November 2011

Kauai's Jurassic Falls. The only way to see it from the ground is to take a helicopter ride. Photo by David Lansing.

After flying over Poipu and Hanapepe, Isaac banked the helicopter sharply to the right and we started to fly up the Hanapepe Valley following the course of the river below us. I’ve got to admit that the flight is both exciting as hell and a bit freaky, mostly because you are just so low in the valley and zipping by the sides of the mountains on either side of you.

About halfway back to the falls, Isaac puts on the Jurassic Park theme music which is a little hokey but actually does add a little ambience to the final fly-in. And then there it is right in front of you: Jurassic Falls.

Isaac landed the bird on a very small grassy landing and we got out and walked just a short distance to the falls. Which were amazing. I asked Isaac if it was okay to get in the water in front of the falls and he said, Well, you can…but I don’t recommend it. The force behind that water is so incredible and you can only imagine what would happen if you got nailed by a rock or a coconut coming off the falls.

So we all had our picture taken in front of the falls (of course) and then hopped back in the bird to fly over the rest of the island.

Linda from Island Helicopters called me shortly before noon. “Can you make it to Lihui in about an hour?” They’d had a cancellation and there was a seat on a chopper with my name on it if I could get myself there around one.

When I arrived they asked me to get on a scale. They even told me to hold my camera if I was going to take it on the helicopter. “We need exact weights,” she said. A few minutes later they shuttled me over to the heliport just north of the Lihue airport. As I’m sitting there putting on my inflatable vest (“in case of a water landing”), the shuttle van pulls up with the rest of the group on my flight: a couple of young honeymooners from California and a family that includes grandma and a two-year-old toddler. Which sort of surprises all of us, including the guy giving us instructions on how to board the helicopter and what to do in an emergency.

“Did you book the child?” he asks the mom. Oh, sure, says the mom. They knew. The thing is, says the guy, it’s a six-passenger helicopter and now I’ve got seven people. He’ll sit on my lap, says the mom. It’s not a problem.

The helicopter employee scratches his head and says he’s going to have to go talk with the pilot about the situation. A few minutes later he’s back and says, Okay, the kid can go, but he has to wear his own inflatable vest. Which is a problem because the minute the man tries to put the orange vest on the kid, he starts thrashing and crying in his mother’s arms. He wants nothing to do with it.

Meanwhile I’m thinking: Wait. They insist that I stand on the scales holding my camera so they know the exact weight on the helicopter and now we’ve got a kid sitting on his mother’s lap? Does anyone know how much the kid weighs?

Anyway, we load. The honeymooners get the primo seats in the front so they have unimpeded views of everything in front of them. I sit next to grandma in the back. The pilot, whose name is Isaac, makes sure we’re all properly strapped in and that our headsets work and then, bang, we’re off. Floating like a seagull high above Kalapaki Bay, on our way to Jurassic Falls.

Most of the waterfalls on Kauai are impossible to get to short of a helicopter ride, but Opaekaa Falls is viewable right from the highway. Photo by David Lansing.

If Kauai wasn’t called The Garden Isle they’d have to call it The Waterfall Isle. How many waterfalls are there on the island? Too many to count. Most of them are unnamed (and almost impossible to get to). They plunge off the many side of Mt. Waialeale, one of the wettest spots on earth (100 years’ worth of records show that rainfall on Waialeale has varied from a low of 244 inches in 1993 to 683 inches in 1982). And all this rain has to eventually make its way down the 5,148-foot peak to the ocean.

One spot on Mt. Waialeale is called the “Wall of Tears” because there are so many waterfalls plummeting down the deep, tropical green sides of the mountain that it looks as if it is crying. But the only way to really see the Wall of Tears is by helicopter and even then you have to get lucky since the area is usually socked in with clouds.

I’ve been looking into taking a helicopter tour. There are quite a few companies that offer you a ride up to Mt. Waialeale but the one that has got my attention is Island Helicopters. According to their web site, they’re the only helicopter tour company that will not only take you up to Mt. Waialeale to see the Wall of Tears but they also will take you to the 400-foot-high Manawaiopuna Falls, also known as Jurassic Falls because this is where the helicopter bringing Laura Dern and San Neill lands and they get into the vehicle that takes them into Jurassic Park. Better yet, the helicopter actually lands at the base of Jurassic Falls and lets you hang out there for awhile. And they’re the only tour company that can do that.

