Sun and bathe, but don’t take back any bit of Hawaii

Seastrand isn’t the only tourist who purloined a piece of Hawaii and is seeking redemption. Shipments of lava, shells, coral and even old shoes filled with sand arrive every day at post offices, park headquarters and resort hotels throughout the state. The packages usually include anonymous notes apologising for having provoked the wrath of Pele, the volcano goddess, who ancient Hawaiians believed created the islands.

“I’ve never been a superstitious person, but after what we have been through, I’m not taking any more chances,” wrote a hapless visitor who sent a lava shipment to the Mauna Lani Resort on the island of Hawaii. “Oh, please stop punishing me,” another sender beseeched, in a letter addressed to “Queen Pele”, care of the Mauna Lani. The author of a similar missive enclosed a single grain of sand, retrieved from the cuff of a pair of pants worn on the beach.

The packages come in all shapes and sizes, usually ranging from a couple of ounces to a few pounds, says Kaniela Akaka Jr., Mauna Lani’s historian, who opens Pele’s mail. Sometimes rocks are returned a decade or more after they left the islands, he says.

Some guests are so scared that they book a trip just to hand-deliver their contraband. Akaka says an employee of a neighbouring hotel once called on behalf of returning visitors who wanted to find out the proper procedure for delivering a stone back to its home. “I suggested that they release the rock into the ocean as the sun is setting,” Akaka says. “That’s the time that Hawaiians choose to release their problems, anxieties, grudges, or anything that might hold you back.”

No one is quite sure about the origin of the legend that if you take a bit of Hawaii home with you, your luck will turn bad. Thelma Negley, a New Jersey housewife, says she heard about the Pele curse when Regis Philbin and Kathie Lee Gifford broadcast their morning TV show from Hawaii several years ago.

Negley’s husband had broken his leg during a hiking accident in Hawaii. After the middle-age couple returned to their home, Negley injured her hip and needed surgery. The bear-shaped lava rock sitting on a shelf in her library started to “give me the creeps”, she recalls. She rang up a friend in Honolulu and he urged her to send it back. She did. Both she and her husband have fully recovered.

Untold amounts of natural resources are shipped back to Hawaii from places as far away as Japan, Korea and Germany. Volcanoes National Park alone receives more than 2,000 pounds of rocks a year, according to one estimate. Park administrators have used the combination of ancient belief and guilt to their own advantage. “We don’t really promote the story, but we don’t really discourage it either,” says Rich Wilson, a ranger at Haleakala National Park on Maui.

The powers of Pele are firmly rooted in Hawaiian beliefs. Hawaiians always seek permission from Pele before eating the wild berries which grow in Kilauea’s upland region, says Kepa Maly, a cultural-resources specialist in Hilo. He says that Hawaiian lore tells of warriors who were killed in a 1790 eruption of Kilauea after disrespectfully hurling rocks into a crater on the volcano.

At the Lahaina Mail Depot, tucked into a rear cranny of the Wharf Cinema Centre on Maui, a postal worker displays several letters from recent deliveries, including two hard-luck tales from Colorado. He says his Hawaiian buddies can tell where the rocks and other stuff comes from, and they make a little party out of putting it back. “We buy a six-pack of beer and go enjoy the sunset,” he says.

The Wall Street Journal