The plane I'm on dips below the clouds and I get my first look at the island of Kauai, a lush garden surrounded by the blue waters of the Pacific Ocean. Having grown up in Ireland, I hear myself saying what people often say when they visit my own homeland: "It's so green!"
About five million years old, Kauai is the wettest, greenest, and oldest of the eight major islands that make up the U.S. state of Hawaii. It lies more than 4,000 kilometers southwest of my home in Los Angeles. Known as the "Garden Isle," this is a tropical paradise of mountains, valleys, rainforests, and waterfalls. With around 72,000 inhabitants, most of the island hasn't been developed, so it's the perfect place to explore.
As the plane descends, I try to make out the summit of Mount Waialeale, the extinct volcano in the middle of the island. I learn later that it's only visible for a few days of the year; the rest of the time, like today, it's covered in clouds.
This is one of the wettest places on earth, with more than 11,000 millimeters of rain a year. Fortunately, most of the rain falls on the central mountainous region, with some coastal areas receiving only showers or remaining dry and sunny for much of the year.
I see my first rain as I drive southwest from the airport into the famous Kauai Tree Tunnel, a natural arch of eucalyptus trees that leads to the island's sunny southern shore. A few minutes later, the rain stops, and I'm rewarded with a spectacular rainbow, one of many I'll see arching across the horizon on this tropical isle.
Chickens on a beach
At 1,430 square kilometers, Kauai has more than 180 kilometers of coastline, almost half of which is made up of beaches. My first stop on the island's south coast is Poipu Beach, said to be one of America's best beaches. It's a popular place to go swimming and snorkeling because it has a protected cove populated by fish and turtles, many of which I see lying on the beach to rest.
With its palm trees, golden sands, and warm waters, Poipu is a typical Hawaiian beach, except for one thing: the many chickens crossing the sand. I soon learn that wild chickens have become a defining characteristic of Kauai. They wander freely, cross roads, and hang around restaurants, hoping tourists like me will ignore the signs that say, "Please don't feed the chickens."
Locals here love telling tourists about the chickens' origins, which began in 1992 with Hurricane Iniki, the most powerful ever to strike Hawaii. The island's many chicken coops were blown open, freeing the birds. Their numbers have multiplied since then. Locals love giving tourists their wild chicken recipe, which goes something like this: "Put a chicken and a rock in a pot of boiling water. Boil for two weeks, until the rock is tender. Then throw out the chicken and eat the rock." That's how bad wild chickens taste - luckily, for them.
A tropical wonderland
From Poipu, I travel to the east side of the island, where I visit Smith's Tropical Paradise in Kapaa, the location of an evening luau (traditional party, with entertainment).
Kamika Smith, the general manager, shows me around the 30-acre botanical garden, where I see nene (Hawaiian geese), peacocks, more chickens, and over 20 types of fruit, including coconuts, mangoes, avocados, breadfruit, and macadamia nuts. Kamika explains that, when Kauai was formed, it was a bare rock in the middle of the ocean. All its flora and fauna had to be brought here, by wind, water, or people, the first of whom arrived from the Marquesas Islands around A.D. 400.
The botanical garden is on the island's largest and longest river, the Wailua River. This is the only river in Hawaii that you can navigate by boat. The Smith family offer visitors a three-kilometer-long trip along the river to a lava rock cave known as Fern Grotto, named after the Boston sword ferns that hang over it.
After getting out of the boat at the edge of a rainforest, I walk through a tropical wonderland to what looks like the entrance to paradise. Near the mouth of Fern Grotto, the Smith family band play a charming version of the "Hawaiian Wedding Song," in celebration of the many weddings that have taken place here.
Every shade of green
On the west side of the island, the biggest attraction is Waimea Canyon, known as "the Grand Canyon of the Pacific." I stop off at the town of Waimea, where British Captain James Cook became the first European known to visit these islands, on January 18, 1778; he was killed by islanders on the island of Hawaii just over a year later. I visit the Captain Cook Monument and get a frosty treat at JoJo's Shave Ice (said to be the best on the island) before going north to the canyon.
