it wasn’t the Kauai I remembered. I was thinking of days when the doormen wore aloha shirts and room service placed baby orchids on the pillows in place of candy.

Don’t get me wrong; it’s a splendid hotel. Only once inside the lobby I had a hard time deciding whether this was Princeville or Pittsburgh. A jewelry shop displayed a $13,000 sparkler and an art gallery featured a $5,300 seascape.

Still, the setting is pure Polynesia, with the hotel wrapped in tiers around Pu’upoa Point on Kauai’s north shore not far from Lumahai Beach where Hollywood filmed the legendary “South Pacific” beside a valley choked with rainbows.

Rooms face the awesome Na Pali coast and sunset cruises sail from Hanalei Bay. The view alone might seem worth the price, which figures out to $120/$175 a day for a double.

On the other hand, a fact sheet describes how Sheraton has recaptured “Hawaii’s rich cultural heritage, especially the 19th-Century plantation era.”

Forgive me, but I doubt seriously that old sugar planters took time off to sit around nibbling finger sandwiches and bite-size cakes during the afternoon tea ritual that Sheraton observes daily in the hotel’s spacious lobby.

As hotels go, the Sheraton is impressive. It is crowded with Hawaiian quilts and Chippendale garden furniture and reproductions of period pieces brought to the Islands by New England missionaries; there are Early American antiques and Island artifacts, including a 40-foot canoe hanging from the ceiling in the lobby. Yes, and the service is without fault.

But it’s unreasonable to describe 300 rooms that are anchored to a cliff as “Old Hawaii.” What the Sheraton is, in fact, is a luxury hotel rising in a Pacific setting.

The grounds are lush with tropical blooms. Where there were no palm trees, Sheraton planted them. Great bursts of bougainvillea tumble from the cliff and the sunsets are absolutely shocking.

Sheraton wasn’t the first to discover Hanalei, though. Centuries ago Hanalei was settled by Hawaiians who fished and farmed and filled their souls with those incredible sunsets. During ensuing centuries, though, they got lost in the shuffle and then in the ‘50s along came Mitzi Gaynor and the Hollywood gang to do “South Pacific” and the transformation of Hanalei began.

The 11,000-acre resort community of Princeville--it is 32 miles from Lihue--features several hundred residential homes and condominiums in addition to the new hotel and a 27-hole golf course that Golf Digest rates among the 100 finest in the nation.

Princeville was created with grace and style, which extends to Princeville Center, a shopping mall where a Mexican restaurant called Tortilla Flats turns out steaks and seafood in addition to chimichunga , burritos, tacos, tostadas and enchiladas. Sorry, no poi.

Guests of the Sheraton dine in three restaurants, including Nobles with its chandeliers and etched glass, and Cafe Hanalei, which does a Sunday brunch that features seafood, rack of lamb, omelets, pates, fresh fruit and dozens of desserts.

Besides Sheraton, Hilton has opened a hotel on Kauai at Hanamaulu Beach, only a couple of miles from the airport at Lihue. The Hilton was approved, only after a long legal battle between owners of the land and residents who opposed the development.

In the grand tradition of Hilton, the hotel opened with all the fanfare of a Hollywood film premiere. Barron Hilton flew in a Samoan chief along with movie and TV stars and the booze flowed before a background of sculpted ice. Practically the entire island crowded the resort during an all-day open house.

It is a sybarite’s sand bar, except that the beach isn’t much to rave about. The pool, on the other hand, is. Actually, there are three swimming pools, each fed by a waterfall. The waterfall is man-made because natural waterfalls are generally found in the wrong places and Hilton wanted his dead center of the new resort.

Waterfall Specialist

John Groark of Carmel did the job. Groark specializes in waterfalls. He did this one for $1.7 million. It features a man-made mountain as well as a fern grotto, and while it is a little Disney-like, it didn’t turn out badly at all. Workmen dug lagoons for the swans and surrounded everything with phony lava.

Hilton’s 350 hotel rooms are spread in horseshoe fashion on 25 acres beside the ocean. There are also 150 villas. Single or double, you’ll pay $80 to $155 a day, the rates depending on whether you choose garden, mountain or ocean views. Tennis is offered along with golf and there are jogging paths.

Westin Hotels doesn’t figure to be out-Disneyed by Hilton. It is spending $190 million remodeling the Kauai Surf on Kalapaki Beach. Besides mixing its own instant lava for gardens and such, it will feature a 31,500-square-foot swimming pool complete with its own island, fountains, slides and waterfalls.

There’s more.

Westin is rounding up 50 buggies to deliver guests on five-mile carriage rides.

European Health Spa

When the hotel reopens early next year, it will provide 849 rooms and a European-style health spa. There are plans for a helipad and a wedding chapel. After exchanging vows, newlyweds will slip off to the Inn on the Cliffs for a champagne dinner and one of Hawaii’s haunting sunsets.

