Visiting Niihau

You are looking at the only piece of tourist infrastructure on the entire island of Niihau-- this shack, euphemistically called a "pavilion".  There are no ABC Stores, no golf courses, not even an airport.

We landed yards away, on a flat piece of lava rock.  We are to spend 3 1/2 hours at a beach facing Kauai and Lehua.

The beach, upon first blush, is serene and untouched.  Aside from the pilot and my fellow travelers from the chopper, we are alone.

But upon further inspection, especially up near the high tide line, we noticed a lot of trash.  The windward coast touches the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.  Trash from all over Asia and Oceania has washed up.  And because it is so desolate and outside of the tourism bureau's jurisdiction, no one has picked up the trash.

It's ironic that the most common item that has fouled up the beach and absolutely failed to disintegrate is the liquid soap bottle.

I was so dumbfounded, I had to confirm with my wife-- That's a toilet bowl, right?

I took this emergency eye wash/shower sign home with me as a souvenir. 

There were plenty of nets and floats, many of which had Japanese writing on them.

A lot of plastic has disintegrated into tiny shards.

This Sears DynaPly tire is from the late 1970s, me thinks.

We had a change of plan during our stay on the beach.  Apparently, this has only happened one other time in the pilot's 11 year tenure.  The absolute rule is to keep the tourists away from the locals.  But today, just a few days before Thanksgiving, the co-owner of the island is delivering turkeys and sundries (like a huge plastic picnic table) to the islanders via a borrowed naval landing craft.  Our beach was the ideal place to land that day and three Korean War-era deuce-and-a-halves filled with locals were on their way to greet and empty the boat.  So the tourists had to be evacuated from the beach in order to avoid contact.

But how?  One local was kind enough to pick us up in this Dodge M37, drive us a short distance, and drop us off at another beach.  Score!  Again, I've purposely avoided taking any pictures of the locals.

At the second beach, we took a short walk, until we saw that bloated and endangered monk seal, lying motionless.  We ran back to the pilot to tell him about our discovery.  Fortunately, it's just a really lazy (and very alive) seal.

This picture really captures the spirit of Niihau.  Deserted, with a hint of humans.

I couldn't resist taking this picture as we took off.  It's one of the deuce-and-a-halves, filled with goodies from the landing craft.  Black Friday came early for Niihauans.