Searching for the real Hawaii
Full confession: Hawaii was the first “overseas” trip I ever enjoyed. What can I say? I was young and I didn’t know any better. Living in the rainforest of Vancouver, exotic Hawaii and Mexico are the two main winter attractions when it is the middle of winter and you need some sunshine or you will go berserk and start attacking close friends because they made a casual remark about what they watched on TV the previous night to which you took savage exception. Mexico doesn’t qualify as “overseas” and I’d already been there before and enjoyed a fine dose of diarrhea and felt no need to replicate that achievement, so off to Maui I went with a girlfriend, followed by a flight to Oahu years later with a different girlfriend, but already I digress. You can see how easy it is to get off track when your mind has turned to rust because of the rain.
I enjoyed both Maui and Oahu, but that was many years ago and over the course of time I have come to realize that both destinations are the simple garden variety type of beach escape for those driven mad by SADS (Seasonally Adjusted Depression Syndrome), a condition that occurs after you have looked out the window at the endless drizzle and wished you were in Hell because at least it was warm there, but know you are already in Hell because it has been raining for five months and you are going nuts.
During my many media trips around the world I have attempted to find the heart and soul of the city or country I was visiting, the “real Hawaii” so to speak, although the articles I published were often about the typical tourist traps that newspaper editors for some reason demand because they don’t know any better than their readers. Hawaii is up there with Disneyland and Bali and Venice as the kind of places that have been reduced to clichés, “bucket list” destinations for people who choose their holidays because everyone else is going there. Researching where you are going is all well and good, but the aspiring traveller should throw any magazine touting “Top Ten Places to Go Before You Die” into the round file where it belongs.
At this time it is both urgent and convenient that I blame my wife for my going to Hawaii a third time. The fact is that there is nothing wrong with going to the beach to lie in the sun and bask like a whale shark and drink Velvet Sunsets on the beach if your goal is to lie on the beach like an absent minded Floridian on Spring Break, if that’s what you want to do to simply relieve stress. Trouble is, I am a jaded traveller, and lying on the sand and burning myself into a piece of leftover luggage is never high on my agenda. I get restless; I want to explore. I want to find the “real deal,” the true beating heart of the destination, and experience has shown it’s seldom found poolside of the Hilton Hotel where you wake up from a good snooze wondering what country you are in because everything looks exactly the same as where you came from in the first place.
My wife was, at the time described herein, one of those poor people who is required to work for a living in order to main the lifestyle wo which we had become comfortable. Her idea of going on a trip is to lie by the pool and read a book, which unfortunately for her is a technique for rest and relaxation that seldom succeeds for one reason. That is, she is accompanied by a whirling dervish whose idea of travel is to fling himself into constant motion in order to wring every last moment out of the trip, especially when looking for the true beating heart of the beast, which creature apparently does not exist in tourist haven Hawaii. But we went anyway because it was sunny there and it was cold and rainy where we lived so we agreed to disagree on the exact itinerary that I proposed.
Dealing with the Maui Tourism Board is, as it often is with Tourism Boards, an exercise in frustration. They were used to most visitors, including travel writers, wanting to go golfing, shopping, eating at fancy restaurants and buying tourist tat at tacky stores. I am known to eat frequently, often three times a day when the Tourism Board is paying, but the other supposed allures weren’t on my radar. So I did my own research. Was there any region in Maui where the original Polynesian lifestyle still existed, where the Hawaiian culture hadn’t been adulterated into some sort of tropical Las Vegas? Was there some secret or hidden place where the tourists don’t trundle around like trained seals wearing loud and garish short sleeve shirts that look like a Jackson Pollock painting? Was there some market where the local crafts people didn’t sell flotsam comprised of Great White Shark bicuspids washed up on the sand by an ebb tide?
Apparently, it was conceded in reluctant tones by the Tourism Officials, there was indeed such an off the beaten track place in Hawaii but nobody ever went there, so therefore deluxe tourist accommodations appealing to a person of my exalted status were virtually non-existent. This hidden destination was the island of Molokai, which boasted one small second rate hotel in a small rundown town with little in the way of tourist attractions. There was also the even smaller island of Lanai, something like a church pew floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, a former pineapple plantation that was far more exciting in the old days when the highlight of any tourist trip there was picking a pineapple. But since nobody went to Lanai it certainly wasn’t much of a tourist attraction. I would be welcome to go if I wished, although obtaining any kind of story attractive to readers might prove difficult. Why not simply go to Molokai?
