Adventurous types of visitors are coming to the island of Kauai to experience more physically demanding and exciting activities, like hiking.
Already known to regular visitors for its excellent hiking opportunities, today many first-time visitors head to Kauai with the primary goal of experiencing some of the island’s great hiking.
Guide or no guide?
Too many hikers feel that they do not need the expertise of an experienced guide to fully “experience” a hike. Too many times a year, the island’s authorities have to go out looking for some of these hikers. Not all of those hikers have a happy ending to their day.
Hiking is an adventurous aspect of Kauai ecotourism, and not least when you go with a guide. A guide does not walk and climb for you; A guide provides your trip with context in Kauai’s history, geology, botany, biology, and local lore, enhancing your understanding of the island. The guide is there to make sure the group makes the right decisions, including whether to continue or back off if bad weather hits.
The best of hiking tours encourage participants to blend in with the environment, whether they take place in remote mountain parks or on the coast, taken individually or with a small group. Guide or no guide? We believe that the answer is clear.
While there is no end of trails to explore on Kauai, there are four areas of particular interest: the Na Pali Coast (after the trail ends at Ke’e Beach on the north shore), Koke’e State Park (past Waimea Canyon, at the other end of the trail) and the 10-mile Maha’ulepu Heritage Trail and Koloa Heritage Trail, both on the island’s south shore.
Na Pali Coast Hike to Hanakapi’ai Beach
The Na Pali Coast Walk begins at the end of the trail on the North Shore, near Ke’e Beach. If you are a moderate to experienced hiker, you can follow the first leg of the ancient Kalalau trail to magnificent Hanakapi’ai Beach, two miles from the trailhead. This path is said to date back more than 1,000 years. The initial ascent at Ke’e Beach is steep and rocky. If it’s raining or has rained recently, it can be very slippery. Hikers should wear suitable shoes, carry a cane, and plenty of water.
Hanakapi’ai Beach is beautiful to behold but treacherous, and inland is a 300-foot waterfall. The trail, with sections that can be shortened to less than a foot wide, has views of over 1,000 feet of drop to the ocean. It is magnificent but not easy and it gets more difficult as you continue the rest of the 11 miles in the Kalalau valley.
Permits are required to go beyond Hanakapi’ai Beach and can be obtained from the Lihu’e State Parks Division.
Napali Coast Hike – Kalalau Trail
While Hanakapi’ai is generally manageable as a self-guided hike, the longest Kalalau trail is usually an overnight expedition, for advanced hikers only, and is best tried with a local provider.
As you walk along this coast, you will have wild and rugged cliffs on one side, which stretch sharply upwards, and on the other, a rolling edge of land that includes sea caves and lava arches, desolate coves and sparkling beaches.
In the winter and early spring, you can often see whales in the coastal waters, and in the summer there can be hardy kayakers, making their own pilgrimage on the island with a local provider.
Koke’e State Park and Waimea Canyon
Over 4,000 feet high, Koke’e State Park is a hiker’s paradise – a misty forest criss-crossed by more than forty miles of trails for all levels of hiking. The 20-square-mile highland swamp known as Alaka’i Swamp is home to the state’s only native land mammal, the gray bat, and features a boardwalk for comfortable walks as well as to protect rare plants. .
If you are a less experienced hiker, you can take a walk through the spectacular Waipo’o Falls of Waimea Canyon through red torch gingers and yellow orchids. The Koke’e and Waimea Canyon trails are in the same region but differ markedly in nature, the former being a lush highland forest and the latter a barren landscape of purple and red canyons.
The Koke’e Museum, operated by the non-profit organization Hui o Laka, is open every day of the year, and with knowledgeable staff and volunteers, is available to assist park visitors with information on road conditions. and the weather.
Maha’ulepu and Koloa Heritage Trails
Kauai’s southern shoreline includes popular Po’ipu Beach and an archeology and culture-rich stretch of the often rugged and rocky shoreline from Keoneloa Bay (also known as Shipwreck’s) to Kawailoa Bay, known as Maha ‘ ulepu Heritage Trail.
Along this trail, hikers will pass the Heiau Ho’oulu i’a (“temple of fishing”) and the Makauwahi sinkhole. There are also sixty-seven documented petroglyphs, many of which are often covered in sand. However, north of the beach is a large petroglyph rock containing two cup-shaped carvings on top. Paleoecological and archaeological excavations of the sinkhole have reached its age of 10,000 years and have revealed the remains of some 45 species of birds. Now a reforestation program has been implemented to replant indigenous species and help return this environment to its prehuman condition.
The Maha’ulepu trailhead, four miles round-trip, is one of 14 markers on the Koloa Heritage Trail, which enters and exits the village of Koloa and its historically rich plantation sites – century-old lava rock walls. XIII, Buddhist churches and temples, and Koloa Landing, at the same time the third largest whaling port in Hawaii.
