AAA Colorado ~ EnCompass Magazine

September | October 2006
Volume 80 Issue 5

Feature Over the bridge to Hanalei
Story and photos by Rita Ariyoshi

For more than 1,000 years, men have farmed at Hanalei. The land is flooded with memories. It radiates the comfort and security of a home where the family photographs are everywhere and the chair by the lamp is well worn. Like a good home, it offers, to those who dwell within, both roots and wings.

With the impenetrable Na Pali Coast on one end and a one-lane bridge on the other, Hanalei holds the world away — at least, most of it.

I recall standing at the overlook one day, looking down on the taro patches quilted in shades of emerald and jade, the sunlit ribbon of the Hanalei River and the green forested mountains, and thinking that this valley on the north shore of Kauai, Hawaii, appears to be the quintessential Happy Valley. Dark rain clouds clung to the jagged green mountains feeding the misty waterfalls, casting shadows on the crops and rendering the shafts of sunlight more dramatic. The colors were rich, saturated, a feast for the eyes.

There is one resort, Princeville, which sits on a promontory on the world's side of the little bridge, commanding magnificent views of the volcano-sculpted shore. On the other side of the bridge are three small settlements, Hanalei, Wainiha and Haena, although it's hard to define where they start and stop, their homes are so scattered in the jungle of vegetation and their lives so entwined.

The fertile plains of Hanalei were among the first settled by the earliest Polynesians. They built an amazing system of irrigation ditches, dams and ponds, and transformed marshes into productive agricultural land. Not much is known about those days. But the legends are larger than life. It is said that moo, the giant lizard gods, still dwell in certain mountain ponds.

Some stories are heroic: In the old days, Hanalei was ruled by a giant demigod, Kawelo, who slew a monster as strong as 320 men. Other legends are lyrical, like the one that explains how the rainbow came to Hawaii. A stranger from the ocean tossed multicolored kapa sheets into the pool of Namolokama Falls and the colors arched upward, reflecting in the mist. Through the curtain of colored light emerged a woman, Anuenue, goddess of the rainbow.

The rainbow still greets most strangers who come to Hanalei. The region is wetter, lusher, richer in natural beauty than the rest of Kauai. One of my favorite photographs is a rainbow I captured vaulting along the Na Pali Coast. It was late afternoon and I was on a Zodiac tour. We were all awed into silence.

Outsiders didn't find their way to this quiet corner of the Garden Isle until about 150 years ago. The first were traders and missionaries. Later, the growth of the plantations changed life for everyone in Hanalei. Contract laborers came from China, and later Japan. To accommodate the tastes of the new arrivals, the taro fields were turned to more profitable rice paddies. Eric Knudson wrote of Hanalei in 1895: "The winding river with a barge loaded with rice slowly drifting down on the placid surface, and beyond, the great sweep of sand beach, were a lovely and inspiring sight."

Among the first Chinese immigrants was Ching Young, who came to Hanalei from China as a young man. He opened a little general store and made sure no one in Hanalei went hungry whether they could pay or not. His descendants now own a whole shopping center, Ching Young Village in Hanalei. The family's original general store now houses arts and crafts boutiques and the Native Hawaiian Museum crammed with early artifacts. Jenny Ching still counts with an abacus — the sums are just bigger.

Years ago, I met the oldest man in Hanalei, 92-year-old Kinichi Tasaka, who was born in the valley and worked on Kauai almost his entire life. He had a wonderful sense of humor and said, with a bemused sort of smugness, "There was a guy older, but he died three or four years ago." I remember Tasaka because he was an inspiration. At 83 years of age, he began a new career and for the first time in his life met with success, attention and appreciation. He wove traditional Japanese slippers from fragrant green bullrushes. "If I had started at 65, I sure could make money," he told me. "They don't make them anymore in Japan." Tasaka's slippers are works of art, and were carried in galleries throughout the islands. He sold them as fast as he made them. Mine still sit in honor by my front door.

