Rainbow Falls

In Hawaiian tradition, the cave behind and beneath Rainbow Falls is the dwelling of Hina, a great goddess associated with the moon and with the making of kapa, the bark cloth of old Hawaii. Hina is remembered in many island stories, and along the Wailuku she is often named as the mother of Maui, the clever demigod who, among his feats, is said to have slowed the sun and fished up islands from the sea.

The river and its falls appear in these legends. One tradition tells of Kuna, a moo, or great water reptile, that menaced Hina in her cave, and of Maui coming to his mother's defense and defeating the creature along the Wailuku. Names and features up and down the river carry echoes of these stories, and to Native Hawaiians the falls are a place of continuing cultural and spiritual meaning, not merely a photograph.

Rainbow Falls pours over a lip of hard volcanic rock, and the cave beneath it is a lava feature, part of the layered flows that built the Big Island. The Wailuku River, the longest in Hawaii, gathers rain off the vast slopes of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa and carries it down through Hilo to the sea, and where it meets a resistant ledge it plunges into the pool below.

The rainbow itself is simple physics meeting a lucky geography. The falls face in a direction that lets the morning sun shine into the perpetually rising mist, and when sun and spray align, the light refracts into the arc that names the place. Cloud and rain can hide it, but on a clear early morning it is close to dependable.

Above the falls stands an enormous banyan tree, its aerial roots dropping and merging into a small forest of trunks, and a short path leads up beside it to views over the top of the gorge. The whole setting is classic windward Hawaii, dense and green, fed by Hilo's abundant rain, with the river rushing below.

Because the falls sit within Wailuku River State Park, they are protected and maintained with an overlook, railings, and parking. The river can be deceptively dangerous, however, prone to rising quickly during upstream rain, so the barriers exist for good reason and swimming above or below the falls is not safe.

Because this is Hilo, rain is a constant companion, and it is what keeps the falls flowing strong and the gorge lush. After heavy rain the falls thunder and turn brown with sediment, powerful but rainbow-free; in drier spells the flow eases and the water clears.

For the rainbow, timing beats season. A sunny morning, roughly within a few hours of sunrise, gives the best odds, when the low sun can reach into the mist. Come too late in the day or under Hilo's frequent clouds and the arc simply will not appear, which is part of why locals treasure the mornings when it does.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.