My old mule Tita clopped straight up to the edge of the first switchback. One more step and we’d tumble down a sheer cliff, falling almost 1,600 feet to the sea. But mules are smart creatures and, at the last instant, she swiveled onto the next leg of the pali trail, a rugged path that zigzags down 26 switchbacks to the historic leper colony of Kalaupapa.

The isolated site is the No. 1 tourist destination on the untouristy Hawaiian island of Molokai.

Luckily, bushes blocked some of the most vertigo-inducing views, and I had a mule skinner behind me strumming his ukulele and singing in that sweet Hawaiian male soprano that calms the rawest of nerves.

The thumblike promontory taking shape below us — formed of flowing lava, hammered by rough seas and swept by trade winds — became the site of Hawaii’s famed leper colony that was started in the 1860s, almost eight decades before an antibiotic treatment was found to arrest the disease.

Over the years, more than 8,000 exiles would die there, many disfigured, crippled and blinded by the sickness now commonly called Hansen’s disease. At its peak, the settlement had more than 1,200 residents. Today, only a handful remain, all in their late 70s to 90s, along with the dozens of federal and state workers who manage what is now designated the Kalaupapa National Historical Park; nps.gov/kala/planyourvisit.

Only 100 outside visitors are allowed into the park each day. They must have permits and cannot talk to the former patients, take their photos or enter their properties. No one under age 16 is allowed.

Visitors to Kalaupapa arrive by one of three ways: They take a small plane, ride the mules, or hike the pali (cliff) trail, an arduous trek for the very fit. The 3-plus-mile trail is slippery in rainy conditions, is subject to rockfalls and landslides, and narrows to a few feet in some spots.

Mule trips pose their own risks. Riders can fall, or — if they shriek, freak or try to micromanage these heavily muscled, independent animals — can be pitched off. Which is why operators at the long-standing Kalaupapa Mule Ride take tourists’ insurance information, require them to sign waivers and stick to hard rules. It’s OK if you don’t have equestrian experience — guides will explain what to do — but you can’t weigh more than 250 pounds or be pregnant.

All three ways of getting to Kalaupapa are expensive, requiring permits and prearranged tours on-site. The total for my mule trip was $230. It was pricey, but I had to go. Locals had told me Kalaupapa was a “must-do,” a sacred place with a “special feel.” Every time I pressed for details, there were no more words. “Go. You’ll see for yourself. You’ll know.”

To prepare, I read interviews with longtime residents. I also read up on Father Damien, canonized as a saint in 2009 for his work at the colony. The hearty Catholic priest came to the promontory’s first settlement in 1873 determined to improve the lives of the sick and save their souls for Christ, constructing for them sturdy buildings and, sometimes daily, helping build their coffins and dig their graves.

I thought about their stories as our 11-mule train neared trail’s bottom. My thighs were burning and my knees were stiff and numb as I dismounted, took in the dreamy sandy-white beach beside me, and looked up, stunned by the intimidating green cliff we’d just come down — and would be going back up.

Before boarding the tour bus, I asked our tour guide, Norman Soares, about a restriction that puzzled me. Why no one under 16? His sunny face turned somber as he explained how infants born in the colony were taken away from parents immediately after birth for fear of contagion. Residents also grieved for children they’d left behind when they were first forced into quarantine. They needed no reminders.

He took us to the village’s little bookstore, stocked with volumes on Kalaupapa and religious souvenirs. We traveled east across the peninsula to Kalawao, site of the initial leper settlement. Soares pointed to a cone-shaped island offshore and described how early sea captains with boatloads of new patients would anchor there, sometimes telling already frightened passengers to jump overboard and swim for shore in rough seas.

Our last stop was St. Philomena Church, which Father Damien expanded twice to accommodate his growing flock. In front of pews, I saw the floor holes the priest had cut. Our guide told us how patients with excessive drool would roll up big leaves into a funnel, put the narrow end into the holes, and, often through deformed lips, spit through to the ground as they listened to scripture.

In the church’s graveyard, the priest’s admirers had festooned his fenced plot with leis and necklaces of shell and bead. I looked across the other graves in the cemetery and up, past them, to the towering cliffs knifing down into the sea, some of the peaks 3,000 feet high, furrowed with lush ravines and waterfalls. I thought about how, so visibly walled off from the world, homesick, ill, often shunned and forgotten, these exiles and thousands more buried on Kalaupapa made a life for themselves, creating a community that bonded together, celebrated together, married, buried and mourned together.

The mule ride up seemed easier on us, harder on the mules. My bottom was seriously saddle-sore by the time we reached “topside” Molokai.

I took my tired body to a masseur the next day, and he used some swift Hawaiian Lomi-Lomi moves to “pull up the bad energy from the sore spots and whoosh it away.” As he whooshed, I thought about another kind of ache, the one I’d experienced the day before in Kalaupapa.

It was a strange sensation: a burning of heart, a tug of throat. I realized it was that “special feeling” locals had described — a spell cast by a place of so much sorrow, so much compassion, so much courage and such staggering beauty.

“Go,” said the locals. “You’ll see for yourself. You’ll know.”

I had. I knew.

M.L. Lyke is a freelance writer.