Chockers with chookies

If you are one of those grouches who can’t abide the rooster’s jubilant dawn hurrah, Kauaii is your hell. This glorious Hawaiian island is literally run by chooks and the dawn chorus rings out way before dawn and, well, it goes on all day really.

It is one of the most exquisite phenomena I’ve encountered.

Well, I’m a chook lover - and this is chook island.

They are here in vast numbers just doing their own thing.

The chickens of Kauai are spread with neat territorial imperative all over the island.

And they are very beautiful chooks.

They’re known as Red Jungle Fowl and they are a very ancient breed of chookie.

They’re smaller than a Sussex or a Rhode Island Red but bigger than bantams. The girls can be a bit plain but the boys are showy with particularly perky tail feathers. The roosters have good red combs but the girls seem to have stunted combs and they all look like point-of-lay pullets.

They live in the carparks, on the road verges, in the hills, in hotel grounds, domestic gardens, even on the beach. Look down and a chook is quietly pecking its way past the sun lounge.

They are the welcoming committee under the plumeria trees at the post office.

Kauai has lots of golf courses, too, with grass so fine that it feels like carpet. Feral chooks are all over the golf courses….strutting proud roosters with little hens and packs of chicks. Golf links are prime chook real estate and the golfers just have to put up with it and try not to hit them. I suppose it happens sometimes and the golfers claim a real “birdie”.

They are not in any way domesticated. They are not owned. They coexist with people. They are pleased with scraps received but they are not hanging around for them.

They are not like seagulls, even if they are all around the beach.

Actually, there are no seagulls on Kauaii.

There are remarkably few birds.

One has to remember that this island just popped up as an isolated volcanic land mass far, far from other islands with ecosystems.

Most of the life forms made it here as the result of storms. The were literal blow-ins, whether they liked it or not. Little spiders flew in among the clouds and dropped down on their parachute silks. Plant seeds blew in. The Nene geese probably arrived by navigational error or weather trauma error in a migratory event.

Not the little zebra doves however, These hapless Asian immigrants arrived as caged birds and were cruelly liberated by their owners to fend for themselves. Fend they did. Tiny, sweet little creatures with absurdly short legs, they have become dominant birdlife.

The chooks were brought by humans and bred for the usual purposes - eggs, meat, feathers, fertiliser… But one day, along came the ferocious Hurricane Iwa and it blew away not only all the hen enclosures but all the hens.

Free hens.

There was no getting them back. They have been free range ever since.

They keep the gardens tidy. They are terrific pest control. They aerate the soil.

They’re happy scratchers, thriving on forage.

Don’t try to get too close. They will artfully dodge away.

No one seems to kill them. They seem to love them.

They have become an emblem of the island.

Marvellous Marriott - and spook meets spook

The Marriott is massive, nestled by the soft, golden-sanded strand of Kalapaki Beach on beautiful Nawiliwili Bay. There are dramatically-contoured green volcanic mountains in all directions, lush in some lights, dramatic in others and occasionally garlanded in streamers of cloud.

It is not as breathtaking as the St Regis at Hanelei Bay, where we stayed last time we were here. I thought I could never in the world better that extravagant old place and I yearned to return to it. But the news feeds of Expedia firmly warned that the old girl had gone downhill while her exorbitant prices had risen. I exchanged sentiment for economy as I sat in my Norwood bed surfing the travel sites in the depths of an insomniac night and, after much trawling, settled on the Marriott at Lihue which, it turns out, was what our Flight Centre girl, Nicolette, had suggested in the first place. Good call, Nicolette.

This resort is spectacular and just huge, huge, huge, with endless beautifully-cultivated gardens and some sort of engineering miracle of complicated waterfalls and features. The pool is immense with a scalloped perimeter and it has an island. Swimming the full circumference of the pool is a pretty good little workout. And, under a series of fantastical water-spouting statues, rabbit and elephant among them, it is fun.

Unlike most hotels, people here are encouraged to bring water toys into the pool. I have never seen the like. A giant inflatable stingray turned up yesterday, alongside a blowup swan the size of a small dinghy.

Our room 2125 is a suite. It is on a corner with two balconies giving us both a mountain view and a pool view. It is the stunning reality of the views I perused from my sleepless bed in Australia. Oh, the wonders of the Internet. I pinch myself over and over again. Luxury. Love it. I was born for this.

I was hanging out for a mai tai and was rather peeved that on our first night here, the assorted restaurants and bars were so full of happy, rowdy holidaymakers that there was nowhere to have one!!! Nowhere! There was just one bar stool in the whole place.

We gave up, booked a table for 8pm, and went up drinkless, to change for dinner.

Long, broad paths run from the hotel down the bay to a series of restaurants and, further along, water sports facilities and quaint little tourist shops and a bar. The beaches in Hawaii, as in Australia, are public so there are lots of locals enjoying the landscape. The hotel pops colored wrist bands on us every day as we collect our beach towels. These entitle us to all the sun lounges. The public have to bring their own. They tend to come for the gentle surf or just the pleasure of paddle boarding around the bay. There is quite a congregation of them out there, some being schooled in the art.

We chose the Italian restaurant, Portofino - upstairs on a broad open deck with palm and bay views. Out of habit, I ordered a New Zealand savvy. For the sheer cultural incongruity of it all, I also ordered escargot.

Oh, dear. I have never had snails swimming in a creamy soup before. They sat upon little beds of a piquant tomato and herb paste. They were deliriously good.

I had hoped to have a less rich main course in the veal piccante. You know, the old lemon and caper treatment. But this one was heavy and creamy, an onslaught of kilojoules. Damn it. Delicious with it.

By this time, we’d become chatty with the waitress, Lana. American wait staff tend to work hard at connecting with diners because their tips depend on good impressions. Lana hit paydirt with us.

This is one of the ultimate stories of the small world.

Lana is fair skinned with long blonde hair, neatly in a pony tail. She is definitely not Hawaiian. Where was she from, I asked.

Siberia, said she.

“Krasnoyarsk?" suggested Bruce casually, for no good reason I could detect.

Lana’s eyes almost popped out of her head.

“Yes!” she exclaimed.

“How do you know of Krasnoyarsk? It is a little place. It is mostly underground. No one has ever heard of it here.”

“Ah,” said Bruce wisely. “It has the radar facility, a cold-war magnet for spooks.”

“Oh, my god. You know about this? I was a radio technician there!” Lana exclaimed.

“We used to spy on the USA.”

Bruce chuckled.

“In my job once upon a time, we used to spy on you, too.”

“What? We were spying on each other? This is so amazing.”

Yes it was.

And here we were in Hawaii.

Both Lana, whose proper name is Svetlana, and the Bruce said their work once upon a time was secret and still is. They were not going into detail. Just the strange nature of co-incidence.

Lana had found and married an American and escaped a cold life in Russia for tropical Hawaii. When they moved to the mainland where there were winters, she baulked and left her husband to return to Hawaii. Years ago now. She had no intention of ever living anywhere else again.

I don't blame her.