No Visitors Allowed

Take a vacation to Kauai, Hawaii, and look in to a mystery.

Once you are on Kauai, you will wonder about neighboring Ni’ihau, privately owned and closed to visitors. N”ihau was purchased by the Robinson family in 1864. The island measures 550 square miles, and is the westernmost of the main Hawaiian islands.

Ni’ihau (Nee-ee-how) clings to the sea, low on the horizon, visible from the southwest shore of Kauai, 17 miles away. Native Hawaiian is spoken there by the 200 or so residents. In fact, it’s the only place where native Hawaiian is a living language. Hawaiian is the language of the island’s K-8 school.

Ni’ihau residents regularly cross the strait to Kauai to buy provisions. Ni’ihau is short on provisions because it is a desert, lying in the rain shadow of the tall mountain on Kauai, Mt. Wai-ale-ale, drenched with 460 inches of rainfall every year. It is often called the wettest spot on earth.

The Robinson family, which owns Ni’ihau, has maintained sheep ranches there.

A stunning form of folk art comes from Ni’ihau. These are Ni’ihau shell leis, tiny shells strung from many strands. These tiny luminous shells come in various colors, and so whole families collect them and sort them for size and color. Then the artist, usually a woman, sets to work, punching a hole in each shell using an awl often made from a bicycle spoke (there are no cars on the island). About half the shells shatter at this point. She chooses colors in such a way as to make a final product that is textured with color.

These tiny shells are still found on Ni’ihau, but not on neighboring Kauai where agricultural runoff has tended to kill off the shell-makers. The resulting shell leis are rare, hard to find, and precious.

So, how did Ni’ihau form? Was it the first Hawaiian island, at the opposite end of the chain from the most recently formed one, the Big Island of Hawaii? Ancient Hawaiians thought it was the first one, the original home of the volcano goddess Pele, who hopped islands over the ages and is currently living in the active volcano on the Big Island. But scientists say that Kauai is the oldest island, and that Ni’ihau is a side vent of the volcano that formed Kauai. Ni’ihau is flat and sandy, except for an eroded lava dome on the eastern side of the island. There are also two freshwater lakes.

It’s possible to find a map of Ni’ihau, and pictures of its rock formations. But how can you go and see? In fact, the Robinson family is allowing a few forms of tourism now. Some helicopter tours from Kauai are allowed to land on remote beaches. And you can take a hunting safari, to control populations of feral bighorn sheep and Polynesian boars. In addition, scuba divers regularly dive off Ni’ihau.

Access to Ni’ihau is from Kauai, 17 miles away. While you’re on Kauai, you’ll want to play on the beaches and in the surf. You’ll also want to look at the stunning natural wonder that is the Na Pali coast, the northwest side of Kauai.

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