The Comeback Island : After Hurricane Iniki, the rebuilding is far from done. But a major Poipu resort has reopened, restaurants are serving and the landscape grows lush again.

We’ve heard plenty from Iniki: the scream of 150-m.p.h. winds when the hurricane blew through last September, the groan of roofs being separated from buildings, the splintering of trees. Now listen for a moment to Sara-Lei Pai.

Pai, a 25-year-old worker at the Hyatt Regency Kauai, is one among thousands who have labored half a year to rebuild a storm-hobbled, tourism-dependent island.

“It’s ready,” she told me when I visited Kauai several days ago. “There are enough restaurants open and activities companies. Most of the beaches are OK, and a lot of the hotels have good rates.”

Then she excused herself. It was 7 a.m., and though she usually works in food service, she had a high-priority landscaping assignment ahead. This was just her hotel’s fourth day back in business.

Invitations like hers abound on Kauai these days, offered by residents and tourism officials with a frequent underlying trace of anxiety.

Since Sept. 12, 1992, when the islanders awoke to an estimated $1.6 billion in damages and a quarter of the island’s workers found themselves jobless, Kauai has been struggling to restore itself and the industry that sustains it.

“ Please , tell them to come back,” one hotel worker pleaded when I called to check availability of rooms.

Monthly arrivals, which routinely surpassed 100,000 before Iniki, in October shriveled to 18,200. As recently as February of this year, the number was still down around 31,000, and would have been smaller but for the repeated returns of construction crews. Starting May 1, United Airlines is suspending its three flights a week to the island. An airline spokesman noted that two-thirds of the planes’ seats were going unfilled. A resumption is expected when demand increases substantially. Here’s an uncomfortable irony of tourism as a territory’s dominant industry: What many islanders desperately want is for us to come, lie around in sunscreen and order tropical cocktails while the locals confront some of the hardest work of their lives.

“We need that for this place to be normal,” said Roberta Wallace, co-owner of still-closed Gaylord’s Restaurant outside Lihue, the county seat.

“It’s not like we’d feel bad if they did that,” said Pai. “We want and need their business.”

So far, however, they can only handle so much of it. Six months after Iniki, there are still two rooms unrentable for every one available on the island. It may be 1994 before several luxury hotels reopen. Many of the island’s county and state campsites--some damaged, some housing dispossessed locals--are unavailable for overnight use. In downtown Lihue, the sign over the marquee of the old theater leans wind-mangled and useless. On the island’s south rim, near Poipu Beach, leak-wary homeowners have swathed their battered houses in blue tarpaulins.

But other airlines offer plenty of flights, many buildings show no sign of the trouble they’ve endured, and Mother Nature’s recovery is running well ahead of humankind’s: The beaches and greenery are in generally good shape.

“The island itself is just remarkable in its recuperative powers,” said helicopter tour pilot Will Squyres, who has been hovering over Kauai, on and off, since the mid-1970s. “The problem now is hotel rooms. Places to stay in are hard to come by.”

The bottom line: If you can land satisfactory hotel and rental car reservations ahead of time, there’s no good reason to stay away from Kauai. You can sun, swim, dine, survey lush green mountains and valleys, and watch a largely uncrowded island as it heals itself.

THE LANDSCAPE

Some beachfront facilities remain damaged, but the sand is plentiful in many areas. At Poipu on the island’s south coast, for example, Shipwreck Beach (near the Hyatt) is said to have gained 30 feet of shorefront sand since the storm. While most beaches were clean of debris, neighboring streets in Poipu were unpredictable: neat condominiums to one side of the street; to the other, a thrashed roofless house with lizards lounging in the living room.

Waimea Canyon, often billed as Kauai’s Grand Canyon, is the same deep declivity of red earth and green growth that it was before Hurricane Iniki. On the north shore, the high green cliffs of the Na Pali Coast still look as they did 20 years ago, when they stood in for Skull Island on the last remake of “King Kong.” Circling the island in a helicopter, you do see here and there the white corpses of uprooted trees. But some of those, longtime islanders say, actually date back a decade to 1983’s Hurricane Iwa, and soon will be covered again with undergrowth.

The Tree Tunnel, which many new arrivals drive through on their way to the resorts of Poipu, offers a graphic illustration of the island’s natural regrowth. Before Iniki, the twin lines of trees arched over Maluhia Road to form a green tunnel. The hurricane stripped them bare. Yet by early April, the canopy was perhaps two-thirds regrown. (Among the island’s major roads, authorities say, only a short stretch of Highway 50 in Kekaha, west of Poipu, is closed, and a nearby detour is available on Kekaha Road.)