Kinichi Tasaka's slippers are no longer in Hanalei's shops, but Ola's, an unobtrusive gallery tucked beside the Hanalei River carries award-winning works by Island artists, including paintings, furniture made from native woods, hand-blown glass and exquisite jewelry. The Yellowfish Trading Company in the Hanalei Center is noted for its Hawaiian collectibles such as vintage textiles and hula-girl lamps and nodders. I smile every time I go in that shop.

Like most visitors, I am lured to Hanalei by the mixture of old-time Hawaii, pristine beaches and the amenities of the Princeville Resort, with its luxurious condominiums, homes and the beautifully placed Princeville Hotel. Walk into the lobby and instead of decor, there is a glass wall looking out on Hanalei Bay and those misty mountains streaming with waterfalls.

Princeville was once the sugar plantation of Robert Crichton Wyllie, a Scotsman who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs for the kingdom of Hawaii from 1798 to 1865. He named it for Prince Albert, the son of King Kamehameha IV and Queen Emma. The Hawaiian royal family visited Wyllie's plantation in 1860. Lavish entertainment was a Wyllie trademark and his guests included artists, aristocrats and diplomats from around the world.

Wyllie had grand plans for Princeville as the commercial center of Kauai. Yet when he died, his land was encumbered with so many mortgages that his nephew, who inherited it, committed suicide. After watching crop after crop fail in a climate more suited to rice or taro, the next owner gave up and sold Princeville to missionary Abner Wilcox in 1895. Wilcox rented out the lower lands to Chinese rice growers and turned the rest into grazing lands for cattle.

Today, Princeville Resort covers 11,000 acres, much of it forest conservation land. The showpiece of the resort is the famed 27-hole Princeville Makai Golf Course, ranked among Golf Digest's Top 100 courses in America. Designed by Robert Trent Jones Jr., the course is divided into three, nine-hole courses with rolling green hills, challenging holes and some of the most spectacular vistas in Hawaii.

I have many times penetrated to the heart of Hanalei's green beauty by kayak, paddling up the winding Hanalei River, past the taro farms and under the little bridges. I've also seen it from above. Almost a hundred helicopter flights a day drop into the isolated valleys, viewing the remote beaches. If in a lifetime, there is to be only one helicopter tour, this should be it.

The high sea cliffs of the Na Pali Coast are best appreciated by boat, and late afternoon offers the best light. That's when I zipped along in a Zodiac and captured my rainbow. Most boat tours now leave from Port Allen on the other side of the island because everyone wants to keep Hanalei as pure and natural as possible. Visitors can also sign up for whale-watching trips and fishing charters along the famed coast. On offer from Hanalei town are adventure hikes, historic walks and visits to the Waioli Mission Museum.

Haena Beach Park at the end of the road, is the start of the famous Kalalau Trail which leads into the wilderness of the Na Pali Coast. The trail was laid out in ancient times when Hawaiians lived in the remote valleys. Some of the original paving stones are still intact. The trail winds along precarious cliffs above the pounding surf. The surf is so powerful as it crashes relentlessly into the fortress of cliffs that even at 1,000 feet above sea level, I could feel the land vibrate from each impact.

An ancient heiau (temple), Ka Ulu a Paoa, stands as a sentinel of time beneath the towering green hills. It was dedicated to Laka, goddess of the hula, and dancers from around the islands make pilgrimages to the spot. The grass is neatly trimmed and green ti plants spring up beside the temple stones.

The past is invited to stay at Hanalei. In spite of the stream of rental cars that make their way across the old bridge to the beaches and restaurants, the surfers who live for the waves, the helicopters overhead and the brightly colored kayaks cruising past the taro fields, Hanalei is one of those places where we can nurture the illusion that Hawaii is not changing.

Rita Ariyoshi lives on Oahu. Her writing has won national writing awards including the National Steinbeck Center Short Story Competition and the Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition.

AAA Connection

AAA Colorado has several preferred suppliers, such as Pleasant Holidays, that offer a wide variety of Hawaiian vacations. For more information, call a AAA Travel professional at 866-235-7070, or visit www.aaa.com.