Info about Kauai
Kauai: The island movie paradise
Kauai is the oldest island in Hawaii, and with an area of over 550 square miles, is the fourth largest island there. Known as the ‘Garden Isle’, it is home to many different varieties of fruits and crops, and features outstanding natural beauty. Because of these features, the island is often used by film directors to shoot their latest blockbusters, such as James Cameron’s Avatar.
During the reign of King Kamehameha, the Kauai and Niihau Hawaiian Islands were the last to join his Kingdom of Hawaii. Their leader, Kaumualii, resisted Kamehameha for years. King Kamehameha twice prepared a large fleet of ships and canoes to seize the islands by force, however he failed twice: once because of a storm, and once because of an epidemic. Faced with the threat of invasion again, however, Kaumualii decided to join the kingdom without bloodshed, and became Kamehameha's vassal in 1810, ceding the island to the Kingdom of Hawaii after his death in 1824. In 1815-17, Kaumualii held secret talks with representatives of the Russian-American Company in an attempt to gain military support from Russia against Kamehameha, but the negotiations failed and the Russians were forced to abandon all of its Kauai presence, including Fort Elizabeth, after it was revealed that they had lost support of Tsar Alexander I.
Lihue city, on the south-east coast of the island, is the site of Kauai County and is the island's second largest city. Kapaa, is on the Coconut Coast (site of old coconut plantation) about 6 km north of Lihue, which has a population of nearly 10,000, about 50% more than in Lihue. Waimea, Kauai island, where the capital of the south-west, was the first in Hawaii, visited the British explorer James Cook in 1778. Kauai was home to thousands of wild chickens, which have few natural predators. The chickens originate from Polynesian settlers who brought them to provide food. In 1992, Hurricane Inika may have caused an indirect change to the ecosystem in Kauai,which caused a rise in the chicken population. Kauai is the site of the U.S. Navy's Barking Sands Pacific Missile Range Facility on the sunny and dry western shore.
Kauai is home to the Napali coast, which is rich in natural beauty with the green cliffs towering high into the sky and majestic waterfalls in the deep, narrow valleys. Such is the beauty that the island has been used to create many of the Hollywood films shot in Kauai, including Jurassic Park I, II and III, Raiders of the Lost Ark and King Kong. Tourists can view the area in a novel manner, and discover the stunning coastline and Waimea Canyon by helicopter. There are a number of tours available that provide a landing tour into Manawaiopuna Tower Falls, which feature in Jurassic park.
Visitors are also able to venture deeper into Kauai to enjoy the locations where some of the biggest Hollywood movies were filmed. Some local tour operators offer Theatre-On-Wheels tour buses visiting the sites of a number of legendary cinematic masterpieces, including Six Days, Seven Nights and Raiders of the Lost Ark.