Hawaii has many folklore and myths, especially when it is about the Pali.

The Pali, or actually Nu’uanu Pali, is a part of the east cliffs (Pali in Hawaiian) of the Ko’olau mountain, which can be found on top of the Nu’uanu valley (our marriage, for example, took place in the Nu’uanu botanical gardens, which can be found a bit at the beginning of the valley).

The Pali Highway is one of the three ways to get directly from our side (leeward, or the westside) to the other side of the island (ok, there is another way but then you will have to drive around the coast and that can take a while). Basically you are going over and through the mountain.

I will give you a few pictures (only the first two pictures are made by myself (in 2007), I found the rest through images.google.com, a couple of them say “Picture by Jai” when hovering them, these are found on this forum and made by Jai), so you can get a bit of an idea of how the Pali looks like.

First our side, the westside:

This is a little spectactulair sight as you can see. This is mostly because it goes up very gradually over a distance of about 5.5-6 miles.. besides this, you find yourself here in a valley until you are at the top, so there are no cliffs or something but mountain walls with lots of green from the rainforests (especially on the top, below you can still find some houses).

The other side, the Windward side or eastside, looks like this:

A bit more nice, I think

The Pali has a rich history, there has been one of the bloodiest battles of Hawaii: King Kamehameha I wanted to unite the islands of Hawaii into one kingdom and went, with his army of 10,000 warriors, after conquering Maui and Moloka’i, towards O’ahu. On this island, the decisive battle took place in Nu’uanu Valley and the defenders of O’ahu, led by Kalanikūpule, were then driven up to the cliffs where they were more than 400 warriors were driven over the cliff and fell about 1000 feet lower towards their death.

The Pali highway, or actually the first road over Nu’uanu Pali, was build in 1845 to connect the eastside with the westside. In 1898 they constructed this road into the (old) Pali highway and during the construction, they found about 800 skulls which they believe are remains of the warriors who fell of the cliffs during the battle. This road has been replaced later on by the current Pali highway and it’s tunnels (see the pictures above).

You can see the old Pali highway on the next photo’s:

You can see the old Pali highway in the left on the first picture, and a bit to the right, just below, is the new Pali highway. At the other two pictures you can see that it this road has become pretty green with grass and other stuff.. They closed the road for traffic but you can still walk there as a pedestrian, as far as I know.

Right, back to the folklore and myths, because that’s why I am writing this post…

As you can understand, there are a couple of myths who came out of the happenings back in 1795. But there are also a couple of new and more recent myths. They all happen on or around the Pali, and it is, according to the stories, especially at night, something one should watch out for.

There are the ‘Night Marchers’, which are spirits of old warriors which you can find on all the islands, and especially on places where there were big battlefields, like Nu’uanu Pali.. There are multiple legends about them and one of them is that when you see a Night Marcher right into the eyes, that they’ll force you to walk along with them into eternity, but if there is a relative who is already walking with them, then you will be spared. The Hawaiians tell that when you come in the vicinity of the Night Marchers, you need to lay down on your belly and hold your face to the ground to avoid any eye contact. You need to be quiet, breathe silently and especially not move. Some also say that they sometimes nudge you to provoke a reaction and to take you with them after all. Nice story.. brrr…

And here are many stories like this here in Hawaii.. there are, for example, two stones to be found in the back of Nu’uanu valley, Hapu’u and Ka-lae-hau-ola, from which is said that these represent a pair of goddesses who were guardians of the passage down the pali. Travellers would leave offerings of flowers or bark cloth to ensure a safe trip, and parents buried the umbilical cords of newborns under the stones as a protection against evil. It is also said that there is a “mo’o wahine” (a lizard woman) lingering around the pass. A mo’o wahine is a mythical creature who can take the shape of a beautiful woman and lure male travellers over the cliff to their dead. A bit like the story of the Lorelei at the river Rhine.

But ok, I can keep telling stories, and there are many other stories also, but I want to go back to the title of this post: Pork and the Pali Highway.

One of the myths, or folklore, which goes around, and is also strict believed by many people here, is that one should never take pork over the Pali, and especially not at night. The exact stories are a bit different from each other but the legend is that when people try to take pork, in whatever form, over Nu’uanu Pali by car, that their car will stall and will not start until the pork has been removed out of their car. According to some stories, the pork needs to be raw, in some others it should be cooked (like in Michelle’s version where it should be there as a dish). Some versions tell that this only happens when it is dark and in other versions they say that a white dog will appear and that you need to give the meat to the dog before you can continue to drive.

