Kauai

Top things to do in Kauai

1. 01

   Waimea Canyon - the red gorge above the west side

   scenic nature wildlife 👍 Popular

   A ten-mile gash in the island's western shoulder, a mile across and thousands of feet deep, its walls banded red, rust and grey with waterfalls threading down the green side canyons. The road climbs the rim from the coast in about forty minutes past a sequence of lookouts, and the drive keeps going up into cooler forest above it. Mornings are usually clearest; by afternoon the cloud that feeds all this rain tends to fill the head of the canyon.

2. 02

   Na Pali Coast - the cliff wall with no road

   scenic nature wildlife adventure 👍 Popular

   Sixteen miles of pleated green cliffs standing thousands of feet out of the water on the island's northwest side, cut by hanging valleys that were farmed and settled for centuries and are now empty. There are exactly three ways to see it: the cliff trail from the north end, a boat from the harbour on the west side or out of the north shore in calm months, or a flight. Sea caves, a waterfall you can motor under and spinner dolphins come with the boat version.

3. 03

   Hanalei Bay - the north shore's two-mile crescent

   scenic surfing 👍 Popular

   A wide half-moon of sand under green mountains streaked with waterfalls, with an old wooden pier at one end and a taro valley of one-lane bridges behind it. Summer turns it into the calmest swimming and beginner surf on the north coast; winter turns it over to serious surfers and a lot of respectful spectating. The town at its back is a couple of streets of timber shopfronts, shave ice and surf shops.

4. 04

   Kalalau Trail - the cliff path into the hanging valleys

   hiking adventure scenic ⭐ Highly recommended

   The only way to walk the Na Pali coast: eleven miles of narrow, root-strewn, frequently muddy trail traversing above the sea to a beach at the foot of a valley nobody drives to. Most people do the first two miles to a stream and beach, or push another two inland to a tall waterfall; going beyond that needs a camping permit and a real head for exposure. The stream crossings flash-flood, the beach at the two-mile mark has a grim drowning record, and neither is a place for improvisation.

5. 05

   Kokee State Park and the Kalalau Lookout - the rim above the cliff valleys

   hiking scenic nature wildlife ⭐ Highly recommended

   Keep driving past the canyon lookouts and the road climbs into cool koa and ohia forest at four thousand feet, ending at two lookouts that stare straight down a Na Pali valley to the sea. Trails run off the ridge in every direction, including a boardwalk out over the swamp below the island's summit. The cloud comes and goes on a ten-minute cycle up here, so wait it out rather than driving off - and bring a jumper, because it is genuinely cold.

6. 06

   Poipu Beach Park - the sunny south-shore swimming coast

   nature wildlife scenic

   A pair of small bays joined by a sand spit on the dry south side, with a shallow lifeguarded pool that suits small children, reef fish a few strokes out and a break at the far end for beginner surfers. Hawaiian monk seals, one of the rarest seals on earth, regularly haul out and doze on the sand behind roped-off cordons; the rule is to keep well back and let them sleep.

7. 07

   Kilauea Point - the lighthouse headland and seabird colony

   nature wildlife history

   A stubby 1913 lighthouse on a cliff at the island's northernmost point, wrapped in a wildlife refuge that is one of the easiest seabird spectacles in the Pacific. Red-footed boobies nest on the slope in the thousands, tropicbirds and frigatebirds ride the updraught off the cliff, Laysan albatross nest on the grass in the winter half of the year, and the state's endangered nene geese wander the car park like they own it.

8. 08

   Wailua River - kayak up the only navigable river in the islands

   adventure nature wildlife history

   A broad, flat, jungle-lined river running out of the island's wet interior on the east side, paddled from a boat ramp near the mouth up to a landing where a muddy walk leads to a waterfall dropping into a swimming pool. Barges also run up to a fern-hung lava grotto that has been a sightseeing fixture since the 1940s. The valley was the island's royal centre, and there are temple platforms and a birthing-stone site on the bluff above.

9. 09

   Polihale State Park - the end of the road under the cliffs

   off beaten path scenic

   The longest beach in the state, a wide-open strand of sand running for miles to the point where the Na Pali cliffs begin, reached down a rutted former cane-haul track that punishes ordinary hire cars and turns to soup after rain. There is no shade, no lifeguard and a shorebreak that dumps hard, so this is a sunset-and-stars beach rather than a swimming one, with Niihau sitting out on the horizon.

