Day 18 – 23 : Hawaii – “Think of every natural disaster possible. We’ve got it.”
We board at Vancouver, fly south to LAX and endure a four hour lay-over. Sheila tries to sleep (on the floor) and I amuse myself by staring at a Sony kiosk machine and its thorough service-man as he phlegmatically restocks earphones and eReaders into its esurient guts. (Yes, you can buy an eReader from a machine in LAX).
After the morning’s stunt escapades, and a non-stop barrage of poor food choices, I feel like death. Thankfully the flight is another uneventful affair and we land in Honolulu without incident. At least, I don’t throw myself down any stairs between the plane and the baggage claim area which is always a bonus.
Whether it’s the recent shock to my system or just plain old-fashioned fatigue, my body goes into total meltdown when we reach the terminal. The humidity in Hawaii hits me like a wet mattress, pushing from all angles as if the string of Pacific islands are somehow subject to a local gravitational phenomenon that delivers more than the universal 1G of pressure. Before I completely falter, Sheila orders me to sit down while she locates our bags and, with absolutely no sign of masculine pride on show, I gladly capitulate. In fact, I find a comfy seat and doze into oblivion as Hawaii rotates around me. At least, it feels like it’s rotating.
Bags are collected and, after more hilarious high-jinks involving a call for transport, we partake of a complimentary shuttle to the hotel. The sign in the bus suggests giving the driver a dollar for each bag carried. It’s not mandatory but, hey, they sure would appreciate it. There’s an egregious typo on the sign, however, so I’m afraid “Benny” is getting nought from this grammar nazi. (Oh calm down, I get him on the way back.)
The hotel is so close to the airport we might as well be staying in the air-traffic control tower. It’s old and sufficient and everyone says “Aloha” and “Mahalo” (Thank you) at every opportunity available. During my stay in Hawaii I learn that something like less than 2% of the population can speak the native tongue, that it’s dying out and affirmative action is needed to prevent its extinction. 2% – that’s even worse than the Irish language. Then again, if the natives continue and insist on naming every street and geological object with a Hawaiian moniker, I’m quietly confident the language will make it. Annoyingly, the Hawaiian alphabet appears to only have about fourteen letters resulting in street names and far-flung places all pretty much sounding the same. Also, with an over reliance of vowels, the vast majority of words sound like your mouth is burning and you desperately need a glass of water. We stay away from pronouncing anything outside of each other’s forgiving ear-shot.
We eat at the hotel out of pure dogged laziness and immediately regret it. At this point my leg now looks (and feels) like a minced plum, my stomach is no longer on speaking terms (despite the incessant growling of complaints) and the carefree shifting through time-zones has left me feeling like some sort of drunken intrepid science experiment. Despite this all-penetrating malaise, sleep comes begrudgingly. That would be the pain in my leg reminding me of how much I’m an idiot at every turn.
We awake and investigate what the free hotel breakfast might contain. The coffee is actually passable (either that or my system is now literally in denial and will accept any caffeinated product with apparent glee) and I munch on an uncooked waffle. During which I spy the waffle machine and hope no one spotted me eating the uncooked one. I eat a stack of waffles, a food that has quickly become the cornerstone of my “new diet.” I feel like I’m on the opposite of The Biggest Loser where I’m the Big Winner who’s trying to pile on the pounds before being starved to death.
We grab Benny again and get him to take us back to the terminal which, in daylight, we realise we could have probably walked to in about ten minutes. We’re off to the Big Island where we will be spending the majority of our stay, frolicking about on lush beaches and getting lost in dense vegetation.
Due to some problem with the boarding-pass printer, and maybe because the check-in guy thinks I’m angry because of it — seriously, it’s the leg, I’m really not that pissed off – we get bumped to first class, which is actually quite comical considering the flight to the Big Island takes 35 minutes and premium fliers literally only enjoy an extra cup of coffee/juice during the terse you’re-up-and-you-re-down jaunt.
The islands below are picturesque and straight off a postcard but before we know it, the plane descends into Hilo airport and we’re spat out into a tiny hovel of a place. I can’t help but think “drug running operation” but everyone is far too laid-back for such a high-octane activity. We exit and go to “Dollar Car Rental” where, in less than five minutes, I’m entrusted with a red Chrysler to bounce around the island at my pleasure. I recall the old maxim: “There’s only one thing faster than a stolen car. And that’s a rented one” but, considering my luck of late, decide not to invoke the privilege.
