Sunny.\u00a0 80.\u00a0 Ocean blue.\u00a0 Ocean green.\u00a0 Waves steady.\u00a0 Low tide today at 9:28AM.<\/p>\n
Took a 2 hour hike along the Maha’ulepu Heritage Trail.\u00a0\u00a0This is an up and down trail along the southern shore of the island.\u00a0 It begins in the County Park right next to the Hyatt and heads east from Shipwrecks Beach.<\/p>\n
At the county park an older Hawai’ian man with a great bushy white beard got out of a beat up pick up, slung a plastic bag over his shoulder and headed out along the trail.\u00a0 I followed a bit later.<\/p>\n
There was a blue tent pitched not far east of the parking lot, also not far from the sign that read No Camping in County Parks.\u00a0 The trail goes up over a lithified dune into Pa’a Dunes (dry and rocky).\u00a0 All along the way trails worn down by hikers, runners and island fisherfolk weave in and out, sometimes three, sometimes only one.\u00a0 One trail finds shade, if there is any and another finds the edge nearest the ocean.\u00a0 Through Pa’a I hiked the edge trail going out and the shade trail coming back.<\/p>\n
After the dunes come a stretch of sandstone pinnacles (think Lake T’ai rocks) eroded by wind and rain and ocean into fantastic shapes, shapes that any Chinese literati would make a home for in their study.\u00a0 On a tide pool just below the sand pinnacles I saw the Hawai’ian man waking in flip-flops collecting something from the pool area just vacated by low tide.\u00a0 On the way back I went out there myself and tried to figure out what he was after.\u00a0 The only thing I saw were sea slugs.\u00a0 Are they edible?<\/p>\n
The trail runs up hill from the pinnacles to a bay filled with black lava rocks covered with a green lichen.\u00a0 These rocks, stacked carefully to form a huge structure, look like other Hawai’ian temples or heiau’s, but these are so old that no one, not even the Hawai’ians know its name or whether it was ever a heia’u.\u00a0 It’s called the fishing temple, the assumption being that offerings to Keoniloa, god of the sea, placed here would ensure good fishing.\u00a0 No one really knows.<\/p>\n
After crossing just behind the heia’u, the trail strikes out across\u00a0another sacred landscape, the Poipu golf course, scene of many of pro golf’s most important contests.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Well, where the trail used to run near the edge people fell off as the ledge crumbled.\u00a0 They died.\u00a0\u00a0So, the trail\u00a0now runs along the\u00a0greens for about 300 yards.\u00a0 There are signs to make sure hikers look for golfers and vice versa.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I stopped about three-quarters along the way and struck out off the trail to find Makau-wahi sinkhole (Fear, Break Through). It is a small part of the largest limestone caves found in Hawai’i. Paleoecology and archaeology have found evidence here of how the first humans affected the local biome.\u00a0 This is one of only a few such sites in the world.<\/p>\n
The walk back, with the sun higher, became hot and somewhat onerous, so I headed back to the lanai for a rest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sunny.\u00a0 80.\u00a0 Ocean blue.\u00a0 Ocean green.\u00a0 Waves steady.\u00a0 Low tide today at 9:28AM. Took a 2 hour hike along the Maha’ulepu Heritage Trail.\u00a0\u00a0This is an up and down trail along the southern shore of the island.\u00a0 It begins in the County Park right next to the Hyatt and heads east from Shipwrecks Beach. At the … Continue reading Offerings to Keoniloa, God of the Sea<\/span>