Pink edges of dawn fade into the powdery blue of morning at Maui’s Honokahua Bay, with distant spouts of humpback whales hanging in the air above the ocean’s surface like a whisper. On a grassy bluff near the Ritz-Carlton Maui, Kapalua, guests out for an early-morning walk follow the orderly line of a hau (sea hibiscus) hedge that runs between the neatly clipped lawn of the resort grounds and the cliff’s edge.
Upon first glance, the dense hedge might seem to be merely landscaping, but a nearby plaque says otherwise. The boundary marks the Honokahua Preservation Site, where remains of more than 2,000 Hawaiian kupunci (ancestors) date from between 850 and the early 1800s. Registered as a State Historic Place, the site is reserved exclusively for native Hawaiian ceremonial and religious practices.
“Every once in a while, someone decides to take a shortcut through the site without realizing that they’re walking on the ancestors,” says San Michel. Known as Aunty San, she’s an Ambassador of Aloha at the resort. “When I call them over to ask them to change their path, they’re always very
