Home | Travel-and-leisure

The Forbidden Island

Take a vacation to Kauai, Hawaii, and look in to a mystery.

Here's the mystery: what's it like on the Hawaiian island of Ni'ihau? This 550-square-mile island is the westernmost of the main Hawaiian islands and has been privately owned since 1864 by the Robinson family, which forbids tourists.

Ni'ihau (Nee-ee-how) is separated from Kauai by a 17-mile strait. Standing on the Kauai shore, you can see Ni'ihau slung low on the horizon. If you could go to Ni'ihau you would hear native Hawaiian spoken. In fact, it's the only place you can go to hear native Hawaiian spoken as a living language. Hawaiian is taught in the island's K-8 school.

Ni'ihau residents travel freely between Kauai and Ni'ihau. They need to to get provisions for living on the dry island. Ni'ihau is a desert, shielded from wet trade winds by the mountain on Kauai, Wai-ale-ale, the "wettest spot on earth." Wai-ale-ale receives 460 inches of rainfall per year.

Sheep ranches have historically supported the people of Ni'ihau, under the ownership of the Robinson family.

A stunning form of folk art comes from Ni'ihau. These are Ni'ihau shell leis, tiny shells strung from many strands. These tiny luminous shells come in various colors, and so whole families collect them and sort them for size and color. Then the artist, usually a woman, sets to work, punching a hole in each shell using an awl often made from a bicycle spoke (there are no cars on the island). About half the shells shatter at this point. She chooses colors in such a way as to make a final product that is textured with color.

The Ni'ihau shell leis are precious in part because the shells are rare on other Hawaiian islands. Kauai, for example, was home of sugar plantations for many years. The agricultural runoff has destroyed many of the sea creatures that make shells.

So, how did Ni'ihau form? Was it the first Hawaiian island, at the opposite end of the chain from the most recently formed one, the Big Island of Hawaii? Ancient Hawaiians thought it was the first one, the original home of the volcano goddess Pele, who hopped islands over the ages and is currently living in the active volcano on the Big Island. But scientists say that Kauai is the oldest island, and that Ni'ihau is a side vent of the volcano that formed Kauai. Ni'ihau is flat and sandy, except for an eroded lava dome on the eastern side of the island. There are also two freshwater lakes.

Seeing the low lava dome of Ni'ihau from the southwest side of Kauai is tantalizing. You can find a map of Ni'ihau. You can even find pictures of rock formations on Ni'ihau. What if you are dying to see for yourself? If you are willing to pay for the privilege, you can go--the Robinson family allows a few helicopter tours to remote beaches on Ni'ihau. Or they may let you take a hunting safari to shoot feral bighorn sheep and Polynesian boars, when those populations need culling. Or you can scuba dive offshore--no permission needed.

All that is available from Kauai, Ni'ihau's big sister island 17 miles away. Kauai has immense charms of its own; not only does it have the usual beaches and surf, but it has incredible beauty on its northwest coast, called Na Pali, or The Cliffs.

Article Source: http://www.uberarticles.com/articles

If you love a mystery, you'll come to Kauai for a Kauai Hawaii vacation. You'll want to learn all about Niihau, the off-limits Hawaiian isle, as well as about Kauai, land of lush natural beauty, from writer Phyllis Wheeler. Don't reprint the same version as everyone else. Get your own unique content Hawaii article here.

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, which means you may freely reprint it, in its entiretly, provided you include the author's resource box along with LIVE VISIBLE links (without "nofollow" tags).