The 180-acre National Tropical Botanical Gardens near Poipu are closed until August, in large part because of damage to facilities, not flora. Island-wide, “the worst places have greened up a lot,” said botanist Steve Perlman. “ A lot of places look so good you can forget there was ever a hurricane.”

THE HOTELS

Authorities in Kauai estimate that the hurricane shut down about 7,000 of the 8,202 hotel, condo and bed-and-breakfast rooms on the island.

On April 7, Kauai County economic development officials reported that 2,495 of those 8,202 rooms had been repaired and returned to the marketplace. (To put it another way, about 30% of the island’s hotel rooms are up and running.)

The biggest recovery milestone so far was the March 30 reopening of the 600-room Hyatt Regency Kauai, the only large luxury resort now open for business on the island’s sunny, popular south shore. Hyatt, which had only completed the $220-million, 50-acre development in November, 1990, spent an estimated $30 million to renovate it.

I arrived unannounced on April 1, surprised that even after dogged questioning of the reservationist, the best rate I could get was $230 a night. (Hoping to woo islanders, the hotel is offering deeper discounts to Hawaiian residents, including a “Double Take Package” providing a $199 nightly rate, plus two rounds of free golf or spa treatments.)

The Hyatt’s handsome public areas were impressive and inviting, as were the comfortable rooms (two sinks, two phones, three chairs in mine) and the most detailed introduction to the premises I’ve ever had from a bellman. (He had plenty of time; the place was less than 20% occupied.) The nightclub and one restaurant near the oceanfront (the hotel has five) was not quite completed, and the water-slide was not yet ready for use, but virtually all other hotel offerings seemed to be in place. The golf course looked immaculate, and was in use.

The service, while enthusiastic, was a little uneven (I had to ask for a menu at breakfast) and occasionally hampered by technical bugs (a computer failure delayed my dinner bill; to compensate, the waiter offered free dessert), and the plumbing in my shower seemed a bit klunky. Also, with the 600 rooms spread among wings far from the restaurants and lobby, a guest does a lot of walking. Some of these drawbacks may be remedied as the hotel returns to business as usual. Certainly, the hotel and its hundreds of employees have shown great mettle so far in regrouping so well so quickly.

Other major resort hotels that never closed include the 350-room Outrigger Kauai Beach Hotel (known as the the Kauai Hilton until Jan. 1) near Lihue. Rates for double rooms there normally begin at $125, but under an offer available through June 30, travelers who present business cards can get a “corporate discount” rate of $75 nightly. Travelers who ask for the “Preferred Club Card” discount get 15% off the normal rate.

Among the other open hotels: the 228-room Kauai Resort Hotel on the island’s eastern rim, and the 300-room Kauai Coconut Beach Resort not far away. (Thirty of the Kauai Coconut Beach Resort’s rooms were damaged in Iniki and remain closed.) Reservationists said last weekend’s occupancy rates were 80% at the Kauai Resort Hotel, about 50% at the Kauai Coconut Beach Resort. Those numbers include some construction workers.

Many more hotels at one time or another have pledged to return before summer’s end. But hoteliers--especially those at some of the largest lodgings on the island--have learned the hard way that the post-Iniki future is hard to predict.

The Sheraton Kauai Garden Hotel on Poipu Beach was scheduled to start accepting guests on April 1, but in March the reopening was indefinitely postponed. The nearby Sheraton Kauai Beach Resort, once scheduled to reopen Oct. 1, has also been postponed, with company officials saying only that they’re aiming to reopen both properties sometime in 1994. The 426-room Stouffer Waiohai Beach Resort is predicting a reopening late in 1993.

On the north shore, the 280-room Hanalei Bay Resort planned to reopen June 1, then delayed the date to Aug. 1. The 252-room Princeville Hotel is telling callers it will reopen around the end of 1993.

At the largest hotel on island, the 847-room Westin Kauai at Kauai Lagoons on the island’s windward east side, a receptionist reports that the lavish hotel, which faces fiscal as well as physical troubles, will probably be closed until late 1993 or early 1994.

A few miles north at the 390-room Coco Palms Resort in Kapaa--known among veteran Hawaii hands for its coconut grove and nightly torch-lighting ceremony--management first forecast a reopening within a few months, then adjusted the date to fall of 1993, and then stopped offering dates at all.

RESTAURANTS AND ACTIVITIES

Most of the island’s non-hotel restaurants are open. The longstanding Ono Family Restaurant in Kapaa (dinner entrees $7-$14) reopened in November. The upscale, Pacific Rim-flavored A Pacific Cafe (dinner entrees $14-$22) in Kapaa reopened in December. The Tip Top Motel, Cafe & Bakery in Lihue, a favored lunch and breakfast spot with locals (meals for $4-$6), reopened in December. The Bull Shed, a popular dinner place in Kapaa (dinner entrees $11-$25), reopened early this year.

