Wild isles

Somehow, this wasn't how I'd long imagined my tropical-island getaway: staring into a steep gully, about 100 feet deep, filled with jungle flora, a narrow creek, and some very jagged-looking rocks.
This was billed as a Zip Line Safari, and my entire family was about to cross to the other side of the ravine, half a football field away, with the help of a harness, a pulley, and a thin-looking overhead wire - and possibly a prayer.
"Whoo-hooo!" That was my 11-year-old son, Jesse, sounding like Bart Simpson while flying like Peter Pan, if Peter Pan had worn a red plastic hard hat. Next was my silently stoic 13-year-old daughter, Julia, followed by my wife, shouting (later emphatically recanted): "I don't like this!!"
Now, it was my turn to walk the plank.
This was Kauai - not exactly the Hawaii I had imagined in a youth of watching Hawaii Five-0 and surfing competitions on ABC's Wide World of Sports, but exactly the Hawaii we wanted for an action-filled family vacation with two kids. Indeed, in looking into a Hawaiian vacation, we had ruled out the better-known islands, including Oahu, home to the high-rise hotels of Waikiki, and the now trendier Maui - too much development laced among the volcanoes and the greenery.
That's why we'd set our sights instead on Kauai (or, locally, Kaua'i), the westernmost of the populated Hawaiian islands - developed, yes, but not too much so. Here, on a lush, mountainous isle with just 55,000 residents, we were still able to experience all the things you'd want guaranteed in a Hawaiian vacation: the amusingly tacky excess of a beachside luau, riding the wild surf (on a boogie board), island sunsets, even an all-instrumental "surf band" pounding out surfer goldies like "Pipeline."
But Kauai offered us something more - more outdoorsy, more adventurous, less claustrophobic. We called it, only half-jokingly, "Extreme Hawaii." In one event-filled week, we snorkeled in the clear waters underneath spectacular and inaccessible (except by boat) sheer cliffs. We kayaked, then hiked, deep into a rainforest to swim under a 150-foot waterfall. We bicycled down a steep and sharply curving canyon road.
We lifted off in what was, for Jesse and me, our first helicopter ride, in and out of the steep canyons created by the runoff from the rainiest spot on Earth (really), Mount Waialeale. And last but not least came the family zip-line outing.
Oh, and also my up-close and personal encounter with a large stingray - but more on that later.
Our adventures took place for the most part in exotic locales that felt like settings for Hollywood movies. There's a good reason for that: Most probably were. Among the movies filmed here, at least in part, were all three Jurassic Park flicks; the middle King Kong; Harrison Ford's Six Days, Seven Nights; Hook; Outbreak; Elvis Presley's Blue Hawaii; and the granddaddy - South Pacific. (Also, the pilot for the TV show Gilligan's Island, which explains why my son kept singing its theme song, in full operatic glory, in the shower each day.)
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In an age of high-tech travel, Kauai is not easy to get to. In part because of an airline schedule change, it took us one entire day (yup, I mean 24 hours) from the time we awoke to drive to Newark Liberty International Airport before collapsing into our beds at the Sheraton Kauai, literally five minutes after we checked in. (Getting home was better, a wind-aided 18 hours or so.)
Upon arrival, we learned that an island so far from home, yet still part of the good ol' U.S. of A., makes for an odd duck, or, more appropriate, an odd rooster. Some parts of the roadscape are almost too familiar: There are now a Wal-Mart and a Starbucks, although you're likely to also see a flock of wild chickens on the road outside. While some of the locals we met complained about overdevelopment, my sense as a first-timer was that Kauai is still a lot less built-up than it could be, helped in part by a local law essentially barring high-rises.
One reason for its rural nature is that much of the land remains locked up by large agricultural owners, including the perfectly named Robinson family, which owns several big pieces of Kauai - including the last remaining sugar plantation - as well as Niihau, the 72-square-mile so-called Forbidden Island for cattle farming that looms off Kauai's western coast and houses residents who want to maintain an old-time Hawaiian way of life. There's actually not much farming left in Kauai; pineapples left for the Philippines years ago, although there is a coffee plantation.
