The Menehune of Aulani

I interrupt my nearly-finished honeymoon series to bring you a special post about Aulani that I wanted to put up before the last day. While we were in Aulani, we started to notice these kinda-weird kinda-cute little dudes all around the resort.

We started to notice them…everywhere. They were around the pool, in the lobby, indoors, outdoors, even in the elevators:

Sometime during our stay we learned these little figures are called the Menehune. According to Hawaiian tradition, the Menehune are little mischievous men who live in the forests and hide from humans. Aulani paid tribute to this legend by introducing their own group of Menehune hiding all throughout the resort. There’s also a scavenger hunt-type game that kids (or adults, like us) can play to hunt for Menehune.

Once we figured out that they were all over the place and purposely hidden, naturally it became a game to find as many as we could. And there are SO many! We only started taking photos of them later on in the trip, so this isn’t even close to all of the ones we saw while at Aulani.

One of my favorites – hiding under the pay phone:

They were so cute and fun, and such a playful detail of the resort!

We especially found a lot along the lazy river:

This one had a Santa hat on – we weren’t sure if he wore it year round or if someone forgot to tell him it was February!

I loved the ones that were doing fun poses, like this guy taking a nap:

Or this one who looks like he’s washing his face:

And they were even used in other elements of the decor, like this Menehune light!

Or this guy, hanging out in the kids’ water play area:

They were just so silly and we ended up becoming very fond of the Menehune! On our last day we walked around just looking for more and since we returned home we frequently reference and remember those cute little Menehune.

Hawaiian legend says they’re crafty and sneaky little buggers, so next time you misplace an item or think something seems amiss? Blame the Menehune.

You can read more about the legend of the Menehune here, and the Menehune’s presence specifically at Aulani here. I thought they were too cute and fun to just mention offhandedly in a post and I had to elaborate about them more than that! Maybe we’ll start hiding them around our own home… 🙂