Having been out and about constantly for the past few days, we decided to just hang out in our condo and read/write in the afternoon, which was very relaxing. I would have thought I would miss the internet like crazy, but I didn’t. It just goes to show how bad humans can be at predicting things. My travel reading is a book called “The Black Swan – The Impact of the Highly Improbable.” It’s fascinating stuff, all about how we are horrible at predicting future events, but never realize it, since after the events we look back and convince ourselves it was, in fact, predictable. There are many reasons for this phenomenon, but a principal one is that our memories are reconstructed each time we “remember”. There is no accurate ticker tape to go back to and check what we were really aware of at a given time. For instance, many people look back on the internet bubble of the late 90s, convinced they knew at the time it was a bubble about to burst. While a SMALL number of analysts actually did envision the internet bubble bursting before it did, the vast majority of people (myself included) and financial “analysts” were convinced we were in a new era where old rules didn’t apply. To everybody looking back on it, the crash seems like an obvious result, and we humans naturally impose today’s obviousness on yesterday’s memory. This phenomenon causes us to underestimate the randomness and unpredictability of life - we remember ourselves predicting more than we did. The “Swans” author is not shocked that we make these errors, but is amazed that we never catch on and realize we keep making the same error over and over again. One thing to think about: why do the majority of people still listen to and believe in the financial analysts (the supposed experts) that were SO wrong about the internet bubble, when it was so costly to be wrong?
In the afternoon, we headed over to Queen Emma’s Bath, which is an oval shaped swimming hole protected from the ocean by a natural formation of lava rocks. The guide book gave it an A for snorkeling, but it was crap. The water was all silty, making for poor visibility. It actually felt more like a pool than the ocean, which would have been cool if it were clean and uncrowded, but it was neither. The long hike down to the bath was worthwhile, however, as the rocks throughout the area were swimming with turtles, who had showed up for their afternoon algae feast. They come up for air every minute or so, when you can catch them with your camera.
That night, we headed into Hanalei for an early dinner of delicious pizza (again) followed by shave ice. When selecting a shave ice establishment, make sure their machine shaves from a solid ice block. Some places just feed ice cubes into an ice crusher, yielding a snow cone effect. It doesn’t hold the syrup as well, and it’s not as good as the cloud-like airiness of correctly shaved ice. Once I figured that out, I would shake my head in pity whenever I saw someone with an inferior shave ice in hand. Poor bastards. Also, the best flavor is (artificial) guava.
After dinner, we headed to the Hanalei Bay resort for a drink. Pulling into the parking lot, there was a guy manning the entrance, whom the car in front of us stopped to get instructions from. When it was our turn, we pulled up and said we wanted to have a drink at the bar, to which he replied, “Okay, go ahead and park.” I couldn’t come up with what we could have told him that would have resulted in a different response. I laughed out loud that it was this guy’s job to state the obvious. I’m sure he was recently promoted into his current job after having done such a good job handing out soap and paper towels at the local upscale nightclub. Yeah, cause that deserves a tip.
The bar at the Hanalei Bay Resort fits perfectly into Kauai’s landscape. It’s an open-air bar tucked into a little rainforest, with trickling water pools, colorful birds darting between the greenery, and a 50-foot canoe running diagonally along the entire ceiling. Almost as soon as we sat down, it started raining, then pouring. Kelly and I noted the serendipity of our having just missed getting soaked, yet being able to enjoy the rainforest atmosphere in all its glory. We drank Lava Flows and Mudslides while the blues rock band played.
