Garden Island offers true trek to paradise

Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Feb 23, 2003 by Anne Chalfant Knight Ridder Newspapers

KAUAI, Hawaii -- The Napali cliffs tell their own story -- it's just a matter of listening.

Some ancient memory shard stirs at the sight of these raw, prehistoric cliffs rising in the mist of the Hawaiian island of Kauai. It's no surprise that the velvety green crags served as dinosaur land in the movie "Jurassic Park" -- there are few places like this on the planet.

The approach to the Napali Coast is blessedly limited. This is no theme park. You can arrive by foot or by sea, but there's no road, no parking lot. The occasional sightseeing helicopter does buzz by, an annoyance to those caught up in quieter contemplation of this land before time.

I took both land and sea routes. One day I sailed to the cliffs by chartered catamaran; the next I hiked part of the Kalalau Trail into the cliffs' rainforest.

However you choose to visit the Napali Coast, Kauai has already prepped you for a gentler Hawaii. Only 33 miles wide and 25 miles long, the "Garden Island" is a sanctuary. Its tropical showers scare some sun lovers away, but they conjure the island's lush greenery and voluptuous floral displays.

We sailed the Napali Coast on rough-and-tumble October seas, departing from Port Allen on Capt. Andrew Evans' 55-foot commercial catamaran. We stopped to snorkel: The water was warm, and yellow and blue fish flitted about, but soon we were sucking down snootfuls of water in the unrestful seas.

So we sailed on. Eerie in the misty distance lay Ni'ihau, the "Forbidden Island." To gain entry to the secretive island, you must be Hawaiian, or be invited.

More spookiness: a long stretch of beach bordering Pacific Missile Range at Barking Sands. Missiles are launched during tests here, and pleasure craft haven't been allowed to land on the beach since Sept. 11, 2001.

Farther up the coast, the water did its part to create an otherworldly atmosphere. Sea blue turned to spilled-inkwell blue, a hue so convincing that it seemed if you dipped in a towel, it would surely come back stained.

And then someone shouted, "Flying fish!" and off to starboard what looked like a flock of hummingbirds hurled themselves out of the water and dived back down. Shortly after that, our catamaran was led by a pod of spinner dolphins leaping and twirling directly in front of the bow like mythical sea helpers.

As our craft began to approach the Napali cliffs, the sea color changed to the improbable bright blue of antifreeze, yet with the transparency of glass. Little neon-blue waves danced and smacked against rocks, tossing foam like playthings at imaginary targets.

Captain Andy offered an explanation for the weird blue seas along this coast. Lava beds underlie the dark areas, and the brighter spots owe their color to the coral beds just below.

The palette of improbable blues fit well with the surreal green cliffs that rise as high as 2,700 feet above the sea.

The catamaran slowed so we could survey the cliffs and gaze up at the green valleys, where Hawaiians farmed until the 1920s, when they were lured away by town life in Hanalei.

We looked up into misty valleys and into intriguing little sea caves at the feet of the cliffs. Sea kayaks poke around in them on calm summer days, but the October choppiness would have made sea- kayak soup.

As we sailed past Hanakapi'ai Beach -- the beach I planned to hike to the next day -- hikers waved to us.

When it was time to head home, we sailed back to Port Allen at a rapid pace, the catamaran smacking the hefty swells and causing more than a few of us to sip ginger ale to ease the quease. But Captain Andy had reason to high-tail it home -- the naval base had radioed that it planned to lob a missile at 3 p.m., and the choice was either to whiz past the base before the launch or to sit and wait out missile practice. The captain rolled.

We sailors were pretty wave-whipped by the time we landed, and I headed to my room at the Princeville Resort for a hot shower and what had become a sunset ritual -- watching the daily wedding on the resort's little beach on Hanalei Bay.

Each day, the wedding ceremony ended as the sun started to set, and the photographer went to work afterward with the newlywed couple on the beach, cliffs in the background. The drill was repeated daily - - sunset shots of the couple, one final photo of the groom scooping up his bride in her billowing gown, sun dipping behind the dreamy cliffs.

Blessed must be the weddings that take place on the shores of Hanalei Bay, for it surely is one of the most beautiful places on earth. The movie "South Pacific's" mythical Bali Hai was filmed here.

The next day, my friend Laurie and I were off to scout dinosaurs along the cliffs of the Napali Coast.

Actually, scouting red mud was more like it. Mud here is a distinctive Kauai souvenir that smears into your clothes and never, ever washes out. Hikers and bikers wear the red ooze of courage with pride -- and T-shirts that tout "Red Mud."

The Kalalau Trail rates as one of the most beautiful hikes in the world, and one of the most difficult -- earning a Sierra Club rating of 10 on its difficulty scale. But that's if you hike all the way to the Kalalau Valley, which requires an overnight stay. Day hikers can find happiness in sticking to the first two miles of the trail, a hearty trek through green rainforest with spectacular views of the sea. The trail ends at the inaccessible beach, Hanakapi'ai.