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<\/p>\nI was in Hawaii when I wrote this blog, and we were on the Big Island (the actual island of Hawaii).\u00a0 It’s much less densely populated than Oahu and quite a bit less touristy.\u00a0 My daughter found a cool spot where the unification of the Hawaiian Islands originated, and that’s the Pu’ukohola Heiau National Historic Site.<\/p>\n
King Kamehameha, the guy who was in charge of the island of Hawaii (which is one of eight Hawaiian islands) consulted with a Hawaiian priest about how to unify all eight islands.\u00a0 \u00a0The priest was called a kahuna, and because King Kamehameha was the guy was asking the questions, I suppose the priest would have been the Big Kahuna.\u00a0 The Big Kahuna advised\u00a0 King Kamehameha to build a temple and sacrifice an ally there.<\/p>\n
The Pu’ukohola Heiau temple is what you see in the photo at the top of this blog.\u00a0 It kind of looks like a whale, and you can see whales occasionally when you are in Hawaii.\u00a0 The temple was built in just one year with stones mined 27 miles away (and this occurred on an island where there were no horses or mules).\u00a0 King Kamehameha picked an ally for the sacrificial offering; it was his cousin Ke\u014dua, except they weren’t really allies.\u00a0 As the story was told to us, Ke\u014dua realized it was his destiny to be sacrified, so even though he knew the invitation was for a party that would not end well, he went.\u00a0 There are other aspects to the story that are more disturbing.\u00a0 Cousin Ke\u014dua mutilated himself before he arrived (he thought that would make him an imperfect sacrifice), but it didn’t work.\u00a0 Yep, King Kamehameha killed the guy.\u00a0 But evidently the Big Kahuna had been right.\u00a0 King Kamehameha succeeded in unifying the Hawaiian Islands.<\/p>\n
Pu’ukohola Heiau is where all this happened, at the edge of the Pacific, and the area and the temple King Kamehameha built are now a National Historic Site.<\/p>\n
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The Pu’ukohola Heiau temple is what you see in the large photo at the top of this blog.\u00a0 It is impressive.\u00a0 \u00a0 There’s a sort of a tower in front of it, and that’s what you see below.<\/p>\n
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This Pacific Ocean inlet is at the base of the temple.\u00a0 There are contemporary signs warning that the waters are shark infested, and they advise people not to swim or even wade there.\u00a0 The sharks will attack, the signs warn.<\/p>\n
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In the old days, or so the story goes, the Hawaiians used to make human sacrifices in this bay.\u00a0 The rock you see below is where the chief would sit to watch the sharks attack whoever was being sacrificed.<\/p>\n
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Surprisingly, there’s a public beach less than a quarter mile away along the same shoreline.\u00a0 Needless to say, I stayed out of the water.<\/p>\n
Another thing we saw there (and all over the Big Island) were mongooses.\u00a0 Mongooses are an invasive species in Hawaii (they came from India), and they have become an apex predator as they have no natural enemies on the Big Island.\u00a0\u00a0We didn’t know they were mongooses initially.\u00a0 We thought they were rats, but the tails were way too big and thick for rats.\u00a0 They behaved liked squirrels and they are about the same size.\u00a0 The mongooses scurried about and would come right up to you (they were not afraid to beg for food).\u00a0 I gave a mongoose something to eat, even though youi’re not supposed to.\u00a0 I didn’t want to disappoint an animal unafraid to go head-to-head with a cobra.\u00a0 I suppose you could introduce cobras to Hawaii to counter the mongoose invasion, but that would create other problems.<\/p>\n