Guests will choose between sashimi at the Tempura House and steaks at Cooks at the Beach.

Epcot it isn’t, but almost.

Except for the Kauai Surf I don’t recall any big hotels on Kauai in 1960, the year I paid my first visit. Coco Palms was the reigning hotel then. Guests still shave in giant clamshells and bathe in lava tubs.

Grace Guslander was princess of Coco Palms. Although she is retired, her evening torchlight ceremony is still the longest-playing show on the island.

Movies Filmed Here

A score of movies have been filmed at Coco Palms. Elvis Presley paddled down the lagoon in one. In 1954 Columbia Pictures built a chapel for a Rita Hayworth film that has been used for more than 12,000 marriages. Coco Palms does a honeymoon package for $370 for four nights that includes accommodations, a gift, a cocktail party and a fruit basket.

AMFAC, which operates Coco Palms, also does business at Waiohai, the 460-room resort at Poipu Beach with two restaurants, four bars, Jacuzzis, steam rooms, three swimming pools, half a dozen tennis courts and a jogging trail.

Guest rooms feature king-size beds and TVs hidden in armoires. The hotel is loaded with teak and brass along with travertine marble and mini-bars packed with booze and soft drinks.

Still, I mourn for the old Kauai. The former Waiohai had only 49 rooms. It was a special place with a friendly staff and missionary-style cottages and white-railed porches. During breakfast I would watch the surfers while little English sparrows stole crumbs off my plate, and offshore immense clouds billowed on the horizon.

Cars Were Scarce

At that time cane trucks rumbled down the roads and cars were scarce. Now there’s less cane and more cars. And I wonder whatever happened to the pineapple fields?

Lihue was like a country Western town. A small one at that. Everybody seemed to know everybody. I’m not sure that’s true anymore. On the road to Poipu there’s a big new shopping center that would fit better in San Fernando Valley.

Because of all this development, I drove to the far north end of the island--past Hanalei. TV antennas stuck up from the rusty tin roofs of cottages with their beefsteak hedges. Later, I caught a glimpse of the lovely, deserted beach where we picnicked once. And, yes, it was still deserted.

This is Bloody Mary’s island where waterfalls still spill from wet green mountains and the sea washes over lava and white sand and birds sing out from hidden places while rainbows weave a pattern above the mountains, the rice paddies and the taro patches.

Choice for Lunch, Dinner

Near where the road ends at Haena, entertainer Charo owns a restaurant that’s a choice place for lunch and dinner. Or just a cocktail in order to catch the stunning, real-life seascape framed by the windows. The menu lists pork ribs, steaks, fried mozzarella and calamary fritas, and there is a fine inn just next door, the Hanalei Colony Resort, that’s possibly the best buy on the entire island, what with two-bedroom units with kitchens going for $70 to $115 a night.

For a reasonable meal there’s the Black Pot Luau Hut at Kauhle Center in Hanalei. The proprietress, Cathy Ham Young Souza, does Hawaiian and Chinese dishes and serves drinks at her three-stool House of Happy Talk Bar. The boss lady raises her own pigs and gathers fresh seaweed for the sashimi.

Next door Lynn Powell of Washington, D.C., bakes pies, cakes and brownies and creates splendid sandwiches and homemade soups at her West of the Moon Cafe.

Words for Romantics

These words by an unknown author appear on the menu:

Still around the corner there may wait a new road or a secret gate, and though I oft have passed them by, a day will come at last when I shall take the hidden paths that run west of the moon, east of the sun.

It pays to be a romantic in Hanalei.

I wandered over the other night to a favorite restaurant of mine, Tahiti Nui, which is also in Hanalei. It was raining and with the water pouring off the tin roof I was reminded of a cafe on St. Lucia in the Caribbean called Rain. Like Rain, Tahiti Nui is friendly with a smell of age and a proprietress whom we’ve discussed before, Louise Marston, an expatriate from Tahiti, which is where I met her more than 20 years ago. She was in love with a handsome German and together they made an attractive couple, he with his blond hair and she with her dark features.

For some reason, Louise appears not to have aged, not a single day.

Meals Are Memorable

Her son, Christian, is the chef and the meals are memorable. Christian apprenticed in Paris and is married to an ex-Miss Hawaii, Haunani Marston, who joined her mother-in-law this recent evening as locals gathered in the bar where drinks were being poured by Linda Clark, an ex-physician-turned-bartender.

There’s not a happier bar on the entire island.

Tahiti Nui is 106 years old; the floor creaks and the rain blows through the window, but no one complains. Particularly none of the locals who gather of an evening to play their ukuleles and guitars . . . sometimes till dawn.