Hanalei Bay

I’d seen photos of Hanalei Bay for years before I ever stood in front of it — the pier, the crescent of sand, the ridgeline of Makana behind it catching the last light — and I assumed, as you do with places that photograph too well, that it had to be exaggerated. It isn’t. If anything the photos undersell it, because they can’t capture the sound: the particular hush of a two-mile bay with almost no development on it, just mountains and water and the occasional rooster.

The Pier at the End of the Day

The Hanalei Pier is the obvious spot and the obvious spot is correct. Locals fish off the end of it, kids jump from the pilings on calm days, and everyone else just sits on the beach in front of it and watches the sun drop behind the ridge. Lia and I came back three evenings in a row, which is unusual for us — we’re normally trying to see something new — and each sunset was different enough to justify the repetition. One evening a rainbow arced directly over the pier for about four minutes. Nobody around us seemed surprised by this. On Kaua’i, apparently, this is Tuesday.

Taro Fields and the Valley Behind Town

Inland from the bay, the Hanalei River winds through taro fields that have been cultivated in some form for close to a thousand years — the National Wildlife Refuge protects much of the valley now, and the patchwork of flooded green terraces against the mountain backdrop is one of the quieter, less-photographed sights on the island. We pulled off at the scenic overlook on the highway coming down from Princeville and just stood there for ten minutes, which is longer than we’d planned and shorter than it deserved.

Hanalei Town Itself

The town is one main road, a handful of surf shops, a shave ice stand, and Tahiti Nui — a bar-restaurant that’s been serving the same unpretentious mai tais since the 1960s. We ate poke from a plastic container on the tailgate of the rental car, which felt like the correct way to eat poke in Hanalei, and watched surfers paddle out at the river mouth where the waves break with more consistency than anywhere else on the north shore.

When to go: Summer (May to September) brings the calmest bay water for swimming and stand-up paddling. Winter delivers serious surf at the river mouth and can bring heavy rain and occasional flooding — check the forecast before you go.