Have you ever tasted salt made the traditional Hawaiian way at the salt flats near Hanapepe’s Salt Pond Park? Its flavor is rounded out by a sweetness that makes it the most delicious salt I have ever tasted. Kauai’s Santos
Have you ever tasted salt made the traditional Hawaiian way at the salt flats near Hanapepe’s Salt Pond Park? Its flavor is rounded out by a sweetness that makes it the most delicious salt I have ever tasted.
Kauai’s Santos ohana (family) works the salt flats every year as their family and others have done for generations in a labor-intensive process that is said to be the only one of its type in the world, dating back to when Kauai was first inhabited. Everyone participates; it’s not uncommon to see relatives in their 70s, 80s and 90s happily doing the most grueling parts of the labor, as they have done since they were children.
As a child, Kuulei Santos, 39, always found reasons to avoid joining her family in this beloved and back-breaking work until she had her own daughter. Then all the reasons for keeping this Hawaiian tradition alive became clear to her.
“Every summer I get to stand in the same spot my grandmother stood, the same spot my father stood when he was a child, and I create paakai (salt),” she says. “My grandmother, Sarah Loa, passed on before I was able to learn any of her talents like making Hawaiian quilts, feather hat bands and shell leis. But the one skill that she taught my father, that he taught me, and that I have now passed onto my children is making salt at the Hanapepe salt flats.”
Salt-making the old way is a labor of love. The season begins each year around June when the sun is high and hot. Families spend hours preparing the seven-to-eight feet deep earthen wells and the nearby punee (beds) where the salt is formed when the ocean water evaporates.
“Salt is very old world. It balances our modern lives of cars, TV, working to support a family. When we’re making salt, we get to slow down,” Kuulei says. “There are no cell phones, no radios, just working side by side with each other. There is lots of laughter, lots of stories and lots of affection.”
And although the work leaves her body in pain the next day and her lovely painted fingernails and toenails ruined, “I just love it, where it came from, who taught it to me and why I teach it to my children,” she says. “I enjoy every moment of it.”
The process
The salt-making process begins with men of each family jumping into the deep earthen wells that were covered by the ocean all winter, bailing out the water, then scrubbing the well walls to open the pores and allow fresh ocean water to seep in.
Meanwhile, other family members begin preparing the salt pans by scraping out mud that built up during winter, then lining the pans with thick, gooey black clay.
“We get down on our hands and knees to shape the clay by hand, smoothing it first with rough rocks, then progressively smoother rocks,” Kuulei explains. “Getting the consistency of the clay just right is important because if the clay doesn’t bind together, the pan walls will crack and we have to start over.”
Once the clay dries, water from the freshly scrubbed wells is poured into the pans, where, over months, the water crystallizes into salt flakes and the sweet Hanapepe salt is harvested, also by hand.
“Some people say the secret to Hanapepe salt’s sweet taste is in the brine shrimp that live in the wells,” Kuulei says. “When you have brine shrimp in the wells, that’s when you know you’re going to have a good season.”
Help us protect this little area
Typically, Kauai families have gone about their salt-making quietly, keeping to themselves and not seeking publicity of any kind. In fact, Santos’ family gives away the salt they make each year rather than sell it.
But about seven years ago, Kuulei realized that in order to protect their centuries-old tradition, she would need to draw some attention to the little area on Kauai where Hawaiian salt-making takes place.
“If you look at Hanapepe from above, the salt patch is in the middle. We’re surrounded by a county park, an airport and former sugar plantation land,” she says. “People drive on the sand and drive through our parking lot, spraying sand and asphalt into our clay, making it hard to bind properly. People will sometimes throw their bottles into the parking lot and break glass that ends up in the salt patch.”
Kuulei wants everyone to realize that their actions affect the salt.
“The more people understand, the more people will respect what we have here and will help us protect this little area so we can save this tradition,” she said.
That’s why Kuulei began giving tours of the salt patch to school children and visitors to the island, who are entranced even before tasting the final product. She has also become an advocate for the salt-making families by coordinating efforts among the various state and county departments under whose purview the nearby land falls, trying to get them all on the same page to preserve the area.
“There’s a fine line between old Hawaii and new Hawaii,” Kuulei says. “As long as Hawaiian people keep some traditions alive and pass down some part of our culture to our children, the Hawaiian culture will always be a part of them and it will stay alive.”
• Pamela Varma Brown is the publisher “Kauai Stories,” and the forthcoming “Kauai Stories 2.”
