Over at EconoRides, Monk managed to find us another Mustang convertible that came off the same boat as our previous car and had only four miles on it, about the distance from Nawiliwili Harbor to the rental lot.
I filled out another stack of forms and made sure to get every insurance plan offered. I neglected to mention that the last car we’d rented ended up getting stolen.
By the time we got on the road, the sun was peeking out through the clouds. I put the top down and steered us north toward Makana Peak, which was the mythical Bali Hai in South Pacific. I wanted to see those idyllic beaches set against that famous peak.
Monk was quiet, wrapped up in his own thoughts, so I turned on the radio to a station playing soft Hawaiian music that was heavy on ukulele.
The glimmering blue ocean was to our right. The lush mountain rain forests were to our left. The music of the islands carried on the wind. The air was rich with the sweet scents of a thousand tropical flowers. I was completely immersed in the Kauai experience. For all of two minutes before Monk spoke up.
“We have to get a stopwatch.”
“We will,” I said, trying in vain to regain that feeling of complete immersion. It was like trying to get back to sleep in a hurry to jump back into your dream after being rudely awakened. “Enjoy the fresh air. Look at all the beautiful scenery. Who knows when—or if—you’ll ever get back here again.”
“We should get it now.”
“What’s the hurry?”
“This way we can stop by the hotel and drop it off for the workmen; otherwise they might not get the timing of the fans exactly right.”
“The hotel is in the opposite direction. We’re not going back that way just to drop off a stopwatch. Try to relax. If the timing of the fans is still wrong, we’ll have the repairmen come back.”
“But what if they’ve already gone home for the day?”
“We’ll turn the fans off,” I said. “Then they’ll all be moving at the same rate. A dead stop. Problem solved.”
I saw a sign for the Wailua Falls and nearly passed the turnoff. I made a neck-snapping, hard left turn onto a narrow road riddled with potholes. The road snaked toward the mountains through fields choked with overgrown weeds.
We bumped along for twenty minutes until we saw cars parked in the red muck on either side of the road, which ended in a muddy cul-de-sac where a couple dozen tourists stood, their backs to us.
A Hawaiian man in a yellow rain slicker sold pineapple and coconut wedges from the back of a pickup truck. He cut the fruit with a small ax and served the halves to the tourists on newspapers. Roosters, clucking and crowing, scurried amidst the people.
I made a U-turn and found a parking spot on the road facing back toward the highway. We got out and joined the tourists who were pressed up against a chest-high Cyclone fence that overlooked the Wailua Falls and the verdant canyon below.
We had to stand on our tiptoes and peer over the hedge of weeds on the other side of the fence to see the twin falls, which spilled down eighty feet into a dark pond that fed a tiny river in a thick grove of trees. In the distance, the serrated ridges of the mountains were shrouded in haze. It made a pretty picture, one that I told Monk was used in the main titles of Fantasy Island.
“Minus the roosters, the weeds, and the potholes, I assume,” he said.
“Yes.”
“No wonder it was called Fantasy Island. The reality is pretty miserable.”
“I think there’s something very appealing about the undeveloped feel of this weedy lookout,” I said. “If this sightseeing spot were anywhere else in the world, the parking lot would be paved, there would be signs telling us where to take the best photos, and there would be a gift shop selling hot dogs instead of that guy hacking pineapples with an ax.”
“Exactly,” Monk said. “Let’s go there.”
Adrian Monk was a study in contradictions. He could walk into a blood-splattered crime scene and examine a decaying corpse without hesitation, and yet he was totally unnerved by some wild roosters and a little mud.
We drove back to the highway and over the rickety bridge that spanned the picturesque Wailua River. To our left, the abandoned and decaying Coco Palms Hotel, its thatched-roof bungalows pummeled by Hurricane Iniki in ’92, sat on the edge of a dense coconut grove overlooking the golden beach where the river met the sea. The resort was a tiki icon, harkening back to another era. Looking at the building, I could almost hear Elvis Presley singing “Blue Hawaii.”
Actually, I was hearing it. On the radio. It was too perfect.
Once we crossed the bridge, the Kuhio Highway became the main drag of Wailua, a ramshackle town of Western-style storefronts and minimalls. My stomach was growling, so I parked in front of Namura Saimin, a place I’d read about in the guidebook.
“What are we doing here?” Monk asked.
“Having lunch. This is supposed to be the best saimin place in the Hawaiian islands,” I said, getting out of the car before he could argue with me.
Monk eyed the place dubiously. “What’s saimin?”
“It’s like a soup. Noodles, boiled eggs, bok choy, green onion, pork, peas, wonton, and SPAM all in a dried-shrimp broth. It’s a delicacy. They also make wonderful pies.”
“I wonder if they have gecko on the menu."
“If not on the menu,” I said with a smile, “certainly on the walls.”
We opened the screen door and walked in. There were no tables, just a very low counter with tiny stools that must have been designed with
