Waimea Valley

This guide to Waimea Valley on Oahu's North Shore centers on Hewahewa, the high priest who guarded Hawaii's sacred kapu laws for Kamehameha the Great, and the valley long granted to the kahuna nui as their home. It traces the sudden unraveling of that religious order in 1819, when Hewahewa began breaking the very taboos he had spent his life upholding, and follows the valley through his death here and his family's later loss of the land. Listen for the temple ruins, or heiau, still visible on the ridges around you.