There’s an old saw in sales: “your best customers are the ones you already have.” And that’s why so many companies have loyalty programs, discounts for repeat business, referral discounts, and similar programs – to keep you coming back and spending money with them.

Our timeshare management company, Vistana (now owned by Marriott Vacations), doesn’t have a loyalty program, but they do offer a small bribe reward if you’re willing to attend a 90-minute “Owner’s Update” during your stay; we took them up on the offer and scheduled the “Update” (sales presentation) for today at 11am.

We planned to go for a walk through Princeville before the session, but the weather didn’t cooperate – we got drenched! One advantage of staying at a timeshare is having a washer/dryer in your unit – we came back and dried our clothes before heading over for the presentation.

Matt was our salesperson, and he was pleasant to talk with; he even gave us some tips to help find availability on the Marriott Vacations website. We were nearly an hour into the session before he brought up the idea of our buying additional “Club Points” to get better status and more options for our vacations. He didn’t try a hard sell, just showed us some “possibilities”. We said “no” to each.

The next step was for his manager, Justin, to enter the conversation. Justin wasn’t there for anything but selling us points; he made a couple of offers and we said “no” to each one. We’d hit the 90-minute mark and were ready to leave; they brought in Candice to “check us out”. She made us a final offer for an “Encore visit” (which is actually not a bad deal – $1300 for 5 nights), but we refused that, too, and left for lunch with wallets intact, only a few minutes behind schedule.

The weather was much better after lunch, so we drove to Hanalei to look around; our driving guide suggested getting off the main drag and driving to Black Pot Beach on Hanalei Bay. We didn’t want to go into the water, but it was very pleasant to walk around and enjoy the scenery.

It was raining when we got up this morning. The forecast predicted more of the same all day, but the forecast for the South Shore was friendlier, so we got in the car and headed that way, taking HI-51 South for the first time this trip so we could see a bit of new territory.

Our route (as suggested by the driving guide app) took us past the airport, past the cruise terminal and Nawiliwili Harbor, and onto Hulemanu Road, where we stopped at the Menehune Fishpond Outlook. The Menehune were here before the Hawaiians, and they are credited with building the fishpond in a single night (probably not true!).

We returned to the main highway for a few miles before turning south through the Tree Tunnel to Kōloa, where the Hawaiian sugar industry started. The chimney and ruins of the Old Sugar Mill of Kōloa is a National Historic Landmark, and there’s a sculpture honoring the laborers along with an 8-panel history of the sugar industry (completed about a decade before the industry left Hawaii forever).

We had lunch at the Kauai Island Brewing Company in the Kōloa Village shops and followed it with shave ice from The Fresh Shave in Old Kōloa Town – there are a lot of restaurants and shops for such a small town!

Our next stop was Prince Kuhio Park, the birthplace of Hawaii’s first Native Hawaiian Congressman, Prince Jonah Kuhio Kalaniana’ole (who would almost certainly been King if the US hadn’t annexed Hawaii). It features a monument to the Prince, an acknowledgement of the Kauai chapter of the Royal Order of Kamehameha I, and the remains of an ancient heiau.

We crossed the street to look out at the ocean before driving away.

Our next stop was Spouting Horn in Poipu; unlike our other stops today, we’d been there before. It was a lot less crowded on a cloudy Tuesday than it had been when we visited on a sunny Saturday in 2017!

Our driving guide suggested stopping at the Kukuiula Boat Harbor to see a different view of Spouting Horn; it probably wasn’t worth the stop, but I did like looking around at the people using the bay.

We turned for home, but the guide had one more suggestion – a trip to Shipwreck Beach near the Grand Hyatt. When we got there, there was a person atop the cliffs considering jumping in (it’s about a 40-foot jump and it might even be legal).

I watched him for a few minutes, then turned away briefly. I should have waited.

We took a very short walk on the Maha’ulepu Heritage Trail; I wish we’d had more time to see more of it.

It was time to head home. As we neared Lihue, we saw a wonderful rainbow – and a couple of minutes later, we were in a torrential rainstorm!

The storm didn’t last long, and we had mostly dry weather the rest of the way back.