Going up the curving road to the Waimea Canyon lookout, I notice the relative dryness of the land and the redness of the soil. The winds that come from the northeast release most of their rain on Mount Waialeale, leaving this area relatively dry. The red soil is a result of the high iron content of the volcanic soil, which has oxidized over time.
Further up, the landscape becomes greener and the air cooler, and I feel the first raindrops of the day on my skin. There's nothing like that sense of expectation before you first look at something you know you'll remember forever, and when I look down at the kilometer-deep canyon, I'm not disappointed.
Formed by the erosion and collapse of the central volcano that formed Kauai, each layer represents an eruption and the flow of lava that followed. Although this canyon is smaller than the Grand Canyon, and at 16 kilometers much shorter, it's more colorful, with hills and valleys in reds, browns, and greens that contrast beautifully with the blue skies and fluffy white clouds above.
I don't think any view could be more beautiful than this, but I see that I'm wrong when I arrive at the final lookout, Puu o Kila. From here, I look out over Kalalau Valley, a tapestry of every shade of green you can imagine, to the rugged cliffs of the Napali Coast. The view is truly breathtaking - even more so when a bank of clouds sweeps in, filling up the valley and making it disappear.
A coastal wonder
One main road goes all around Kauai, except for a 27-kilometer stretch of the northwestern Napali Coast, which you can reach only on foot or by boat. Now that I've seen the coast from above, I also want to see it from below, so I decide to take a boat tour. But not just any boat tour: I want to go on the smallest, fastest, and most exciting boat possible.
Early the next morning, I drive south again, to Port Allen, and get on a seven-meter-long inflatable raft with seven other tourists who, like me, are brave (or crazy) enough to go on a "Na Pali Snorkel Tour" offered by Kauai Sea Tours. After a quick safety lesson from our captains, Shawn and Jamie, we sail out into the ocean, holding onto ropes with our hands and feet as we bounce across the waves. We stop to snorkel and later sail with a school of spinner dolphins, watching as they skim the water and spin in the air.
It's an exciting ride that turns awe-inspiring when we arrive at the Napali Coast, where sheer green cliffs drop a kilometer into the ocean below. Shawn expertly navigates the turbulent waters to bring us under one of the waterfalls, cascading down the cliffs and into the mouth of a cave, though the crashing waves stop us from going inside. Sailing further along the coast, he shows us the locations of movies that were filmed here, including King Kong, Jurassic Park, and Pirates of the Caribbean.
Jamie points out Niihau, a private island that lies 27 kilometers to the west of Kauai. Owned by the family of a Scottish woman that bought it in 1864, and closed to everybody but its owners and inhabitants, this is the only place in the world where Hawaiian is spoken as an everyday language.
Sugar then, coffee now
One of the biggest changes to come to Kauai in recent years has been the end of the sugar cane industry. This dominated Hawaii for more than a hundred years, bringing immigrant workers from China, Japan, the Philippines, and other countries. But mechanization in mills on mainland U.S., and the rising cost of labor, shrank the industry and caused Hawaii's sugar mills to shut down.
Thanks to the end of the sugar cane industry, nowadays, one can go mountain tubing with Kauai Backcountry Adventures, one of the world's only underground tubing adventure tours. After a bumpy ride with about a dozen other tourists through the former Lihue Plantation, which opened in 1849 and closed in 2000, I put on gloves and a headlamp and sit in an inner tube. We float through a canal, along waters channeled from the summit of Mount Waialeale, inside five tunnels that were hand-built about 150 years ago to irrigate sugar cane. I swirl along, bumping now and again into rocky walls and the other tubers, before coming out into the daylight and flying down a dip in the canal to end the ride.
My final visit is to the Kauai Coffee Company, another former sugar plantation in Kalaheo, on the island's south side. This is now the biggest coffee producer in the U.S. The guide on my free walking tour tells us that the coffee farm has four million trees, each of which produces five pounds of "cherries," or one pound of coffee, a year. She invites us to pick a yellow cherry. I squeeze mine and out pop two coffee beans. I put one in my mouth. The taste is sweet and delicate, just like the spirit of this glorious island that has stolen my heart.