Midway through our trip, Jesse and I got the lay of the land from the air, circumnavigating the island by helicopter in roughly an hour. Just the sight of my son sitting next to our pilot with his headphones on, a half-mile over the breathtaking cliffs of the western shore, was worth the fare, but so was the panoramic view of inaccessible waterfalls and canyons.
"This is what I call 'the Imax moment,' " said the characteristically chirpy pilot, Jim, as he rose over a mountaintop to reveal the splendor of the early-morning surf on the west shore.
We had met that surf up close two days earlier, on our boat tour aboard a large catamaran with about 30 other rough riders. After 10 minutes of snorkeling on the island's Na Pali ("pali" means "cliff") Coast, my daughter and I decided we didn't really want to know that fairly large fish were swimming just a few inches from us, so we kicked back to simply enjoy the thrill of swimming underneath sheer cliffs etched with spectacular caves and natural arches.
The cool waters also helped us break up the rough bobbing of what was billed as a "sunset dinner cruise" - although the folks in our party of four were either sick or nursing the motionally challenged, so no one ended up actually eating.
That night of fasting was the exception, though. Kauai, it turned out, specialized in meals that tend to fuel our family vacations best, including what we think of as our two basic food groups, pizza and burgers. In fact, the Bubba Burgers on the main drag in Hanalei - the north shore mecca for aging surf-hippies (top-selling T-shirt: "Old Guys Rule") - were simply the best ever in a long lifetime of burger-eating, two perfectly grilled patties.
Foodwise, the Bubba Burger was even more memorable than our pig-and-taro luau, one of two held weekly on the grounds of our moderately luxurious resort, the Sheraton Kauai, in the pleasant and not overly built-up resort area at Poipu Beach, on the island's south shore.
In fact, a "resort potato," someone without a car or the inclination to move much, could be entertained quite nicely at the Sheraton, which also has a nightly mai tai reception, the bar that featured the above-mentioned surf band, a funky (but small) pool with a waterfall, and a white, sandy, surf-battered beach.
But we prefer to get out, which is why we assaulted most of Kauai by land, sea and air.
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We headed all the way north to Hanalei and its funky shops a couple of times, stopping to tour the tropical flora of Na 'Aina Kai Botanical Gardens, a 240-acre garden and preserve where owners Ed and Joyce Doty (the ex-wife of late Peanuts cartoonist Charles M. Schulz) highlight native plants, often accented by whimsical sculptures. We also explored Waimea Canyon on the west side of the island, said to be the largest in the Pacific Rim. In fact, the winding and relentlessly steep 12-mile drive to the main viewing site was a bit like our boat ride - not for those with a weak stomach.
But the same can't be said of our breezy trip downhill - on mountain bikes. On our last morning in Kauai, we arose at 6 (an ungodly hour, especially in a tropical paradise) to hook up with Outfitters Kauai. They drove a dozen people and bicycles to the top of Waimea. The swift (and largely pedaling-free) ride - illuminated by the rising sun behind us and sweeping views of the ocean surf pounding Niihau on the far horizon - was a daybreak I'll never forget, although in our adventure-laden tour it actually wasn't even the most memorable event of that day.
That would be our Zip Line Safari, over steep gullies and waterfalls in a rugged, junglelike setting on a private plantation - a tour also arranged by Outfitters Kauai. Over a couple of hours, we zipped, and occasionally screamed, as we glided over a couple of gullies, used a rope to rappel down a steep cliffside, and dangled high over a stream.
To the uninitiated (me), it may sound a tad terrifying, but the presence of a 7-year-old girl in our group helped to stifle any fears. The trip was capped with a dip in the chilly waters under Kipu Falls, where the more adventurous plunged from a rope swing atop a 20-foot cliff.