Among those still closed: Brennecke’s Beach Broiler at Poipu Beach, where the windows are boarded up and the telephone remains out of service; Eggbert’s in Lihue, where major repairs have not yet begun, and Gaylord’s Restaurant, located in the 1935 Kilohana mansion outside Lihue. Gaylord’s lost part of its roof and had a chimney collapse on the kitchen. Reopening is scheduled for June 1.

Though millions of dollars worth of equipment was ruined in the hurricane, most of the island’s many tourist-activity companies are open at least part time. Most visibly, the helicopter companies are flying. (My flight with Will Squyres cost $140.)

At Kayak Kauai, owner Chino Godinez had one of his two shops totaled, but kept his 100-plus-vessel fleet in place during the hurricane by filling the kayaks and canoes with water. He’s open for business again, with shorter hours, at his sites in Hanalei and Kapaa.

At Pooku Stables, owner Gale Carswell has cut back from six days a week to two. She reports, however, that none of her 20-odd horses were lost.

Some of Kauai’s activities do unfold in a somewhat different context than they used to. While I was canvassing the area, I saw one longtime local surfer near Brennecke’s Beach pause on his way to the waves and gaze back at the crazy architectural lines of partially collapsed beachfront house.

“From out in the water, at the right angle, that looks like an Escher print,” he said. “The descending deck. The ascending deck.” Then he paddled out into the uncrowded ocean.

THE PEOPLE

“Aloha Spirit” is an often-employed phrase around the islands, and right now there’s much discussion of how that storied attitude is enduring among the 50,000 residents of Kauai. Obviously, it’s unfair for a tourist to demand cheerfulness from a disaster-scarred community. But on the other hand, many travelers don’t want to go where they won’t feel welcome.

“You have to kind of keep in mind that this place was ripped apart not too long ago,” said tourist Cam Winter, who came from Seattle with her husband and two children. “People just have other things on their minds.”

Kauai County spokesman Alan Iwasaki discouraged generalizations. “I’ve run across people who are remarkable in resilience and spirit,” he said, “and other people who are really having a difficult time.”

Yet a lucky visitor may well happen upon the right opportunity to “talk story,” in the phrase the Hawaiians use for their much-enjoyed casual conversation. If so, said Roberta Wallace of Gaylord’s Restaurant, “you’ll hear the most wonderful stories of heroism and human caring.”

She tells about one day a month or so after the hurricane, when parts of Kauai were still without electricity. Musicians of the Honolulu Symphony floated over on a barge and set up outdoors by the Kilohana mansion. A crowd of 4,000 gathered for the free concert, and they played the 1812 Overture.

“It was a fabulous thing,” recalled Wallace.

GUIDEBOOK: Back to Kauai

Getting There: No airline flies nonstop from Los Angeles to Kauai’s Lihue Municipal Airport, though Hawaiian Airlines offers an LAX-Oahu-Kauai connection beginning at $309. After travelers reach the Honolulu airport on Oahu, Aloha and Hawaiian airlines offer regular flights to Kauai with cheapest one-way fares beginning at $74. (United Airlines has announced that its regular flights between Oahu and Kauai, which begin at $74 one way, will be suspended indefinitely beginning May 1.)

Where to Stay: For lower-priced lodgings, consider smaller hotels and bed-and-breakfast operations. Travelers wary of noise or children may want to ask hotels how many of their guests are construction workers or displaced island families. For luxury in the popular Poipu Beach area, the only major resort to open since Hurricane Iniki is the Hyatt Regency Kauai (1571 Poipu Road, Koloa, Kauai, Hawaii; 808-742-1234 or 800-233-1234). The hotel includes 600 rooms, tennis, golf and half a dozen restaurants and lounges. Regular rates range from $230 nightly for a garden-view double room to $410 for a Regency Club ocean-view lodging with various extras. (After May 1, the rates drop to $195 and $370, respectively.) Under a current promotion, a fifth night is free once you’ve paid for four.

Helicopter tours: About a dozen companies are back in business. The one I used was Will Squyres Helicopter Tours, (808) 245-8881 or (808) 245-7541; an hour’s ride covering the entire island costs $140 per person.

For more information: The County of Kauai is running an island information hotline with referral numbers and updates on what business are open. The service will also send faxes; telephone (800) 262-1400. Also, a variety of literature is available from the Hawaii Visitors Bureau (3440 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 502, Los Angeles 90010; (213) 385-5301).