After some quick chanting of the “Drive on the right, drive on the right” mantra, we’re away and head for the hostel. Hilo is a really nice town with a lot of charm. The issue I have with Hilo, and Hawaii in general, is the inherent clash of cultures. Or maybe I should say the juxtaposition of authentic island life and Americanisms that appear to have merged into one another to form some sort of mutant lifestyle. You’re in the middle of the Pacific, but you’re also in America. There are white people and there are native Hawaiian people (there are few black people, something I notice with more than a curious twitch of an eyebrow) with both groups appearing to move, speak and act in different ways. Despite this, there is some common ground where both cultures have synergised. Watching Hawaiian kids practice American Football drills in the rain brings it home that, despite the palm tress and the tropical setting, this is very much America. Just not the America I, admittedly, am used to.
Hilo Bay Hostel is on the corner of two streets whose names I will not try and pronounce and one of the more remarkable of hostels we’ve stayed in if anything for its layout. The wide front steps from the street emerge up into a communal landing area with the numerous bedrooms peppered around its edges. We’re greeted by Terry (I’m sure he’s gay) who runs the place with his partner (in every way) Scott. If Terry and Scott are reading this and they’re not of the homosexual persuasion, sorry guys, but it sure as hell looks that way. They have a cool parrot which could also be gay considering it wolf-whistles at both myself and Sheila whenever we pass without any apparent display of preference.
With the freedom a rental car provides, our time on the Big Island is spent gallivanting around its beautiful environs soaking up as much as we can. On our first day we visit the Rainbow Falls and the Boiling Pots, two quaint spots where the locals skateboard up to and promptly throw themselves off. I reflect on how cliff-diving looks dangerous at any angle.
We spend a full day checking out the volcano park which we quickly discover is pretty much the entire island considering The Big Island is basically five big volcanoes at various levels of eruption jostling for position. It’s here we’re educated regarding the perils of island life. The ranger talks us through the big volcano speech and then basically tells us that Hawaii, with its eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, flash-floods, mud-slides and tropical storms is basically Hell on earth. But he loves it anyway.
We also learn the origin of the name “The Big Island”. We are, in fact, on the island of Hawaii. However, when the stupid and quite likely petrified white-man first appeared on its southern shores a few hundred years ago and asked the dark-skinned and exotic locals what it was called and received back the word “Ewaohi”, they doltishly assumed the locals were referring to the entire chain of islands. Not so, the natives were in fact referring to the island they were currently on. Whether or not they had a name for the collection of isles, I’m not sure. But this is “Hawaii” whitey, that’s Maui over there, and that’s Oahu etc. Soon enough, the misunderstanding became wide-spread among the English speaking newcomers and, probably having no interest in correcting such idiocy, the native people never bothered to make a point of it. So, in order to differentiate Hawaii the island from Hawaii the State and collection of islands, another name was required. Considering Hawaii (the island) is somewhat bigger than its neighbouring islets, I’m assuming “The Big Island” was the natural choice; if not the laziest one. For the trivia buffs, there are eight main islands with a ninth currently under construction. If current eruption patterns and lava activity continues, it should surface in a few thousand years. I’m sure there’s a company out there right now with time-share plans already drafted up.
Another titbit of intriguing information is that Hawaii is slowly moving westwards at a rate of a couple of feet per year. 600,000 years from now it will be parked in Tokyo harbour which, considering the large number of visiting Japanese tourists we see on the islands, I’m sure will be viewed as most beneficial.
We visit sulphur trails with rotten egg smelling odours emanating from the ground like geological-farts and walk through a lava tube – a cylindrical tunnel cut through solid rock by a long-departed river of molten magma. We also drive down to the south-east of the island where, right now, lava is spilling out of a nearby volcano into the sea, constantly increasing Hawaii’s landmass at an alarming rate. It’s here we ditch the car and walk the few kilometres up past the closed road sign to witness the ultimate road block. In 1984, and after an eruption of significant magnitude, lava spilled across miles of landscape toward the ocean. Destroying everything in its fiery path, it crossed the southern ring-road before spilling into the nearby water, blocking future passage forever. Unless you’ve got a serious amount of explosives handy, that is.
It’s an intriguing sight to see a road become sucked under a now static torrent of black porous rock. We climb up on to it and walk into the dark waves of hardened lava toward the cliff edge. In the distance we can see a billowing white cloud spew up from the island’s shoreline, a few kilometres north where lava continues to meet water in an explosive confluence. It strangely reminds me of a distant nuclear explosion, a mushroom cloud of steam hanging on the horizon like a foreboding, yet totally natural, warning. This is nature at its most extreme.
The rock, trapped in the frozen pose of a quarter of a century ago, is like weathered ripples, similar to fractured onyx rhinoceros skin stretched in all directions like a giant unchanging tide of destruction. Incongruously it wrinkles, implications of hidden movement long past, an amorphous landscape pocked with sink-holes and strange anomalies found only on the undulating back of what is essentially cooled hellfire.