I passed on the rope swing; I'd already proved my adventure mettle for the week. A couple of days earlier, my kids and I were boogie-boarding and bodysurfing at Poipu Beach, a state park just five minutes down the road from the Sheraton. The rough, salty surf was everything I'd imagined a trip to Hawaii would be, so much so that the opening instrumental riff of Hawaii Five-0 steadily played through my head.
Suddenly, my legs and stomach felt as if they were enveloped by rubber. I looked around for a raft, or a small child, and felt a pang of horror to see none, just a floppy shadow that splashed away and darted near other swimmers. "A giant sea turtle!" several exclaimed, erroneously: A day or two later I confirmed that it had instead been a close encounter of the stingray kind.
Normally, I'm the kind of person who gets weirded out by fish just touring an aquarium - but I was strangely calm about the incident. This was our "Extreme Hawaii," after all, and for one week the extreme came to feel surprisingly normal.

A trip to remember: a journey down Waimea River

"From mauka to makai," our native Hawaiian site supervisor said, gesturing from the mountains to the ocean of the picturesque island of Kauai.
Native Hawaiians take pride in the natural beauty of their homeland, and tourists can enjoy beaches on each coast, in addition to guided boat tours of the sea, kayak tours and even helicopter rides!
Our group managed to squeeze in some sight-seeing; part of the Habitat for Humanity Challenge trip each Intersession involves learning about the culture and environment in which students are immersed for two weeks in January.
We took our leisure time very seriously, gazing in amazement at surfers attempting to wrestle the gigantic waves.
At one of the first beaches we pulled up to, Alexis Rosker complained, "These waves aren't even as big as the ones on the Jersey shore." A few days later, we headed out to the west coast of Kauai to a beach named Polihale. In order to reach Polihale, we had to endure a tumultuous five-mile drive down a dirt road.
After about 45 minutes of turbulence in our tightly packed 15-passenger van — named The Silver Bullet since it somehow survives times like these — we pulled up to possibly the most gorgeous coastline I have ever seen.
With infinitely high cliffs coming straight down to meet sandy shores and waves that towered over any wave on the Jersey shore, surf enthusiast, Alexis, was not complaining any longer. After experiencing a perfectly hued sunset, we packed up and prepared ourselves for the bouncy journey back to the main road.
The next day we woke up way too early for our kayak trip and hike to a fresh spring waterfall. We met our tour guide, a tall and soft-spoken hippy with a towering pile of dreadlocks on his head.
He patiently helped us load our kayaks into the Waimea River, one of the longest in all of Hawaii, and took us on an half an hour trip downstream.
After arriving at the rocky bank where we docked our kayaks, we commenced our hike to the waterfall. Since it had rained the night before, the trails were very muddy and we were warned to take extreme caution while trekking along the 2-foot -wide ledge overlooking the river.
We could hear the rushing waterfall in the distance as our guide pointed out ancient Hawaiian remains of villages and carvings in the rocks bordering the native habitat.
Finally we arrived at a towering waterfall and quickly noticed that we were in the company of colorful roosters. The waterfall looked as if it had come out of a storybook and provided us with a cool swim in the hot midday sun.
We learned that the surrounding vegetation had been introduced to the island by foreigners. Lisa Irizarry commented, "It was hard to believe how developed the trees were since they were not originally indigenous to the island."
On the final day of our exploration, we exited our cabins to hike up the lofty mountain range of Kahili Mountain Park. We spent a good 45 minutes practically scaling the extremely steep, narrow trail and attempted not to look down until we reached the peak.
Finally arriving at our destination, we braved the wind and enjoyed a breathtaking view of the entire southern coast of the island, disbelieving the height we had achieved.
On our way down, the leading member discovered the most efficient way to descend: sliding down on our rears. It was a swift journey to the base, where we raced back to our cabins for lunch.
I cannot fully express the natural beauty of this amazing island. It is understandable how the native population enjoys such a peaceful, placid and spiritual connection to their homeland and ancestors.
The culture of the island is directly intertwined with the natural environment, but I will save that for next time. Aloha!

Travel: Where Old Hawaii Lives On

A touch of paradise on the Na Pali coast of Kauai.
