| :: Hawaii >The Big Island
:: |
Attraction >Landmark
|
| ::
Description and Basic Information ::
|
 Kapu's, or taboos, were strong in ancient Hawaii. Break one and you could get bashed stone dead with a club. Ever play 'hide and seek?' The stone walled 12-acre refuge in the 180-acre Pu'uhonua O Honaunau, a national historic park, was home base. If you made it inside the now restored park boundaries, priests could wash away your sins. This wasn't easy. Tides and sharks made the swim quite dangerous.
Today, the park is the kind of quiet place tourists either skip, or simply zip through in their haste peak into volcanoes. That's too bad, for the restored 1650 Hale-o-Keawe Heiau is often the site of traditional Hawaiian handicraft demonstrations like canoe making, hat weaving, poi or kapa cloth pounding and more. As a rule, there are 20-minute talks about the park at least a half-dozen times a day, and if you miss those, there is an excellent self-guided walk. Kids will love the 'lava trees' or the holes left when lava flowed in, and the tidepools along the calm shore in the Volcano's wind shadow.
Activities peak around 4th of July weekend with a hukilau version of a luau that gets everyone into hauling fishing nets, eating and drinking. There's a royal court with some Hawaiians sized to fit the furniture in Kailua-Kona's Hulihe'e Palace. All sorts of traditional games highlight Hawaiian coordination, vendors sell more Hawaiian food than anyone can manage without a nap afterwards, and as the sun sets, the sounds of drums and rocks beat out the rhythms of ancient hulas.
Labor Day brings more food, more fun and a lot more sweat as canoes race the nearly 20 miles to Kailua. There's even a torchlight parade, but a lot of paddlers aren't lifting more than a beer. Six people -- there are both men's and women's events --have to work hard to race a single or double canoe.
However, the park is perhaps best enjoyed at dawn or at dusk when you can imagine times past and, if you squint past the pair of massive carvings of the spirits of ancient gods and see a desperate fugitive sprinting over the lava to safety. As such times there's a feeling, an aura if you like, of the spirits of the refugees, and of the 23 chiefs whose bones are buried under Hale-o-Keawe Heiau. |
|
|
|
|
|
:: Hawaii >The Big Island :: |
|
|