We walk back to the car and, whether because of the growing temperature of the day or the proximity to the conflux of water and rapidly cooling magma northward, the air is intensely hot. Not humid per se as, being so close to the shoreline, there are pleasant eddies rafting in from the ocean. But these winds are remarkably warm and deliver a strange sensation as we walk through them. There is the feeling of wind on our exposed skin but none of the telltale signs that gusts of air usually bring. No cooling salve as the wind rushes around us. No goose-bumps as a natural response to the sensation of movement across open skin. It’s like walking through a sauna – if saunas blew waves of air around you.
We move on to a famous caldera which I learn is a huge crater caused by an ancient eruption resulting in a massive depression in the landscape. At one location in the volcano park there is actually a crater in a crater, suggesting the sheer size of the former. We hike down into the steamy pit, and as the sun bakes us unforgivingly from above, we traverse its diameter – a full kilometre or so of blasted rock and wispy steam squeezing out from the molten earth below. Ignoring the lush vegetative rim that encapsulates us above, we could be on the moon. Or walking across Mordor. Lee and Sheila, Hawaii’s version of Frodo and Sam, doggedly trekking along to personal soundtracks delivered by rapidly melting iPods, futilely pulling garments over necks in the hope of protecting already burnt napes, sure that previous fire-damage done to the backs of calves will only be compounded deep inside the exposed crater.
On one exceptionally adventurous day we decide to circumnavigate the entire Big Island. We start early and head north and stop off for some kona coffee and fudge. We take in Hapuna beach, a long spit of white sand and clean glassy sea. The allure of cooling off is too much, and after unleashing probably the two whitest bodies the beach has seen since Cook landed, we splash about at neck-height in the warm waves. Until some other people beside us start freaking out after spotting jelly-fish in the water at which point we think it’s probably wise to follow them out and back to the scorching sand. I’m not up to speed with Hawaii’s jelly-fish threat but I’m not willing to risk it. After all, at this point my left leg is a bizarre motley of unpleasant colours. Yellows, blues, greens and purples from the swan-dive down the staircase in Vancouver and a raw mix of reds and pinks thanks to more stupidity after ignoring the punishing (and fast acting) onslaught of Hawaii’s sun. The last thing I need is more discolouration thanks to a jelly-fish prong.
Along the way we bypass the Big Island’s other major town, Kona, and race back to Hilo across the island’s southern region in the vain hope of making an evening lava event that promises visitors the chance of walking (with torches) right up to the lava streams and witnessing the intensity first hand. Unfortunately we mistime our departure and we don’t make it back but the spectacle of driving in Hawaiian night almost makes up for it.
It’s important to note that there are very few street lights in Hawaii. There are a few when you enter towns but by the time you exit out of them again you’re back to relying solely on three coloured cats-eyes that grace the highways’ edges and centre, offering up the barest form of guidance. The roads are also practically deserted so, without the oncoming glare of passing car lights, it’s remarkably dark. The sky overhead shirks off the remnants of daylight with surprising alacrity and plunges into deep indigo, distant starlight offering no help in the thick and encompassing darkness.
Mirroring Hawaii’s rising and falling landscape, at times the roads appear to launch into nothingness, rising into the night like spectral launch strips, tinged with a trio of cat lights beckoning us upwards with no sign of ever coming down. I’m within the speed limit but it feels like we’re rushing across a dark tranquil cloth at light speed, coloured guiding winks spinning past us like flashes from passing fireflies. I’m reminded of the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey when Dave enters the star-gate. I mutter “It’s full of stars!” under my breath at one point and shoot onwards through the cosmic star-scape. Of all the strange and beautiful things I’ve seen so far on this trip, I don’t think the vision of dashing across the impenetrable and vast Hawaiian night is something I will ever forget.
We miss the lava event by a factor of hours but the day is deemed a success. We get up to other things on Hawaii like checking out a farmers’ market where we sample some local lemonade (as in, made from actual lemons) while walking around Hilo arguing about which restaurant to eat in. Considering there’s only like three that are still open, the debate seems alarmingly facile now to say the least. We go off the beaten track and climb bluffs that overlook hidden valleys where a local native guide shares with us its history and how his grandchildren still live in its vales and consider it “theirs.” I don’t doubt for a second how true this is. We trek through Uncharted jungle that wind into secret beaches where tight, monstrous swells bundle together in the narrow coves and crash on deadly rocks just metres away.
Four days later we fly back to Oahu with its skyscrapers and luxurious homes and stay once again in the same hotel for one more night. We decide to shun the in-house dining option and, after queuing behind three dickheads from the mainland who want to pay for one room with three credit-cards, we avail of a seriously-not-to-scale map and shuffle off into the night before a long and annoying walk dumps us at the doors of a McDonald’s. All burgered up, we get another crap night’s sleep before calling upon Benny to ferry us back to the terminal one last time.
Next up: Fiji and a date with time travel.
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