Frommer's Kauai - Jeanette Foster [156]
A few suggestions if you plan to visit: Carry an umbrella (it’s very rainy here), and wear what the Hindus call “modest clothing” (certainly no shorts, short dresses, T-shirts, or tank tops); Hindu dress is ideal. Also, even though this is a monastery, there are lots of people around, so don’t leave valuables in your car.
To get there, turn mauka (left, inland) off Kuhio Highway (Hwy. 56) at the lights, just after crossing the bridge, onto Kuamoo Road (between Coco Palms Hotel and the Wailua River). Continue up the hill, for just over 4 miles. A quarter mile past the 4-mile marker, turn left on Kaholalele Road and go 1 block to the end of the road. The Information Center is at 107 Kaholalele. Park on Temple Lane. Enter the open pavilion, where a guide will escort you through the monastery. You can also visit the Sacred Rudraksha Forest at 7345 Kuamoo Road for meditation, open 6am to 6pm; or the Nepalese Ganesha Shrine and Bangalore Gallery, which are located at 107 Kaholalele Rd.
SLEEPING GIANT
If you squint your eyes just so as you pass the 1,241-foot-high Nounou Ridge, which makes a dramatic backdrop for the coastal villages of Wailua and Waipouli, you can see the fabled Sleeping Giant. On Kuhio Highway, just after mile marker 7, around the minimall complex of Waipouli Town Center, look mauka (inland) and you may see what appears to be the legendary giant named Puni who, as the story goes, fell asleep after a great feast. If you don’t see him at first, visualize him this way: His head is Wailua and his feet are Kapaa. For details on an easy hike to the top of the Sleeping Giant, see “The Sleeping Giant Trail.”
5 Paradise Found: The North Shore
ON THE ROAD TO HANALEI
The first place everyone should go on Kauai is Hanalei. The drive along Kuhio Highway (Hwy. 56, which becomes Hwy. 560 after Princeville to the end of the road) displays Kauai’s grandeur at its absolute best. Just before Kilauea, the air and the sea change, the light falls in a different way, and the last signs of development are behind you. Now there are roadside fruit stands, a little stone church in Kilauea, two roadside waterfalls, and a long, stiltlike bridge over the Kalihiwai Stream and its green river valley.
Birders might want to stop off at Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge, a mile north of Kilauea, and the Hanalei National Wildlife Refuge, along Ohiki Road, at the west end of the Hanalei River Bridge. (For details, see “Birding,” in chapter 7.) In the Hanalei Refuge, along a dirt road on a levee, you can see the Hariguchi Rice Mill, now a historic treasure.
Now the coastal highway heads due west, and the showy ridgelines of Mount Namahana create a grand amphitheater. The two-lane coastal highway rolls through pastures of grazing cattle and past a tiny airport and the luxurious Princeville Hotel.
Five miles past Kilauea, just past the Princeville Shopping Center, is Hanalei Valley Lookout. Big enough for a dozen cars, this lookout attracts crowds of people who peer over the edge into the 917-acre Hanalei River Valley. So many shades of green: Rice green, taro green, and green streams lace a patchwork of green ponds that back up to green-velvet Bali Hai cliffs. Pause to catch your first sight of taro growing in irrigated ponds; maybe you’ll see an endangered Hawaiian black-necked stilt. Don’t be put off by the crowds; this is definitely worth a look.
Farther along, a hairpin turn offers another scenic look at Hanalei town, and then you cross the Hanalei Bridge. The Pratt truss steel bridge, pre-fabbed in New York City, was erected in 1912; it’s now on the National Registry of Historic Landmarks. If it ever goes out, the nature