O'ahu, Hawai'i, August 29-September 3, 2003

Hawaii consists of a series of six major islands that are really just the tops of underwater volcanoes in the Pacific Ocean. The more correct name of the state (it's the 50th state of the US) is Hawai'i, with the ' sign indicating that you should pause at that point when pronouncing the word, like when you say "oh-oh". The island we went to, Oahu (or O'ahu) is where the capital Honolulu is, and where most of the tourists go. When you're in Waikiki, definitely the capital of the tourism industry in Hawaii, it's difficult to believe you're on a small piece of volcanic rock 2,400 miles from the US West Coast.

The first thing we noticed when we reached Hawaii, after 5 hours of flying over landless ocean, was the change in weather from California. It must have been about 30 degrees C, not much higher than in the Bay Area, but the increase in the humidity was drastic. Since most tourists come to Hawaii mostly for sun and sand, the airport apparently did not feel it necessary to shield arriving passengers from the outside temperature with air conditioning except in a few select areas. (We made sure we stayed in and around those areas.) This was our first stop, on the island of Kau'ai, where we looked around the airport for half an hour, and then flew on a short 20 minute flight to the neighboring island of Oahu. Since this was the Friday before a long weekend (Labor Day in the US) it took us over an hour to get our rental car at Honolulu airport. But we were finally on our way into the city a couple of hours after we landed. As we slowly realized, Waikiki and Honolulu are not best discovered by car, since (according to our trusty guidebook) there are 400 cars in Hawaii for every mile of road. Still, our steady 5-mile-an-hour speed gave us plenty of time to look around at the Aloha State. It soon became apparent that the Aloha State ("aloha" is a Hawaiian word meaning "love") took the Aloha part of its name very seriously. We were noticing a common theme in the stores that we passed. Hungry? There has to be an Aloha Cafe right around the corner. Need a haircut? Chances are high there's an Aloha Barber within a few blocks. Want a new car? There's definitely an Aloha Car Dealer or two in your area. There's even an Aloha Tower if you want to get a good bird's eye view of the city.

Apart from the over-abundance of Aloha around us we also noticed how similar some of the trees were to those in India. It's probably because of the similarly hot and humid climate. The most noticeable and plentiful of these are definitely the palm trees that line the avenues, and driving alongside the beach into Waikiki through rows of hotels was like being in a slightly more upscale version of Juhu; later we would also see banyan and magnolia trees around the island.

After checking into our hotel (parking was across the street, cheap at $5 per day) we went for a walk. It was 6.45 pm and already just past sunset (days are shorter in Hawaii, closer to the equator, than California). Our hotel was 2 blocks (about 100 m) from the beach, and the road, Kalakaua Avenue, that runs along it. It was full of activity: some people sitting on the beach, many surfers returning from the ocean with their boards under their arms, and some diehards still out in the sea, in the deepening twilight, hoping to squeeze a few more minutes of surfing pleasure out of the day. We were tired after our flight (and we had gotten up at 5 am that morning), so after dinner we were soon back in the hotel and asleep.

The next day, Saturday, we planned to spend sightseeing around Honolulu. Oahu is shaped like a butterfly (a butterfly with one extremely deformed wing, it must be said), and Waikiki and Honolulu are on the southern coast of the island. Rising behind Waikiki is the dormant volcanic cone of Diamond Head, which we were planning to hike that day. Stopping for breakfast at the McDonalds on Kalakaua Ave, we saw part of some kind of parade that seemed to have been organized by the Japanese community in Oahu. We took plentiful pictures, but we're still not sure exactly what everything was about. Still, it was pleasant to watch for a while. (Sejal's Comments: It was kind of difficult to imagine the time after the Pearl Harbor attack and the general feeling Americans had for Japan at that time. Because now we were in Hawaii a few decades later, and it is full of Japanese Tourists. Infact not just tourists we saw many mixed American-Japanese couples too. Just FYI, Waikiki beach is the most popular beach in the world and not many people know but is almost entirely an artificial beach. Yes, can you believe it? The most popular beach in the world is a man made beach! We had read about it as being the most crowded beach in Hawaii too.) After walking along Waikiki Beach for some time we decided to begin the hike before the day got too hot. The Visitor Center at Diamond Head is actually inside the volcano's cone, and that's the starting point for the hike. You drive around the outside of the mountain, till a tunnel cuts through it and emerges on the floor of the volcanic crater. Inside the crater it was dry and hot, not because of any lingering volcanic heat but because the cone that completely encircles it blocks clouds and moisture from reaching the inside. The hike goes from the crater floor to the highest point on the rim of the volcanic cone, passing through a series of tunnels and passageways originally created by the US military. It's only 0.7 miles from start to finish but a steep climb, with all of the tunnels unlighted so that flashlights are required. It took us about 45 minutes to get to the top, but the view is well worth it. The hotels of Waikiki stretch out along the coast west of the mountain. Closer in, and on its seaward slopes, are some of the more expensive areas in Oahu, many of them filled with the second homes of the rich and super-rich from the US mainland (more about this later). The water is shallow and clear enough near the shore to be able to see the bottom even from that height, and we could see coral reef just below the surface. Behind us were the Ko'olau range of mountains that run down the entire eastern coast of Oahu, covered with clouds as on every day we were there. For the first of many times on this trip we felt that a wide-angle lens would have been able to capture this vista better.

