While Kauai's reputation as home to the wettest spot on Earth — Mount Wai'ale'ale, averaging 485 inches of rain per year — has lead to its popular designation as "The Garden Isle," the island has another, older name: "The Separate Kingdom." In part this is because Kauai may have been the first of the Hawaiian Islands to be settled by Marquesan seafarers, somewhere around 750 A.D. Combined with its remoteness from the rest of the island chain, this may also have led to the belief that Kauai's royal bloodline was the purest in the Islands. READ MORE »