Princeville

Princeville is the planned, polished counterpoint to Hanalei’s scruffiness one bay over — a clifftop community of resorts, vacation rentals, and golf courses built in the 1970s on land that used to be a sugar plantation. I’ll admit I arrived skeptical. Manufactured resort towns in beautiful places usually diminish them. Princeville, somehow, mostly doesn’t, because the topography refuses to be tamed no matter how many fairways you lay over it.

The View the Golfers Get for Free

The Makai Golf Course’s back nine runs along the clifftop with ocean views that would justify greens fees three times what they charge, and you don’t actually need to play golf to see them — the public can walk sections of the cart paths near the clubhouse at quiet hours, and the view from the overlook near the Westin is free to anyone who parks and walks five minutes. We stood there at golden hour and watched the light turn Hanalei Bay, visible in full sweep below, into something closer to a painting than a photograph.

Queen’s Bath, With Real Caution

A short, rooty trail near the Princeville subdivision leads down basalt cliffs to Queen’s Bath, a natural tide pool carved into the lava rock. It is genuinely beautiful and genuinely dangerous — rogue waves have killed people here, and every sign along the trail says so in language blunter than most tourist infrastructure allows itself. We went on a flat, calm summer day, checked the surf report twice beforehand, and still climbed down feeling more cautious than curious. The pool itself, when the ocean is behaving, is a still, clear window of water framed by black rock. When it isn’t behaving, you should not be anywhere near it.

Kilauea Point, Just Down the Highway

Ten minutes east, the Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge protects a lighthouse and a headland thick with nesting seabirds — red-footed boobies, wedge-tailed shearwaters, the occasional albatross depending on season. We paid the small entrance fee expecting a quick stop and stayed the better part of an hour watching frigatebirds ride the thermals off the point, tails forked like something drawn rather than born.

When to go: Year-round for the views; visit Queen’s Bath only in calm summer conditions and never during high surf. Kilauea Point’s seabird nesting season peaks roughly March through August, when the refuge is busiest with wildlife.