Our second stop for the day was Pearl Harbor. Abhi was not very keen to take the tour to the USS Arizona, the US Navy battleship that was one of the most damaged in the famous attack on Pearl Harbor. The battleship itself was sunk in the attack and is still submerged in the harbor; what you see is a memorial that seemed too little interesting for the time we would have to wait in line to see it. Instead, we took a tour of a submarine there, the USS Bowfin, that was used in conducting a surprise attack on Japanese forces in the Sea of Japan during World War II. A surprising number of Japanese tourists visit these exhibits, so many of the displays focus on the skill and daring of the people involved without taking sides. Still, the presence of the US military in large numbers on Oahu is somewhat jarring - Pearl Harbor is still an active military base, and most of it is off-limits to civilians - so this was not a place we were keen to spend much time on. In the couple of hours remaining before sunset we took a drive along a part of the Koolau mountains, getting spectacular views of Waikiki and Diamond Head at sunset.

Considering that Hawaii is almost halfway between the US mainland and East Asia, it's not surprising that there are many Japanese tourists in Honolulu. What's surprising is how many there are, and how much the tourist areas cater to them. The fact that (according to our guidebook again) the average Japanese tourist spends $120 per day in Hawaii, compared to $25 or so for a typical American tourist, may have something to do with it. It's hard to walk past more than a few restaurants on Kalakaua Avenue without encountering a sushi restaurant, and many signs, especially in shopping areas, are in English as well as Japanese. Many of the prices too are more Japanese than American - a single plate at a not-very-fancy Japanese restaurant that Abhi ate at one night was $18. However, since the only vegetarian thing on the menu at most Japanese restaurants is seaweed, most of the food we ate there was not Japanese. In fact it wasn't even Hawaiian, since most of the native Hawaiian cuisine has been overrun by the ubiquitous fast food and mall cuisine from the mainland. The only way you can really get Hawaiian food is by attending an overpriced "luau", or Hawaiian feast, where they serve such delicacies as roasted pig and mashed "taro" plants. Although this is Hawaiian food, it's often not good or particularly authentic Hawaiian food, so this was something we stayed clear of also.

What we did want to do on this trip, of course, was participate in some (or at least one) of the watersports for which Hawaii is justly famous. The North Shore of Oahu is where the action is in winter, when the 20 foot waves come in crashing from the Pacific, and pro surfers from all over the world come to test their skills, but we were headed to calmer waters and an easier sport, snorkeling at Hanauma Bay. There is a coral reef in shallow waters close to the shore, home to many colorful varieties of fish. We were taking lessons from an instructor that we had booked before the trip, and we were picked up early in the morning on Sunday to be driven to the Bay. You wear a wetsuit (a skintight suit till your knees), goggles to cover your eyes and nose, and put a breathing tube in your mouth. You have to learn how to breathe in and out through your mouth, and how to clear out your breathing tube when it fills with water, as it inevitably does sooner or later (mostly sooner). We soon realized that those pictures you see of people swimming around in calm clear water, gazing down at millions of little fish swimming happily below them, and with golden sunlight streaming into the water, were not quite as easy to reproduce in real life as we had thought. The sunny part of it was achieved easily enough, but the sea was having a little difficulty being as calm as it was in the brochures. Part of this was because of a Pacific storm that on that day was passing about 100 miles south of us (and just missed one of the other Hawaiian islands), but mostly it was because we were just inexperienced in swimming in anything larger than a swimming pool. Also, sea water is SALTY, which you never really realize till you get a big mouthful of it when you're trying to catch your breath. (That's probably what people mean when they talk about getting the real taste of Hawaii.) Did we mention that seawater also stings your eyes? Sorting out these problems, however, Sejal realized that the nearest land after she left the shore would be Antarctica, so she refused to go in deeper than her waist. Abhi, confident of his swimming abilities, let the instructor take him out to beyond the coral reef.

(Abhi adds: Somewhat embarrassingly, the part about the instructor taking me out is literally true - the waves crashing onto the coral reef were a little too much for my swimming talents, and the instructor had to help me get over the rough portion, over the coral reef, into the relatively calmer waters beyond. In the process I also managed to satisfy my fluid intake needs for the day, and realized how much less offensive swimming pool water tastes. Beyond the coral reef it was calmer and clearer, with many more fish visible, and I had a great time just swimming around and watching them. The instructor tried to get me to go underwater and pick up rocks and other objects from the sea bottom; however, this involves a complicated sequence of operations to keep your breathing tube from flooding with water that I wasn't sure I could manage, so I politely said no. I headed back to shore relatively quickly, though, since just swimming out had been pretty tiring, and the shore was looking really far away by this point.)

