Andrew Doughty - The Ultimate Kauai Guidebook: Kauai Revealed

In a sense, this is not a guidebook, its more of a love story. Having first seen the island as a tourist, I was immediately smitten. I had no idea that a place like this could exist anywhere in the world. Now as a resident, I marvel at its beauty every day.

Longtime locals have been stunned at some of the items in our book. Weve found many special places that people born and raised here never knew about. Visitors will find this book as valuable as having a friend living on the island.

Kauai is a unique place. People who visit here recognize this immediately. There are plenty of places in the world featuring sun and sea, but no other place offers the incomparable beauty, lushness and serenity of Kauai. Living here, we get to see first-time visitors driving around with their jaws open, shaking their heads in disbelief at what they see. Without a doubt, you will never see more smiles than during your visit to Kauai.

Our objective at Wizard Publications is to assist you in finding the bliss that can accompany a Kauai visit. We recognize the effort people go through to visit here, and our goal is to expose you to every option imaginable so you can decide what you want to see and do.

We took great pains to structure this book in such a way that it would be fun, easy reading and loaded with useful information. This book is not a bland regurgitation of facts arranged in textbook fashion. We feel strongly that guidebooks should present information so you dont have to read through every page every time you want to find something. If youre here on vacation, your time is extremely precious. You worked all year to get here, and you dont want to spend all your time flipping through a book looking for something. You want to be able to locate what you want when you want it.

You want to be able to access a comprehensive index, a thorough table of contents and refer to high-quality maps that were designed with you in mind. You want to know which helicopter, SCUBA , boat tour or luau is the best on the island. You want to be shown those things that will make this vacation the best of your life.

A quick look at this book will reveal features never before used in a guidebook. Lets start with the maps. They are more detailed than any other maps you will find, yet they omit extraneous information that can sometimes make a chore of reading a map. We know that people often have a hard time determining where they are on a map, especially here, so we have included landmarks. Most notable among these are mile markers. At every mile on main roads, the government has erected numbered markers to tell you where you are. We were the first to put these markers on a map so you can use them as reference points. We also made every effort to place north at the top of the page. It can be confusing when you see a map with south pointing up or to the right. Only a couple of trail maps deviate from this rule. Additionally, we repeatedly drove and GPSed every inch of every road and trail on the maps. This is important because many of the roads and trails represented on existing maps have been shifted, moved or eliminated. You could become very frustrated trying to find certain beaches or other scenic spots using other maps. We physically check every place and often use aerial photography and a GPS to determine the best methods for getting to certain places.

Early on, I spent three days trying to find a certain secluded beach using existing maps. When I checked aerial shots, I discovered that every single map was wrong . Getting to the beach was a snapif you knew where to go. Where needed, weve drawn legal public beach access in yellow, so youll know when you are legally entitled to cross someones land. Lastly, all the maps are 3-D. Weve found that accurate shaded relief maps easily convey much more information to the map reader.

One of the things unique to this book is the acceptance of change. We produce brand new editions of our books every two years or so, but in the intervening time we are constantly incorporating changes into the text nearly every time we do a new printing. We also post these changes on our website. This allows us to make some modifications throughout the life of each edition. We dont have the luxury of making every change that happens on a weekly basis, but it does give us more flexibility than if we only acknowledged changes every two years.

Slick (and not so slick) free magazines and publications are strewn throughout the island. Most claim to point you to assorted wonders. Theres nothing wrong with that. But the adage, You get what you pay for, applies. Lets put it this way: If all the companies in this book were companies that we had to solicit for advertising, how much candor do you think we could provide? Thats why you pay for the book, not the companies we describe. Were free to be as brutally honest as we want to be. Since we accept no advertisements, our allegiance is to our readers, not advertisers. Nonetheless, these free publications can be useful for the coupons that advertisers put inside.

As you read this book, you will notice that we are very candid in assessing businesses. Unlike some other guidebooks that send out questionnaires asking a business if they are any good (gee, they all say theyre good), weve had personal contact with the businesses listed in this book. We accept no payment for our reviews, we make no deals with businesses for saying nice things, and again, there are no advertisements in our book. If we gush over a certain company, it comes from personal experience with the company. If we rail against a business, it is for the same reason. All businesses mentioned in this book are here by our choice. None have had any input into what we say, and we have not received a single cent from any of them for their inclusion. (In fact, some would probably pay to be left out of this book, given our comments.) We always approach businesses as anonymous travelers and later by phone as guidebook writers only if we need more information. This ensures that we are treated the same as you. (I was once anonymously reviewing a restaurant when a writer from another guidebook walked in, told the manager their identity and asked for food. Not surprisingly, the food was great. But mine was lousy!) What you get here is our unbiased opinion on how companies operatenothing more, nothing less.