So this afternoon I called the helicopter company to see if I could go up tomorrow. They told me they were fully booked but if I wanted they’d put me on a wait list and give me a call in the morning if they had a cancellation. So now I’m anxiously waiting to see if I’m going to make it on a flight. I figure that if I’ve truly made amends to Ganesha through my offering at the fruit stand, I’ll get the call. If not, I guess I’m still on the outs with the elephant god.

Photo by David Lansing.

Just down the road from the Hanalei Colony Resort is the Wainiha General Store which has quite a reputation in the area. I’ve stopped in a couple of times to grab some bottled water or dried coconut and never had any problems, but others tell a different story. The store is owned by a petite woman from Texas who some say is a very nice lady and others claim is a bit crazy. There are tales of her chasing people out the door, ranting and raving at them, and even flipping people off. Others say she’s quite friendly.

It’s almost like we’re talking about two different people here, and maybe we are. Maybe two women work in the store and one is the kindly old lady who always waves and says Mahalo when you leave and the other is a batshit crazy loon who throws change at you while cursing to the heavens.

There’s a Wainiha local who has a blog site called Wainiha Nation and he writes odd tales of the area, including stories about the store which, he says, “is the epicenter of all mischief and the magnet of all trouble in the little village of Wainiha. When you roll down the Wainiha Grade, and cross the first little bridge into town, the very thing that catches your eye like an object of terrible fascination is the Wainiha General Store and a surfboard just beyond that warns you that this is your Last Chance. I would like to place an addendum under that sign that reads Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here. It is here that you will find the entrance to the Underworld.”

He goes on to say that the store is run by three women who “all look exactly alike and you never know which one you are dealing with.” It’s all written very much tongue-in-cheek. Then again, maybe he’s on to something. Maybe the store truly is owned by a woman with multiple personalities who, as one person told me, “has some major issues.” Fortunately for me, every time I’ve gone in, I’ve been greeted by the nice lady. The one who smiles when she takes your money and says Have a nice day when you leave. But I can’t say for certain that the other two women, who look exactly like her, don’t work there as well. In any case, I’m just glad I haven’t run into them. Yet.

Photo by David Lansing.

At the Starbucks closest to where I live the barristas have taken to glueing down their plastic tip jar because twice in the last year thieves have just walked off with it. So it amazes me to see all these little roadside stands selling backyard fruits—avocados, mangos, strawberry guava—on the honor system. Yesterday I stopped at a stand selling bouquets of ginger plants and bird of paradise that had a little woven basket in front with a handwritten sign that said “Please Make Your Own Change.” In the basket was fifteen or twenty dollars. This on an island where every beach has multiple signs posted warning you not to leave anything of value in your car.

This got me to thinking about the trouble I’ve been in with the Hindu gods ever since I took a couple of forbidden photos of the temple at the Kauai Hindu Monastery. Maybe there was another way to appease Ganesha and his pals. Afterall, what you’re supposed to do for the Remover of Obstacles is leave an offering of fruit or flowers for him before you visit the temple so why not visit a roadside fruit stand and make my own little offering?

So this morning I pulled my car over on to the side of the road in front of a modest little house with a broken down trailer in front of it that somebody had modified into a fruit stand. In the back of the trailer was a wooden cabinet, covered with corrugated tin, that said FRUITS and beneath that a sign with an arrow pointing to a little slot that said DONATION and leaning against the trailer was another sign that said GOD BLESS U.

Perfect, yes?

There wasn’t much in the way of fruit at the fruit stand—five or six avocados and some past-their-prime papayas. But I didn’t care because I didn’t really want the fruit. On an envelope from my hotel I’d written FOR GANESHA and inside I put a five dollar bill and slipped it through the donation slot. And left. With just one of the avocados. Hoping I’d finally appeased the gods.