Finally, a First Visit to Hawaii

The inspiring beauty of Kauai

It was way back in 1988 or so that the picture of Hawaii formed an image in my head…

That all began on a stage in rolling country hills of Surrey in England. Perhaps ten or eleven years old and an earnest chorus member in that year’s school musical, Bali Ha'i, the Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein score about a mystical, exotic island in the South Pacific.

Mrs. Robbins’ conducting was absorbingly intense, abundant in deliberately placed energy, and I most picture the endless rehearsals as we prepared just like track athletes doing laps and laps of precise pacing.

I can still pitch that ‘descending octave’ note interval that signals the opening…

Whizz forward four decades almost and the postcard image was still not filled in with a dose of reality.

And it’s been twelve long years living in the US as a surfer, repeatedly replying…”Hawaii, nope, still haven’t been!”….when people assume that you’re a regular to surfing’s birth place and its cultural Mecca.

So we touched down in Kauai, and strolled off the plane into the small Lihue airport. Already evocative and charismatic in the simple 1950s functional architecture of a single terminal airport. C and I had picked Kauai, the Garden Island, for its inspiring beauty and lesser development than the other islands. As we drove ever further and further north that first afternoon we got to understand why, the feeling of being in America in the street signs and cars, but far away from America in so much else. Another land, another people, another tempo.

We passed small towns that felt like a snapshot into heartland America in the 1950s, with quaint and humbly sized art deco cinemas and banks, a boutique or two, second-hand stores, carefully curated vintage shops. Churches in that basic white style of early last century, the biggest we saw standing out in a verdant green in Hanalei and the smallest and cutest in Kilauea showing off a unique architecture entirely of Kauai’s distinctive black lava rocks in its walls.

Gazing out the window and starting to see the lush rainforests and rich birdlife, I understood too why Kauai is famed for being the set for multiple scenes in the 1993 box office hit Jurassic Park and too for featuring in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Grassy areas mid-island turned into richer, greener meadows and then more manicured lawns, and then a golf course as we pulled into towards Hanalei Bay. And the horizon to the left gave us a first sense for the hills, small mountains and rainforest ridges. At dawn and dusk the merging of land and ocean was ablaze into a canvas of color to soothe the day’s energy in tropical vibes.

I loved how, as the week unfolded, I was handed a long overdue cultural education in the word and the culture ‘Aloha’.

We hear and see this word all the time in surf culture, and I’d known it expressed a spirit of mellow warmth, a welcome and a sense of love. But it’s only in visiting Hawaii that you understand that it’s a short word that describes the long arc of a society’s emphasis on living in harmony with others and with nature.

The first known settlers to Hawaii were estimated to land between the fifth to twelfth centuries, seafaring Polynesians arriving from other islands in kayaks. And radiocarbon dating research showing a more precise development period between the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. But it was in the early 18th century that the first American traders arrived and started to shift and dilute ‘Aloha’ with their ways, discovering and harvesting sandalwood for export to China.

The British influence then stepped ashore in 1778 with Captain Cook’s arrival, bringing disease and practices that first disrupted native culture. I’d curiously noticed the Union Jack in the corner of the Hawaiian flag today still and had to look this up. A legacy of an alliance between Great Britain and King Kamehameha the First, when the King unified the Hawaiian Islands in 1810. As Go Hawaii writes:

….warfare between chiefs throughout the islands was widespread. In 1778, Captain James Cook arrived in Hawaiʻi, dovetailing with Kamehameha’s ambitions. With the help of western weapons and advisors, Kamehameha won fierce battles at lao Valley in Maui and the Nuʻuanu Pali on Oʻahu. The fortress-like Puʻukoholā Heiau on the island of Hawaiʻi was built in 1790 prophesizing Kamehameha’s conquest of the islands. In 1810, when King Kaumualiʻi of Kauaʻi agreed to become a tributary kingdom under Kamehameha, that prophecy was finally fulfilled. Kamehameha’s unification of Hawaiʻi was significant not only because it was an incredible feat, but also because under separate rule, the Islands may have been torn apart by competing western interests.

Spending time in Kauai you awake inspired by the rainforest and mountain beauty you are surrounded by, the rumble of the ocean just ever around the corner and the most perfect white noise emerging from the crack in the patio doors as you slip into bed, and on waking. A standout highlight was our eight hour hike along a Napali Coast trail, richly rewarded with the Hanakapi’ai Falls at the top, its glistening 300 feet of rainforest water plunging into the pool below. And the accomplishment of eight stream crossings in the middle of nowhere with no more serious damage done than one foot being soaked through its sole and upper and sock (we each ‘lost one’ to a full immersion on a slip!).

Other moments I won’t forget were the array of fish pecking at some areas of still-healthy coral reef in the protected natural cove at Poipu Beach, a quiet afternoon with a long swim at Anini Beach (our favorite, perhaps!) and our mellow mornings with coffee or lunch in small old towns like Kilauea in the north and Waimea in the south…and, and, and…on the second last day, finally seeing the curious walk and gander of the endangered Hawaiian goose, the Nene (enjoy this Wikipedia entry).

Aloha, at last…:)