Honolulu

It's the first thing that popped into my mind when I booked my flight to Hawaii. Usually I like to start in a small town and work my way up to the big city. But because I had done that in Australia it wasn't that much of a transition going from Sydney to Honolulu. What I did find depressing was the disparity between high-end tourism on the one hand a a lot of homelessness on the other. I was back in the US but it didn't feel like home.

Hawaii has mixed feelings about the mainland US in general and tourism in particular. It has succeeded only in making them feel like foreigners in their own country subject to the rule of the dollar while struggling to maintain their identity. The Royal Family was never interested in becoming part of the US and would have preferred to be part of the British Commonwealth, surrendering only at gunpoint. Many native Hawaiians feel the same today and it doesn't take long for the tension to come to the surface.

Officially there aren't any borders to Honolulu. Many locals however make a clear distinction between Waikiki and downtown. It's a sprawling city that takes in a large area from Pearl Harbor in the north to Waikiki in the south and inland up whatever hillsides will support a house.

My more immediate issue was that anything I wanted was always a long bus ride away. Groceries were a big production and the local ABC convenience stores were pretty unpredictable. Some were souvenir stores. Others were liquor stores. Still others were trying to figure out what would sell on that block (and there seemed to be one on every block).

Some of the glitzy retail was fun. There was some effort to put on some free shows to help share Hawaiian culture but overall it was pretty pricy and not geared to independent travelers.

On the way home, I had a long enough layover between flights to take another spin through Waikiki. This time it came across as way too much after getting used to the quieter gentler towns of Hilo, Kona and Wailuku.

Travler's Tip- if you only have a week, fly direct to Maui.

Waikiki Beach

I'm not a beach guy. Honest. But after the Australia and now Hawaii I'm beginning to appreciate them. The beaches in Western Australia were wonderful and wild and mostly deserted. Waikiki is anything but deserted but it's become my daily sanity break. It's such a highlight to take a walk on the beach right around sunset, Even with lots of folks hanging out for a last surf or taking in the sunset there's something wonderful and soothing about it. It's easy to rue the development but it's also easy to see why people love it.

North Shore (Oahu)

I'm not a surf guy.

At least I haven't been to this point.


But when you watch the waves for a while it puts a spell on you.

Where they appear. When they break.
When a pipeline appears.
The sound it makes when it crashes.

It almost seems natural to have people on boards doing the same thing. Measuring the waves. Waiting, watching guessing and then matching wits with it on the fly. I never even considered trying to surf until now but I can see why people love it and why it's such a big part of Hawaiian life. And who knows, you may see me on a board yet.

Mauna Loa (Big Island)

The guidebooks all say that there's nothing like being on a volcano and that nothing can give you an idea of what it's like
...and they're right


Volcanoes National Park is a truly amazing place. Steam coming out through long cracks in the ground, huge volcanic craters and desolate landscapes marked only by different flows of lava. To say nothing of the big fireworks of a major eruption or a flow of molten lava down the mountainside streaming into the ocean.

I spent five nights and that was barely enough to explore Mauna Loa. When measured from its base on the ocean floor, Mauna Loa is the tallest mountain in the world. OK, OK. Mt Everest is the highest but Mauna Loa is still a massive mountain that dominates the topography of the Big Island.

The park is also serves as an observatory for what is the most active volcano on earth, helping scientists understand and predict volcanic activity. For me it was a wonderful education not only about the geology of Hawaii but of volcanism and plate tectonics worldwide. There were lots of displays, talks and videos to help teach about the geologic and cultural importance of Mauna Loa.

Hilo

It wasn't terribly hard to pick up the anti-tourist
sentiment in Oahu. In Hilo they put it into action.
The free bus that goes from Hilo to the National
Park leaves at 5:00 AM and doesn't go again until
2:40 in the afternoon. It doubles as a school bus
and tries to pretend that no one else would ever
want to go to one of the most unique natural areas
in the world. If you dislike the tourists so much,
get them to the park and out of your hair.

If you want to camp at one of the state or county
parks you have to go to the state or county office
in Hilo to make a reservation even if you're on the
other side of the Big Island 100 miles away. There's
hardly any point to allowing any camping since the
campgrounds are unattended and not particularly safe
as a result.

Work-for-stay

The work-for-stay seemed like such a good idea. I liked the boss. He liked me. I got along with his wife and toddler. Making beds and vacuuming floors didn't bother me and I was even getting into exploring the town.


Alas, it wasn't to be. The perfect fit was a negative fit. The things I didn't know were all the things the boss didn't care to explain. When I asked, he just got mad. Little things like the rules and laws governing payment, cancellations etc. There were certainly things I could and should have done better but it was a recipe for disaster.

When the end finally came I headed up the hill to lick my wounded ego in the National Park. And then something wonderful happened. I got into a conversation with a couple about possible day hikes in the park, showing them my maps etc. When I asked where they were from they said 'Maine'. 'Where in Maine?' 'Camden'. At that point we looked at each other and guessed each other to be about the same age.

Turned out we were one class apart at the same High School in Camden Maine and had even taken a couple of classes together. We ran in somewhat different circles and the memories were a little rusty but it was what we had in common now that was what made it such a treat.

My schoolmate's name was (and still is) Jenny Bell. Her older sister ran the guitar shop in Camden and was a folk performer of some note. Jenny is now married to Doug Sensenig who also has family connections to Camden and hiked the Appalachian Trail in 2005. He's working for the Hawaii Island Land Trust helping them to preserve land for both conservation and recreational use. It's a job he's wonderfully suited to but he longs to travel the world and take his family with him. So between having High School in common with Jenny and the AT in common with Doug and traveling in common all the way around it was a wonderful reacquainting/meeting of the minds. They invited me to stay with them and we had a wonderful time hProxy-Connection: keep-alive
Cache-Control: max-age=0

ing, chatting, touring, going to Proxy-Connection: keep-alive
Cache-Control: max-age=0

e local community chorus etc. And it never would have happened if the work-for-stay hadn't fallen apart.

Kona

I insisted on seeing it because it was the one sight thing left to see.


That said I didn't see a whole lot. Kona Hawaii has a bigger airport and a more developed tourist/resort infrastructure than Hilo but less charm and less of the organic crunchiness.

Hilo is what it is. Kona doesn't really want to be what it is but they had to put it somewhere because you can't afford to completely alienate the tourists in Hawaii. For me, tourism is just a sideshow. The real issue is reconciling the cultural awakening that Hawaiians feel with the reality that they're yet to get up to speed economically. Explaining the cosmos is wonderful. Affording to stay on your land when its value and taxes have skyrocketed throws a wrench into things and leads to a sense of powerlessness and anger.

This is the conundrum of Hawaii. A place the US wanted and needed more than Hawaii ever needed it and that chafes at the position it finds itself in. They can't really live without the tourist dollars now but they don't particularly like living with them either.

Haleakala

Another National Park built around a volcano.
...OK, here we go again.

That was my mindset going into it. It turned out to be totally different from Volcanoes National Park and extraordinarily beautiful. The main difference is that Haleakala is far older and has eroded much more leaving the surface much sandier and often more colorful. In some places the whole scene changed every few minutes from desert to sagebrush to colored sand to lava fields.

The crowning touch for me was being able to see the peaks on the Big Island 100 miles away. It gave a nice sense of closure to the trip and was my own little piece of Maui magic.