Author: Dacy

It began as two words typed into a web search engine: hiking and Kauai. I was planning a trip to Hawaii and wanted to visit the island of Kauai in spite of it’s claim to being home to the Wettest Place on Earth (a close second is Barry’s pants moments before we sit down to a high stakes cribbage match).

The Sierra Club rates the Kalalau Trail as one of the most difficult trails. I did not know that when I applied for a permit six months before flying to Kauai. I had heard that it was the most spectacular overnight hike, with amazing views of rocky cliffs on the edge of the ocean and deep jungles with countless flowers. I found both descriptions to be true.

At six a.m. on a dazzling Kauai morning, my husband and I stood impatiently in Captain Zodiac’s storefront in the one-horse town of Hanalei, hoping that the drop-off boat to Kalalau would run.

We were on our way to one of the most remote, and most beautiful, beaches in the Pacific. There are no roads to Kalalau. It’s smack in the middle of a thirty-mile run of vertical sea cliffs, and devilishly hard to get to. The average person has two choices.