If you’ve gone to Hawaii only once, you’ve probably visited Oahu, Maui, or the Big Island. These destinations are lovely, of course, but more and more they are likely to elicit the "I wish I'd come here 20 years ago" response. Kauai, however, still has that Old Hawaii charm. Basically it’s a matter of scale. Oahu and Kauai are about the same size, but Kauai has only about 60,000 residents to Oahu’s 900,000.
The island, roughly round and 33 miles across at its widest point, is nearly ringed by a two-lane coastal highway that connects a string of small country towns, where you’ll see ranchers driving muddy pickups with a dog in the back. The first plantation in the islands was established on Kauai, and agriculture on its emerald coastal plains and valleys remains a key part of its identity.
Only one plantation is still operating, but the locals still hunt wild pigs in the abandoned sugar cane fields and in the mountainous interior, which is too rugged for roads. Wild roosters seem to be everywhere, and hotels taller than a coconut tree (four stories) are not allowed.
Here are some suggestions for an itinerary that will liberate you from pricey resorts, transport you into rain forests and mountains, and show you why Hollywood directors have selected the island’s unblemished vistas for locations for more than 70 films, from South Pacific to Jurassic Park. (And for more ideas visit www.kauaidiscovery.com.)
Start your exploration on a full stomach with a taste of Kauai's culinary history. Hamura Saimin (808-245-3271), not far from the main airport in Lihue (population 6,000), is a hole-in-the-wall with a friendly diner ambience. Though it’s on a back street across from a Salvation Army loading dock, it’s often crowded and is consistently rated the best restaurant on the island. Last year it won the America’s Classics award from the James Beard Foundation.
You’ll find savvy haoles (non-natives) from gated communities rubbing elbows with the local working class and enjoying Hamura’s renowned saimin, a sort of Hawaiian gumbo. It evolved in the plantation era, when Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, Korean, Hawaiian, and Filipino workers all socialized together, especially at potluck dinners. Their culinary legacy is most commonly expressed as big bowls of savory broth filled with freshly made noodles and whatever else inspires the cook: scallions, sliced boiled eggs, won tons, fish cake, sausage, bits of ham, etc.
At Hamura's, you can have a whole meal for less than $10, including a slice of delicate lilikoi (passion fruit) chiffon pie. No reservations, no credit cards—and, as a faded sign on the wall says, no chewing gum under the countertop, please.
Next head west along the southern coast to the village of Waimea, where English the explorer Capt. James Cook first landed in the islands. It’s still largely intact as a plantation town, thanks to the influence of the preservation-minded Fayé family, heirs to a former sugar plantation. With their charming Waimea Plantation Cottages (www.waimea-plantation.com), 60 renovated (or replicated) dwellings built between 1884 and about 1930, the family has shown that history is good business.
Nameplates on the cottages identify families that once lived in them. Relocated to a century-old coconut grove on a black-sand beach, the cottages have no air conditioning. Rather they offer ceiling fans, ocean breezes, claw-foot tubs, rattan furniture, and screen doors that bang shut. And colorful roosters strutting around the lush yards, making a nuisance of themselves at dawn. If you don’t want to use the kitchen, work your way through the menu of the microbrewery on the property.
Waimea is a convenient base from which to drive north to Waimea Canyon, which Mark Twain called the “Grand Canyon of the Pacific.” The 1,800-acre canyon park and lookout are 12 miles away at the end of a steep, winding road that traces the rim. The timeless orange-red canyon walls plunge 3,000 feet to the river that sculpted the panoramic view. The only distraction is overhead—the noisy flight of what some locals call the state bird, helicopters.
Adjacent to the canyon is 4,300-acre Koke’e State Park, which shouldn’t be missed by any hiker visiting Kauai. The views along its 19 trails vary from merely scenic to spectacular. Admission is free, including a small but engaging natural history museum (www.kokee.org), and there are very modest fees for campsites and much-in-demand cabins (808-335-6061). If you don’t mind roughing it in a historic bunk house (temporarily closed for renovation) built by the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps, you can stay at the park free in exchange for helping conservationists clear out invasive flora that has been overwhelming native plants that grow nowhere else in the world (www.krcp.org).
