Agencies in charge of hiking areas may close an area because they’ve realized it’s environmentally too sensitive to survive more human visits. An area once open to overnight camping may become a day-use-only area. Trails become impassable from lack of maintenance. Happily, agencies may open new areas because they’ve been able to acquire new acreage or complete a trail-building project.
Since I first wrote this book, I’ve seen old trails close and new trails open on Kauai—and then vanish as the rainforest reclaimed them in the wake of a natural disaster. Other trails on public land have become inaccessible because to get to them, you have to cross private land, and the landowner no longer grants permission to cross the land.
Change is the only thing that’s constant in this world, so that guidebook authors and publishers always play “catch up” with Nature and with agencies. We want to keep guidebooks up to date, but we are always at least one step behind the latest changes. The day when you’ll have constantly-revised books on-line at your wristwatch/computer terminal is not quite here, although it’s getting closer. It’s possible that a few trail descriptions are becoming obsolete as this book goes to press.
Write for the latest information
You should use this book in conjunction with the latest trail information from the agency in charge of the areas you plan to hike in (the Division of State Parks or the Division of Forestry and Wildlife). However, this book gives you a much more complete picture of Kauai’s principal hiking and backcountry camping opportunities than information available from any single agency can. And it describes those opportunities from a hiker’s perspective.
It’s a good idea to write to these agencies as soon as you’ve read this book and decided where you want to hike and camp on Kauai. Ask them for their latest trail and camping maps, regulations, and permit-issuing procedures. Enclose a stamped, self-addressed envelope for your convenience in getting the information you need as soon as possible. Their addresses and telephone numbers are in “Permits.”
Prepare yourself with general information, too
A generous source of a wide variety of useful information about Hawaii is the Hawaii Visitors Bureau. You’ll find it at (800) GO-HAWAI as well as on the World Wide Web at http://www.visit.hawaii.org, a site that offers colorful pages including “Vacation Planner” pages for the State of Hawaii and for each major island.
Here are a couple of guidebooks I use. For all the Hawaiian islands, pick up the latest edition of J.D. Bisignani’s Hawaii Handbook (Moon Publications, Chico, CA). For an outstanding guide to Kauai, get the latest edition of Andrew Doughty and Harriett Friedman’s Ultimate Kauai Guidebook (Wizard Publications, P.O. Box 991, Lihue, HI 96766-0991, [email protected]).
Let me know what you think and what you find
I hope this book helps make your visit to Kauai even more enjoyable than it would have been otherwise. I plan to keep on updating it regularly, and you can help me. Let me know what you think of it. Did you find it helpful when you visited Kauai? Was it accurate and complete enough that you enjoyed the walks and hikes you took based on the book? Did you notice any significant discrepancies between this book and what you found when you visited Kauai, discrepancies that you judge are not just the result of two different perceptions of the same thing? What were they? The publisher and I are very concerned about accuracy. We’d appreciate your comments. I’d also like to know about it if you think there are ways in which the book can be improved. Write to me in care of Wilderness Press, 1200 5th Street, Berkeley, CA 94710, or send an email to [email protected].
Spoken Hawaiian:
An Incomplete and Unauthoritative Guide
What, only 12 letters?!
Nineteenth-century American missionaries used only 12 letters to create a written version of the spoken Hawaiian language. Superficially, that might make Hawaiian seem simple. But Hawaiian is a much more complex and subtle language than 12 letters can do justice to. However, we’re stuck with those 12 letters, the five English vowels (a, e, i, o, u) and seven of the consonants (h, k, l, m, n, p, w).
Consonants
The consonants have the same sound in Hawaiian as they do in your everyday English except for “w.” “W” is sometimes pronounced as “v” when it follows “a,” always pronounced as “v” when it follows “e” or “i.” (For example, the devastating 1982 hurricane’s name is pronounced “I-va,” not “I-wa.”)
Vowels
The vowels are generally pronounced as they are in Italian, with each vowel sounded separately. Authentic Hawaiian makes further distinctions, but those are of more interest to scholars than to hikers.* The following is a simplified system. Vowel sounds in general are:
a: like “ah” in “aha.”
e: like “ay” in “day.”
i: like “ee” as in “whee!”
o: like “o” in “go.”
u: like “oo” in “food” (or “u” in “rude”).
Notice that that means that when you see two or more of the same letter in a row, you pronounce each of them separately:
“Kapaa” is Ka-pa-a.
“Kokee” is Ko-ke-e.
“Iiwi” is I-i-wi.
“Hoolulu” is Ho-o-lu-lu.
“Puu” is Pu-u.
That seems too simple, and it is. If you tried to pronounce every vowel, speaking Hawaiian would turn into a nightmare. You wouldn’t live long enough to pronounce some words. Fortunately, several pairs of vowels often—but not always—form merged sounds.
Vowel Pairs Whose Sounds Merge
Like every other language, Hawaiian has vowel pairs whose sounds naturally “smooth” into each other. They’re similar to Italian or English diphthongs. The degree to which the two sounds are merged in Hawaiian is officially less than occurs in English, but most Hawaiian people I’ve talked with on Kauai merge them fully. Vowel-pair pronunciation is approximately:
Syllables
Every Hawaiian syllable ends in a vowel sound. A Hawaiian syllable never contains more than one consonant. That means every consonant goes with the vowel that follows it. Every vowel not preceded by a consonant stands alone when you break a written word into syllables (you may smooth some of them together when you speak). For example:
Accent
In general, the accent falls on the next-to-last syllable for words with three or more syllables and on the first syllable for words of two syllables. For words of more than three syllables, you put a little stress on every other syllable preceding the accented one. Don’t worry about this; it seems to come naturally.
There are common-usage exceptions, such as makai (ma-KAI, with the accent on the last syllable). When you see exceptions such as those, chances are that what has happened is that European usage has fully merged two sounds into one. Proper Hawaiian pronunciation of makai would be closer to “ma-KAH-i,” a three-syllable word with the last two syllables almost merging.
Hint for Longer Words: Repetition and Rhythm
Have you noticed the tendency in long Hawaiian words for groups of letters to repeat? That kind of repetition is fairly common. When you see a long Hawaiian word, don’t panic. Identify its repeating letter groups, figure out how to pronounce them individually, then put the whole word together. Chances are