Kauai Hawaii

High-end restaurants abound on the lush, tropical shores of Kauai, as do high-end meal prices. So here we go again, catching the aloha spirit as we dine our way through the Garden Isle, searching for great meal deals. We teamed up with local food experts to bring you 20 Kauai meals for less than $20, just as we did in our recent surveys of Oahu and Maui.

The woman in the sun hat wants to crack someone in the jaw. It's been a bad day. Actually, for Kaiulani Huff, it's been a bad few decades. She has watched as her home, the island of Kauai, changed from a wild garden of secret places to -- in her eyes -- an overcrowded amusement park for rich people. "Welcome to Disneyland," she says one day while driving around the island. "See the natives. Watch us dance the hula. Clog up our roads. Buy up all the good land.

The unusual stranding of 150 melon-headed whales in a shallow bay off the island of Kauai in 2004 could have been caused by the animals being spooked by the use of sonar by Navy ships, a federal agency reported Thursday. "We can find no other cause for this event -- given the fact there are many things we don't know," said Teri Rowles, a marine mammal veterinarian with the Fisheries Service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

I am standing on a rocky trail on the south side of Kauai, staring down at a beach so divine that I'm glad to be alive. There are half a dozen locals ("I've never seen so many people here," says my guide), but not a tourist in sight. I have been brought to Allerton Beach by two natives of the island who know how to navigate the miles of coffee fields that lead to this trailhead. I ask if there are any beaches like this in Hanalei, to the north. A pause. "We don't go to Hanalei," I am told.

THE second time we capsized, my canteen went east and our kayak headed west. "Better grab it," said my boat mate, Carlos Holguin, as the Nalgene bottle bobbed in 4-foot swells. Our guides had said we would need two quarts of water for the 17-mile paddle along Kauai's dramatic Na Pali Coast. Now half my supply was at sea. Of course, they also had told us to get back on the two-person kayak immediately if we capsized. After snagging the canteen, I could see why.

Kauai is a romantic island, perfect for honeymooners with Bali Hai beaches, double rainbows and coconut groves. But a different side of Kauai awaited me, one not typically lauded in the glossy, gauze-lensed brochures. I was going with my family -- my parents, two sisters, Suzy and Kathy, and their husbands, Jeff and Skip, and, between them, six kids, all 6 and younger. My role would be that of accommodating, doting aunt. We were in search of fun and basic food but with a Kauai twist.

We were driving through a windy pastureland that could have doubled for the coast of Ireland. "Look over there." Our 18-year-old son, Ben, pointed to a knot of gnarled trees. Nearby, cows grazed the long brown grass. "You know, there are a thousand different places we could be, but Hawaii isn't one of them." And yet Hawaii was exactly where we were. "Land of a thousand places" became the standing joke during our two-week trip to the islands of Hawaii and Maui.

Helios, the solar-powered, remotely controlled aircraft that shattered the world altitude record two years ago, crashed near the Hawaiian island of Kauai on Thursday during a test flight. The $15-million airplane was designed by Paul MacCready's aerospace firm AeroVironment Inc. in Monrovia. The craft was flying over the U.S. Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility when it "broke apart," a spokesman for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said.

KAUAI is the island Hollywood calls paradise. Its tropical forests, 4,000-foot cliffs and crescent-shaped beaches have provided idyllic settings for more than 60 films and TV shows, cast as everything from "Gilligan's Island" and "Jurassic Park" to "South Pacific." So I probably shouldn't have been surprised when the melody and lyrics to "Bali Hai" started bouncing around in my head when I visited Kauai last month.

I received my mission shortly after landing on this luscious, 553-square-mile island, a 30-minute puddle-jump west of Honolulu. It was contained in a tourist booklet I picked up at the airport in Lihue, Kauai's main town. The booklet was full of discount coupons for everything from luaus to motorcycle rentals. Particularly well represented were deals on helicopter tours.