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Kauai - The Garden Isle

Official Color: Purple - Flower: Mokihana

"Kauai is the oldest of the main Hawaiian Islands and nature has had ample time to work, sculpting Kauai into a beauty among beauties. Flowers and fruits burst from its fertile soil, but "The Garden Isle" is much more than greenery and lush vegetation - it's the poetry of land itself. Its mountains have become rounded and smooth and its streams tumble to the sea and have cut deep and wide, giving Kauai the Wailua River, the only navigable river in Hawaii. The Waimea River is the island's longest at about 20 miles and the Hanelei River moves the most water. The interior of Kauai is a dramatic series of mountains, valleys and primordial swamp. The great gorge of Waimea Canyon, called the "Grand Canyon of the Pacific" is an enchanting layer of pastel colors where uncountable rainbows form prismatic necklaces from which waterfalls hang like silvery pendants. The northwest is home to the seacliffs of Na Pali, mightiest in all of Oceania, looming 4,000 feet above the pounding surf." ~ J.D. Bisignani

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Ni'ihau - The Forbidden Island

Official Color: White - Flower: White Pupu Shell

Legend says that the Goddess Papa, after a reconciliation with her husband, Wakea, in Tahiti, became pregnant and gave birth to Kauai. Ni'ihau and the tiny island Lehue at the northern tip of Niihau were the afterbirth. Though barren, rocky and not particularly suitable for agriculture, receiving an average of 30 inches of rain per year, Ni'ihau has the largest lake in Hawaii, Halalii Lake. In olden days, the people of Niihau thrived trading seafood and crafts. In the 1860s, King Kamehameha sold the island for $10,000 to a Scottish family who had immigrated to New Zealand. To this day the family is the sole owner of the island where they operate a cattle and sheep ranch, though they live on Kauai. Niihau is the last haven where the only pure Hawaiians still live. Outsiders are forbidden to visit Niihau without an invitation from the owners or someone who lives there, though inhabitants are free to come and go at will. Until their recently getting a helicopter, messages to the outside world were sent by homing pigeons.

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Big Island of Hawaii - The Orchid Isle

Official Color: Red - Flower: Red Lehua

Also known as "The Volcano Island" is more fascinating than you can imagine. It includes Kilauea, Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa volcanoes, two of which tower 13,700 feet above the Pacific. The island is home to coffee plantations, lush green valleys, green sand beaches, black sand beaches, the largest privately-owned cattle Ranch in the U.S. and over a dozen telescopes atop Mauna Kea, including the 2 largest in the world. The Big Island is more than twice the size of all the other Hawaiian islands combined and offers the most diversity. Geologically, the Big Island is the youngest of the Hawaiian islands and the most volcanically active. The Big Island was the first to be populated by Polynesians about 600 AD and was the birthplace, in 1753, of Kamehameha the Great who consolidated the islands into one kingdom, which he ruled until his death in 1819. In the 1200s, the Tahitians introduced luakini or human sacrifice temples which later spread throughout the islands. The British Navigator and explorer, Captain James Cook, who introduced Polynesia to Europe, died on the Big Island of Hawaii.

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Maui - The Valley Isle

Official Color: Pink - Flower: Lokelani

Maui is the only island in Polynesia to be named after a god. Kumulipo, the ancient genealogical chants of the Hawaiians, sing of the demigod Maui who was a mythological half-human sorcerer. Maui was a prankster on a grand scale who used guile and humor to create some of the most amazing feats of derring-do ever recorded. A Polynesian combination of Paul Bunyan and Hercules, Maui had adventures known as "strifes". He served humankind by fishing up the islands of Hawaii from the ocean floor, securing fire from a tricky mud hen, lifting the sky so humans could walk upright and slowing down the sun god with a lasso from atop Haleakala (House of the Sun). Centuries ago, Maui was really two separate islands, but finally joined together. From the air or on a map, Maui looks like a small egg and a large one in a frying pan. East Maui is the larger egg, which is really Haleakala and its hinterland. The area which joins east and west Maui is the "Isthmus". Some say its Map looks like Maui stooping to look at Kahoolawe.

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Kaho'olawe - The Forgotten Island

Official Color: Gray - Flower: Hinahina

Mythology holds that Kahoolawe was a sacred island born to Wakea and Papa, the two great mythical progenitors of Hawaii. It was a difficult birth, which almost killed Papa and Kahoolawe was the child. Small enclaves of Hawaiians lived on Kahoolawe for centuries. In 1917 Angus McPhee built a cattle ranch and vegetable farm. If Niihau is called "The Forbidden Island" then Kahoolawe should be called "The Forgotten Island". It is indeed a modern tragedy that this island was seized on December 8, 1941 and its inhabitants evicted by the United States Government who made it a bombing range for target practice for the American military until 1990. The only inhabitants of Kahoolawe are a band of wild goats that have refused to be killed off by the bombing. In spite of the destruction wreaked by years of bombings from the military, there are scores of archeological sites and remains of Heiau, traditional Hawaiian temples, platforms of skillfully fitted rocks, where structures were built and offerings were made to the gods.

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Lanai - The Pineapple Island

Official Color: Yellow - Flower: Kaunaoa

In olden times Lanai had a long dark past in Hawaiian legend as a desolate place haunted by man-eating spirits and fiendish ghouls. Pince Kaululaau was exhiled from Maui to Lanai by his father King Kakaalaneo. He cleared Lanai of its evil spirits by trickery and opened the door for settlement in about 1400 AD. Soon planting and fishing flourished. Lanai is also home to Ceylonese Axis deer that swam over from Molokai, wild bighorn Corsican Mouflon sheep and North American pronghorn antelope. In more modern times, Lanai produced over 90% of the America's pineapples and the little village called Lanai City, in the center of the island, with a population of 2,700 is one of the most delightful and unique in the world as it nestles among the Norfolk pines at the base of Lanaihale, the island's highest mountain. The village was built in the 1920s by the Dole Pineapple Company when James Dole bought the entire island. The houses today are a rainbow of bright colors that would raise eyebrows in the rest of the world.

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Molokai - The Friendly Island

Official Color: Green - Flower: White Kukui

Molokai is the birthplace of the Hula, home of wild axis deer and the famous leper colony at Kalaupapa. Molokai is home to many native Hawaiians who have strongly resisted developers. "Molokai is a sanctuary, a human time capsule where the pendulum swings inexorably forward, but more slowly than in the rest of Hawaii. It has always been so. In ancient times Molokai was known as Pule-oo, "Powerful Prayer". The small, underpopulated refuge was protected by the chants of its supreme chiefs, not through legions of warriors. This powerful, ancient mysticism, handed down directly from the goddess Pahulu, was known and respected throughout the Hawaiian archipelago. Its mana was the oldest and strongest in Hawaii and its practitioners were venerated by nobility and commoners alike -- they had the ability to "pray you to death". The entire island was a haven, a refuge for the vanquished and kapu-breakers of all the islands. It is still so today, beckoning to determined refugees from the rat race." ~ J. D. Bisignani.