10. 10

    Mahaulepu Heritage Trail - the wild coast past the south-shore resorts

    hiking nature wildlife off beaten path

    A cliff walk east from the end of the Poipu hotels along lithified sand dunes, sea arches and blowholes to a string of empty bays, with humpbacks offshore in the winter months. Halfway along, a collapsed limestone cave holds the richest fossil site in the islands, where flightless birds and the debris of an old tsunami came out of the mud. Almost nobody walks the far half of it.

11. 11

    Tunnels and Kee Beach - the reef under the mountains

    diving scenic

    The two snorkelling reefs at the very end of the north shore road, sheltered inside a shallow lagoon with a wall of green mountain rising directly behind the sand. In the calm months this is the best easy snorkelling on the island; in the swell months the same water is lethal and closed off by the surf. Access to this end of the coast runs on a booked entry and parking system, or a shuttle from town.

12. 12

    Waialeale crater - the doors-off flight into the wet interior

    scenic adventure

    The centre of the island is a cloud-wrapped summit and a bowl of thousand-foot waterfalls that no road and no trail reaches, so the only way in is a helicopter, and Kauai runs more of them than anywhere else in the state. A circuit takes in the canyon, the cliff coast and the crater when the cloud lifts. It is loud, it is not cheap, and it is the one flightseeing trip in the islands that shows you something you genuinely cannot otherwise see.

13. 13

    Ke Ala Hele Makalae - the coastal path along the east side

    scenic nature wildlife

    A paved walking and cycling path running for miles along the Kapaa shoreline on an old cane railway alignment, past beach parks, a headland lookout and long stretches where there is nothing between the path and the reef. Flat, breezy and easy, it is the only serious car-free stretch on the island and the best place to be at first light.

14. 14

    Nounou Mountain - the Sleeping Giant ridge above the east coast

    hiking scenic

    The long ridge behind Kapaa looks like a reclining figure from the highway, and three trails climb it from either side to a picnic bench on the chest with the coast, the river valley and the interior mountains all laid out. It takes a bit over an hour up, is muddy in its lower forest, and the scramble to the giant's head at the end is exposed enough that plenty of people sensibly stop short.

15. 15

    Allerton and McBryde Gardens - the botanical valley at Lawai

    nature wildlife culture arts

    A steep tropical valley on the south coast holding the national tropical botanical garden: one half a research collection of Pacific island plants, the other a series of outdoor rooms, fountains and a bamboo grove laid out around an old queen's cottage. Guided access only on the designed half, and the fig trees with the enormous buttress roots are the ones from the opening of a certain dinosaur film.

16. 16

    Old Koloa Town - the first sugar plantation in Hawaii

    history culture arts

    A short row of restored plantation-era shopfronts under monkeypod trees where the islands' sugar industry began in 1835, with a small open-air monument telling the story through the Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese and Filipino labour that followed it - which is where most of local Hawaii's food and speech comes from. A tunnel of eucalyptus on the road in is half the pleasure.

17. 17

    Hanapepe - the swinging bridge and the west-side galleries

    culture arts off beaten path

    A dusty one-street town above a taro valley that calls itself Kauai's biggest little town, with a pedestrian suspension bridge that bounces alarmingly over the river, a bookshop, a salt pond worked by families in the traditional way nearby, and more galleries than the population can explain. The animated version of small-town Kauai in a well-known Disney film was drawn from here.

18. 18

    Kauai Coffee at Kalaheo - walking the largest coffee farm in the country

    food scenic

    Old sugar land on the sunny south slope replanted with millions of coffee trees, now the biggest coffee estate in the United States, with a self-guided walk through the rows and a tasting bar working through the estate's varieties. It is a genuinely interesting look at what replaced cane, and the drive out passes the tunnel of trees and the canyon turn-off.

19. 19

    Wailua Falls - the double drop off the east-side highway

    scenic nature wildlife

    A twin curtain of water falling into a green pool at the end of a short spur road inland from Lihue, visible from the guardrail with no walking involved, which is why it is the island's easiest waterfall and its most photographed. Best in the morning light and after rain. The steep scramble down to the pool is eroded, unofficial and regularly injures people.

Getting to & around Kauai

Know before you go