For those who don’t care to hike, Aloha Kauai Tours offers a half-day, four-wheel-drive back-roads tour that unlocks the gates of a former plantation (www.alohakauaitours.com). The trip explores unforgettable countryside, including the valley where dinosaurs roamed in Jurassic Park. This is the historic Grove Farm, once owned by one of Queen Liliuokalani’s ardent American defenders, who didn’t go along with the coup that deposed the islands’ last monarch in 1895. Now the farm is part of the 49,000-acre holdings of Steve Case, the founder of America Online, a native of Kauai whose grandfather and father worked for the plantation.
On a recent trip the tour guide, “Uncle” Joe Breu, a retired policeman, drove through former cane fields now pasturing beef cattle. He stopped at the top of a hill, surrounded by grazing cows, some with egrets standing on their backs. Against a background of mountains covered in mist, a clump of trees with distinctive flat crowns stood in silhouette on a grassy ridge. Why did it seem as if we had magically strayed into Africa?
Those are albizia trees from Africa, Breu explained, the first of many alien species he would point out. From bamboo, sugar cane, and ti plants (for cooking and hula skirts, brought in by Polynesian settlers) to the pine trees brought by Captain Cook (for ship masts), much of what walks, flies, or is rooted in Kauai has come from somewhere else. Even plumeria, used for leis and one of the island’s signature horticultural plants, is an alien, from Mexico.
As we bounced along the dirt roads, blue-headed pheasants and a wild pig burst from roadside brush. Breu stopped at the rim of a small extinct volcano, whose inside slopes were covered with flowering bushes and small trees. To keep his visitors from falling 250 feet into the crater, he had erected a crude barrier of guava branches jammed into the earth. One of them, a descendant of guava plants brought in by Spaniards in the 1800s, had sprouted and was starting to bear fruit.
For an introduction to the mountainous center of the island, Aloha Kauai Tours also offers a rainforest outing that takes visitors to the foothills of 5,000-foot Mt. Waialeale, an extinct volcano and one of the wettest places in the world. It gets more than 400 inches of rain a year. The mountain is the fountainhead of the island’s seven rivers, including the only navigable river in the state.
After fording streams and passing through dense rain forest on a twisting, narrow road too rough for anyone with brittle bones, the tour van deposits passengers at a gateway left over from Jurassic Park. From there it’s a less than 1.5-mile hike to the end of the trail, which passes a nineteenth-century irrigation system, much of it chopped through miles of solid rock, with tunnels just large enough to crawl into. It is still in use.
The northern side of Kauai is the island’s least developed part and a must-see for anyone in search of Old Hawaii. On the way, you'll pass through Kapaa, a former pineapple cannery town and the largest community (about 10,000) on the island.
A walking tour, led by a volunteer from the Kauai Historical Society (www.kauaihistoricalsociety.org), puts flesh on the bones of Kauai’s story. During the early plantation era, for example, the Hee Fat building, named for the Chinese “rice king” who owned it, harbored an opium den. During World War II, when 40,000 troops were stationed on the island, Bob Hope entertained them in what is now the town’s ballpark. (The islanders of Japanese descent were never interned. They were simply too indispensable as schoolteachers, business owners, etc.)
Down the street is Larry’s Music, named for the late owner, who used to give piano lessons. If a student had no way to get to his shop, Larry drove to the pupil’s home with an upright piano in his pickup truck.
Then there's the Maytag Building, where the second-generation Maytag repairman is so lonely (since Sears came to the island and started eating his lunch) that he has taken up painting between service calls. Meanwhile latter-day hippies, reminiscent of the 1960s, when Elizabeth Taylor’s brother presided over a nearby commune, hang out in front of Java Kai, an Internet cafe in a former Chinese bank with foot-thick concrete walls. You can enjoy pure Hawaiian-grown coffee there, which is scarce on the mainland; what is sold as Kona coffee is usually a blend with less than 10 percent of its beans from the Big Island.
