Whenever Danny Akaka walks the grounds of the Mauna Lani Bay Hotel & Bungalows on Hawaii island, he feels the presence of the ancients. For 30 years he has been leading a historical tour for guests, shedding light on natural and archaeological treasures and the first settlers of what was once a barren coastal region.

“This area, Kalahuipuaa, is very dry; it averages only 7 to 10 inches of rain per year,” said Akaka, the hotel’s director of cultural affairs. “To the Hawaiians, that would not have been ideal for agriculture; they needed rain to grow crops. For that reason, Kalahuipuaa wasn’t settled until about 1200 A.D., 800 years ago.”

The attractions were six brackish and spring-fed fishponds which date back 2,300 years. (A seventh, Waipuhi Iki, was created in the mid-1950s by then-landowner Francis Ii Brown when he noticed an area next to Waipuhi Fishpond flooded at high tide and thought it would be advantageous to have a pond where seawater was naturally flowing in.)

Among the finest examples of Hawaiian aquaculture extant, the ponds supplied visiting alii (royalty) with fish such as mullet and awa (milkfish). Two-acre Waipuhi and 4.6-acre Lahuipuaa are connected to the ocean and have makaha (fixed sluice gates), a feature unique to Hawaiian fishponds, in their rock walls.

Gaps between wooden posts of the makaha controlled the flow of water into and out of the ponds, allowing small fish to enter while preventing larger fish from exiting. By adjusting the gaps, pond keepers could maintain the delicate balance between fish populations and marine algae growth: Too much algae would kill fish because it would compete for oxygen; too little algae would be like putting cattle in a pasture with insufficient grass.

“When I show guests the makaha, I explain that the word itself is significant,” Akaka said. “The key part of ‘makaha’ is ‘ha,’ which means breath or life force. The literal translation of ‘makaha’ is ‘the source of the breath.’ The Hawaiians often spoke in metaphors. They looked at the seawater that came in and out of the makaha as the breath of the ponds. The makaha was the portal, the entryway, of the ponds’ life force.”

Another highlight of the tour is a section of a trail that once circled the island. Known today by three names — Ala Loa, Mamalahoa and King’s Trail — it was initially built as a footpath.

In ancient times, trails were not necessarily named or given names that were specific to them. Adding to the confusion, people sometimes used different descriptive names for the same trail.

This, Akaka said, is what happened with the Ala Loa/Mamalahoa/King’s Trail. “King” likely refers to Kamehameha III; improvements to the trail began in the mid-1800s during his reign to accommodate horse-drawn carts. Ala Loa, meaning “long path,” calls attention to the fact that the trail originally went around the entire 4,028-square-mile island. Mamalahoa is a derivative of Kanawai Mamalahoe, the Law of the Splintered Paddle decreed by Kamehameha the Great, which guaranteed that everyone could travel on all trails safely.

The 1.22-mile segment of this trail and a 2.5-mile stretch of a coastal path in Kalahuipuaa are part of the Ala Kahakai National Historic Trail, a 175-mile network of trails that runs from Upolu Point, the northernmost tip of Hawaii island, down the west coast to Ka Lae (South Point) and to the eastern boundary of Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park in Puna.

Tour participants also get close looks at a few of the 40 caves that archaeologists excavated in the 1970s; early inhabitants used them for burials, dwellings and temporary shelters.

“Because of the arid conditions, only a small community was here at any given time — maybe 100 people who were fishermen and their families,” Akaka said. “Most of them relocated around 1700 A.D.; only one or two families remained as keepers of the ponds. Evidence of human settlement included wooden fishhooks of various sizes and refuse piles of ash, shells, fish bones and wood fibers.”

Atop what was once a small cave, likely the home of a single fisherman, are petroglyphs — images of honu (turtles), paddlers, triangular figures and more carved on smooth pahoehoe lava. According to Akaka, the meaning of the rock carvings remains a mystery; some scholars surmise they are records of people’s travels or acknowledgments of their aumakua (personal family gods).

“After the artifacts were removed, the cave was filled in to prevent it from collapsing and destroying the petroglyphs,” Akaka said. “We don’t know how old the petroglyphs are or who made them, but because there are no signs to mark their location, they are well preserved.”

Viewing sites that have remained unchanged for centuries is a rare privilege. “Guests see Kalahuipuaa as it was long before it was settled,” Akaka said. “I ask them to be observant, to look and listen intently, and the past will come alive for them. The land will reveal its many amazing stories.”

Cheryl Chee Tsutsumi is a Honolulu-based freelance writer whose travel features for the Star-Advertiser have won several Society of American Travel Writers awards.