Hanalei Pier: Kauai’s walk down Hollywood Boulevard
This view of the Hanalei Pier is taken from the far end of the beach from the St. Regis Hotel in Princeville—which is across a river mouth from the beach of Hanalei Bay. The river didn’t stop godlike George Clooney and his movie family in The Descendants, who apparantly walked on water to confront the real estate agent at his beach cottage. The vantage point for this picture is the garden terraces above the river, where some of the Academy Award winning moive South Pacific was lensed (an easy, but hard to find stroll from the St. Regis). The terraces are home to a dozen concrete ruins being swallowed up by greenery after Hurricane Iwa in 1982 blew the development away.
These kayakers are headed from the ocean up the Hanalei River. The pier, which was given a new roof and truss beams in 2013, has also starred in several movies, including comedy clunkers McHale’s Navy and the Wackiest Ship in the Army, as well as the fine adaptation on W. Sommerset Maughm’s short short Rain, which was called Miss Sadie Thompson in the film version.
As Valentine’s Day approaches, we are taking this opportunity to experiment with our iphonography techniques here in magical Hanalei. For more romantic escapes, you’ll find a wide range of special places in the Kauai Trailblazer guide.