Behind the town, a blacktop path along the beach covers the old bed of a narrow-gauge railroad that once transported sugar cane and cane workers, some of whom took their final rides, in caskets, to a cemetery near the tracks a few miles out of town.
If you stroll along the beach, you are likely to see large outrigger canoes on the shore. Competitive canoeing is a growing sport and a sign of surging Hawaiian pride, for the islanders carry the DNA of ancient Polynesians, perhaps the finest open-boat navigators in history, who sailed by the stars and reputedly could confirm they were near land by tasting the sea.
From Kapaa to the end of the road, northbound drivers cross a series of one-lane bridges, literal as well as symbolic barriers to development that North Shore residents refuse to accept. When cars simultaneously arrive at a bridge from opposite directions, aggressive driving tends to separate the visitors from locals. For the natives, yielding is a sign not of meekness but of good manners.
Except perhaps at Princeville, a luxury resort and gated community, life in northern Kauai is generally very laid back and Old Hawaii. The residents are at least an hour from Lihue, which means that few tourists reach their Bali Hai, the dreamy hideaway of South Pacific, which was filmed here.
Some visitors pay $500 a night to stay in Princeville. But if your notion of comfortable lodging doesn’t require a half-acre lobby sheathed in marble, consider the small, more affordable Hanalei Colony Resort, an older but well-maintained condo complex on a secluded bay, with no phones or TVs in its rooms (www.hcr.com).
Here the north shore’s notorious surf pounds wildly enough to disturb sleep. Don’t resist it; get up when it’s still dark and go out barefoot on the lanai in time to catch the complete unfolding of a Maxfield Parrish sunrise. It’s as close as you can get to heaven and still have a pulse.

Nine Puaiohi birds to be set free

Nine endangered puaiohi birds raised in captivity will be set free in Kauai's remote Alakai Wilderness this weekend.
Handlers say the small gray-brown birds will face their toughest days as they fly off into the rain-soaked ohia forest.
The puaiohi are a success story among the 35 threatened or endangered native Hawaiian bird species.
There are about 300 to 600 puaiohi on Kauai, the only place they have ever been found.
Conservation biologists have released 132 of the birds into the wild since 1999.
Hawaii Endangered Bird Conservation Program is managed by the San Diego Zoo. "

Survey Reveals United States Passport Restrictions Will Boost Domestic Travel

Recommendations by the 9/11 Commission have led to a new law that requires US citizens returning to the country by air to show a passport. As of 2006, only a quarter of the American public actually held a passport. Hawaiian Beach Rentals recently conducted an informal survey that projected a marked increase in domestic travel as a result of the new passport legislation.
In accordance with the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, the passport requirement is a part of the states' and Homeland Security's Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative. Charles Koehl of Hawaiian Beach Rentals states, "Our staff recently conducted an informal survey of our customers. In light of the new passport regulations, more than half the customers questioned intend to make domestic travel arrangements as opposed to scheduling international travel. In fact, one of our customers who's spent her life traveling the south pacific told us that as long as her favorite Kauai condo is available, there's really no need to leave the US."
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As early as January 1, 2008, the Department of Homeland Security expects to have similar passport requirements that apply to sea travel. Traveling to domestic destinations such as an all-inclusive Kauai vacation package will allow tourists to plan exotic, luxurious, and hassle-free vacations by air or sea without having to obtain a passport.
Mr. Koehl further says, "American travelers now find it easier to come to Hawaii than other international destinations, but still want a customized experience that only local people can help coordinate. Hawaiian Beach Rentals offers accommodations such as Kauai vacation rental homes, condos and hotels, as well as airfare and car rentals to customers wanting to travel to Hawaii. Our services include up to date local information about Hawaii and the ability for customers to quickly and easily pay for their vacation online via a secure payment process." Additional information and incredible color photos of domestic travel destinations in Hawaii are available online at Hawaiian Beach Rentals.