Chopper visions

"I hear 'um," Randy Maka-pu'u said, turning around, scanning the skies above the helipad at the new Sheraton Keauhou. "But I no can see 'um ... OK, there we go."

The red chopper sped in from off the ocean, hovered a moment, then gracefully dropped and nestled onto the helipad.

The pilot kept the engine idling, props whirring, and they ran to the chopper.

"This is cool! I never been in one choppah before!" Randy hollered above the noise, holding on to his Portagee Protective baseball cap.

"You'll love it," Tokelani shouted back, holding on to her lacy blouse. "Unless it gets windy."

Barely a breath of wind was moving as they took off and rose like an Otis elevator on rocket fuel.

"Ho!" Randy said from the co-pilot's seat. "Mo' bettah than the Farm Fair!"

Tokelani, riding in back, had earlier sent the pilot a map of the triangular ahupua'a that the Pono Commission was offering Randy in exchange for his ancestral lands at Makapu'u, which it turned out legally still belonged to his family, but which they did not have the power to give to him.

"There's two ways to do this," the pilot said in their head phones. "We can start out wide, cover the coastal property, and then get narrower as we work our way upslope."

"I like see the beach," Randy said.

"You got it," the pilot replied, gave him a thumbs up, and banked the chopper over the turquoise sea. "I gave it a look earlier -- I think you're going to be pleased."

Flying a quarter-mile offshore, the chopper followed Ali'i Drive toward Kailua-Kona town, past the pier and Ahuena Heiau, the last known place where the bones of Kamehameha the Great lay before they were spirited away on a moonless November night and hidden in a secret sea cave. They flew past the Old Airport Park, past Hualalai, past the Keahole Airport, and then it became scrub and lava.

"How much more?" Randy said.

"See that Jeep trail?" the pilot said. Across the pahoehoe lava, years of traffic had left indelible tracks. "That's the start."

For a half-mile they followed the rocky coast, lots of lava points and turquoise coves, came upon a black sand beach that ran parallel to the coast, facing south, protected from the big waves that came rumbling out of the Aleutians in the winter. The pilot slowed, hovered.

"Those pools above the beach?" Tokelani said. "Natural hot springs."

"Eh, somebody's down there," Randy said, "on my property!"

"Technically, Mr. Makapu'u," Tokelani said, "it's still state land."

"Not for long. Eh, you can put 'um down over there?"