This legend comes from an ancient Hawaiian mythology. According to the legend, the Hawaiian volcano goddess Pele and the demigod Kamapua’a (a half-man-half-hog), had a turbulent relationship and the two of them agreed to never visit each other. So when someone tries to take pork over the Pali, then the legend tells that symbolic bring a part of Kamapua’a from one side to the other, and Pele will make sure this will not happen.

There are more stories about food and the Pali. Apparently there have been attacks by hungry spirits who attacked travellers for their food. Truckers tie, for example, a fresh green Ti leaf, the leaf of a banana or a piece of bamboo to their containers with food to divert the evil spirits.

Right.. why are writing all this, you might ask yourself.. well, actually because I recently thought to myself that we (that is Michelle and me) brought pork, at night, over the Pali ourselves somewhere last week…

Why we did it? Well, we didn’t even think about it at the moment itself, neither Michelle or myself thought about the fact that we had pork in our car. We ate in a restaurant and Michelle had some porkchops, she couldn’t eat it all and so we took it with us as a doggiebag (even though it was a box haha). Michelle had a meeting that night, at around 9.45 PM (she could go on an earlier time but Michelle wanted to go the one at this time, this just to explain the ‘odd’ time of the meeting), and since dinner took a bit longer than expected, I told her that I would tag along so she didn’t had to drop me off first (I would just wait in the car for a bit, it only would take for about an hour).

Michelle has her job in Kaneohe, on the eastside of the island, so on the other side of the mountain range. We placed the leftover food in the back of the car, in a closed compartment (this so the car wouldn’t smell) and we went on our way to the other side of the mountains. We went over the H3 on our way there.. this is the quickest way for us, but it is also the most unpleasant way for me as it is pretty high for a longer period and at the other side of the mountain, you are on a really high bridge for a while, and yeah, people who know me a bit, also know that I am terribly afraid of heights haha. We decided that Michelle would drive there over the H3 and I would drive back over the Pali since I am less scared on that road (the Pali Highway goes up pretty quick on the eastside and the westside is really not scary at all to drive on, so you are quickly without any fear).

We did as we said… and now you want to know if something happened on our journey to the other side and back, over the Pali? Well, no.. not that I know of.. I haven’t seen anything out of the ordinary that night and the car didn’t stop either, thankfully.

Why nothing happened with us? Well, you could say it is just a myth, and that it doesn’t hold any truth.. but yeah, how do you explain all those other people to whom it did happen? Or, for example, the people got bad luck after they took pieces of volcanic stone with them from one of the islands? It is the same goddess after all (and I think about a travelshow back in the Netherlands in which the tv host once went to Hawaii and placed a piece of volcanic stone in his pants.. as soon as he did that, his hat blew away). Various TV hosts also took several tests, one of the tests can be read here: Pork and Pali are Recipes for Disasters (pretty nice story).

Other reasons which you could think of could be that our car was too new.. well, I doubt that was a reason.. in the end they’re all the same of course. Maybe it was because we never thought about us bringing pork over the Pali or maybe it was because our car has been dressed up with bamboo wood on some parts inside the car. Or maybe it had to be raw meat after all and not ready-to-eat meat, like a platelunch, like Michelle said.. or it is possible that these things only occured on the old Pali Highway like some stories say (and this road knows more creepy stories, the thick forest is a very good background for ghoststories in the dark).

No, I think it had to do with any of these things. I think Pele saw that we took the meat from her side on to the other side and brought it back, and so we basically brought it back where it belonged. I also think it might have something to do with compassion because of our upcoming child and possibly also because of me being afraid of heights.. I wouldn’t have to think about our car stalling while being on the eastside of the mountainrange (on whatever of the three roads), I wouldn’t know what to do.

Anyways, I went at least three times back onto the Pali last week. One time to surprise Michelle and to pick her up from her job, something else happened on this journey when I was driving on the Pali alone and all of the sudden I found a car next to me.. it has nothing to do with folklore, of course, but I really did not notice him until he was really right next to me (on the right side, I drove in the middle of a 3 lane road, and he stayed on my right side until we went over into a two lane road, just before the tunnels.. nothing scary, just weird). And I also went back over the Pali the day after (now with chicken and beef, remains of a different lunch haha) to bring Michelle back to her job, this was during the day and fortunately I didn’t notice anything on this trip either.

Right, fortunately nothing happened. You can say something about it being folklore or myths but the fact that people here really believe into this all has something special.. I think I would never take pork with me over the Pali with my full consciousness, not even now nothing happened this time… you never know.