After coming back in, the instructor also gave Sejal some lessons in shallower water, where fish were visible - incredibly - even in water less than knee deep. Since fishing is prohibited in these areas (Hanauma Bay is a marine sanctuary), the fish are unafraid of humans and often come in very close to the shore. (The fact that some people, in violation of rules, also feed them probably helps as well.) All in all, both of us had a great time snorkeling, and would love to repeat the experience.

That afternoon we went to a museum of Polynesian culture just outside Honolulu, but after looking around a bit didn't think it was worth spending much time over. An interesting thing we saw there was that the planetarium at the museum was called the Jhamandas Watumull Planetarium. It's possible that someone from Fiji, where there is a large Indian population, donated some money for the planetarium, although we have no real information about it.

Our drive for the day was to the Nu'uanu-Pali lookout, a point where one of the highways on Oahu, the Pali Highway, cuts through the Ko'olau mountains and emerges onto an amazing vista on the other side. The entire eastern side of the volcanic Ko'olau mountains collapsed into the Pacific in a landslide two million years ago, leaving a mountain range with one side an almost continuous series of sheer cliffs (the word "pali" means cliff in Hawaiian). This was the scene of one of the most famous battles in Hawaiian history, where over 400 soldiers of one of the warring Hawaiian tribes jumped to their deaths over the cliffs. From this vista point, the pali stretches away seemingly endlessly into the distance, towering over the east coast of Oahu that runs alongside it. Many small towns along the east coast of the island are visible from here, and two major highways snake through them. The viewpoint is abreast of the cliffs and looking out over the east coast of the island; this gives you about a 150 degree view of the scene. Again, a wide-angle lens would have been better able to do justice to this panorama, but our camera did a valiant job.

We spent Monday, our last (planned) day in Hawaii, doing a semi-circuit of the island, driving up the east coast to the north shore of the island, and then cutting back across the center of the island to our hotel on the south shore. The drive up the coast, along a narrow two-lane road, passes through some of the most spectacular scenery on the island, often passing parallel to, and close by, the same mist-wreathed pali that is visible from the Nu'uanu-Pali lookout. Many beautiful, and sparsely occupied, beaches lie along this route, and we stopped at many of them. The drive also gave us some glimpses into how Hawaii might have looked before it became a tourist mecca: we enjoyed seeing places where people were selling fresh fruit by the roadside from small stalls, and bought coconut water from one such stall; there were also shops off the road selling Hawaiian woodwork and paintings. At one such shop that we stopped at, we got into a conversation with the woman at the counter and her husband, both native Hawaiians and deeply opposed to Hawaii being a part of the USA. The Hawaiian monarchy was overthrown by the US government, primarily at the urging of local US businessmen, in 1893, eventually leading to Hawaii becoming a US state in 1959. In recent years an increasingly vocal movement for Hawaiian independence has emerged, demanding either complete independence from the US or some lesser form of autonomy. Some of the people there have gone even further, forming their own government that they say supersedes the authority of the US government. The people whose shop we were in were office-bearers in this Hawaiian government. Much of their anger (or so it seemed to us) came from the realization that much of the land that belonged to native Hawaiians had been taken away from them by white traders, and from the fact that it is now difficult for Hawaiians, with the increase in real estate prices in recent years, to be able to afford to live in Hawaii. For example, their children were living in California just because it was too expensive to live in Hawaii. Those expensive homes that we saw from Diamond Head were pretty, but they were also unaffordable to anyone but the rich from the mainland. We offered them our best wishes that they would succeed in their cause; there was little else we could do.

The 1960s are alive and well on the north shore of Oahu, especially in a town called Hale'iwa that is where many of the surfers live. Although this is far from the peak time of year for surfing in Hawaii, dreadlocked men (and women) with surfboards under their arms are a common sight, no doubt getting an early start on the season. We sampled one of the local Hawaiian delicacies, shave ice (their version of gola, but without the chaat masala) at a shop in Haleiwa: even this, with psychedelic blue, orange and red colors, seemed influenced by the 60s. Our drive back to our hotel was across the not very scenic plains of central Oahu; we passed the Dole Plantation (Dole is a big company making fruit juice in the US), where they have a tour of their facilities, but it was closed by the time we got there. The island is small enough that we were able to get from the north end to the south in about half an hour.

Our flight was expected to leave the next day; unfortunately, our aircraft chose that day to develop a mechanical problem, which meant that we were in Oahu for one day longer than expected. Although this detracted from our overall enjoyment, it did not even come close to spoiling the other great memories we had accumulated on this trip. Although this was our first trip to Hawaii, neither of us think it will be our last. After all, there are five more islands to explore. Sejal adds: One reason why I loved Hawaii more than I had thought I would was because it reminded me of home. The warm climate and all the trees you normally see in India made me feel as if I am closer to home. Hawaii is one of the most beautiful places we have visited till now and going there again sure would be something we look forward to.