LIHUE, HAWAII — The woman in the sun hat wants to crack someone in the jaw. It's been a bad day. Actually, for Kaiulani Huff, it's been a bad few decades.
She has watched as her home, the island of Kauai, changed from a wild garden of secret places to -- in her eyes -- an overcrowded amusement park for rich people.
"Welcome to Disneyland," she says one day while driving around the island. "See the natives. Watch us dance the hula. Clog up our roads. Buy up all the good land. And please, help yourselves to our beaches!"
Development on Kauai has been so unrelenting that Huff's sentiment has become widespread among longtime residents, although until recently it was a quiet simmering.
In late August, with the arrival of the Hawaii Superferry, the first inter-island car-carrying ferry, the simmering boiled over. Islanders, in the face of Coast Guard gunboats, formed a floating blockade at the harbor entrance and, after a three-hour standoff, forced the $85-million ferry to turn back to Honolulu. The protest had turned into a citizen uprising.
The crowd represented a motley army of beach bums and businessmen, lawyers and ex-cops, dopers and doctors, and at least one college instructor -- many of whom discovered for the first time that they shared the same concerns. How many tourists and resorts and subdivisions can a little island take?
"The population is saying, 'Enough already,' " says Dennis Chun, 57, who with his surfboard had helped lead the human flotilla.
At the forefront of that protest was Huff, her face covered in war paint, like her Polynesian ancestors going into battle. Unlike her ancestors, she wore a bamboo sun hat.
Wearing the same hat this afternoon, she drives around the island's north shore in bumper-to-bumper traffic and ends up in another confrontation. She stops her pickup at what used to be a favorite secluded spot, now part of Ha'ena Beach Park. The lot overflows with cars, and the beach swarms with people she doesn't know. At one end, Huff spots an old-timer selling baskets made of coconut leaves. She pulls over to visit with him.
Within seconds, a young couple, cameras dangling, slip into their rental car. The driver backs up, but Huff's truck is blocking the way. The driver tells Huff to move her truck.
"Just cool it, brah," Huff tells him. "This isn't New York. This is Kauai. We'll be leaving in a few."
The driver backs up another several inches. He glares at Huff.