Molokai wasn’t at the front of my awareness of the Hawaiian Islands at that time, except I knew that part of it was a former leper colony and while I had visited many villages, prisons, town dumps and hospitals on my adventures around the world, leprosy did not appeal as a storyline to me, whether for an article or book. But doing some more research I discovered that Hawaii was the last place in the Pacific to be discovered before European colonizers showed up to shove the Indigenous people off their land, and it was a bay on the northeast coast of Molokai that appealed to the Polynesians as a base to start a settlement. Even better, rather than being turned into a casino or surfboard rental shop, the bay had been largely abandoned and the only folks living there today are a handful of the original Polynesian settlers from a few centuries before. Who knew? Molokai? It sounded perfect for a story about the real Hawaii and I said “let’s go.”
To go to Molokai it is necessary to land in Maui first, and since the Maui Tourism Bureau was paying most of the freight on my trip it was mandatory to stay there first and enjoy the local attractions. Strangely enough, given my aversion to swank resorts, this proved to be a most interesting interlude indeed. Along the west shore of Maui a lot of hotels had been built over the years. Among the first was the low rise resort Napili Kai, supposedly the best beach for snorkeling and swimming on the entire island. Because I was coming to splash and snorkel in the shallows like a toddler, the weather blew up into a serious storm, producing some of the highest waves in the resort’s history. Instead of swimming we got to watch local surfers ride huge waves, a traditional Hawaiian sport and a truly memorable spectacle. Our time was also right for other forms of traditional entertainment like a world famous Hawaiian slack key guitarist performing at an outdoor pavilion. If I was looking for the “real Hawaii,” that was certainly the musical version thereof.
Aside from the obligatory tourist ventures, like cruising the shops in Lahaina and shopping for a sun hat, we moved on to a five-star hotel where a Las Vegas song and dance show was performed nightly in an outdoor setting with a magnificent fireball of a sunset for a backdrop. Normally I would rather arrange for a root canal at the dentist before attending a song and dance review, but this particular performance brought together traditional music from all over the South Seas, from Tahiti to Samoa to Tonga, with appropriate dances to match. I could swear it was an optical illusion, but I watched one male dancer run right up the side a 50-foot palm tree. He was barefoot, so I assume he had glue on the bottom of his feet. Then there were the half-naked female dancers doing the hip shaking hula, but I won’t mention that here because there may be young children to whom you are reading this as a bedtime story.
You can get to Molokai a few different ways. You can swim from Oahu if you are Superman and avoid the sharks. Or you can fly from Oahu or Maui. It may be there is a ferry from Maui, but don’t quote me on that. If somebody is paying for your flight, you can book a chopper from Maui and fly to Molokai’s fabulous northeast coast to have a look at the world’s most amazing cliffs. Jurassic Park Three (or it could be 33 the way they crank out episodes of that franchise) was shot here, although reviews say they should have shot the director. Hawaii is a first world country, but the northeast of Molokai looks like nothing has changed in a million years, and there may be dinosaurs in the jungle there that look far different than the ones basking on the beach in Waikiki.
The chopper hovered in the sky like a large annoying insect, definitely disturbing the half dozen people the pilot told us were “living off the land” in the vastness of the jungle below. How anyone could live in such a wilderness was beyond me; there are no 7/11s or McDonalds and the number of tourists available to fleece is minimal, given there was no way to travel there aside from crawling through the jungle like an extra in a Mel Gibson movie like Hacksaw ridge about GI’s in World War Two. However, there was another option should you maintain a mad desire to get to Halawa Gulch, no matter the difficulty. So we flew to Molokai airport and rented a car.
The airport in Molokai is located in the middle of the island, which doesn’t mean much on an island where there is virtually nowhere worth going. The airport looks like Terre Haute, Indiana, circa 1956 but it does have a roof which comes in handy during rain storms. Outside, you walk across the street to a little shack where you can rent a car. Choice is limited; you don’t need an all-wheel drive but air conditioning is recommended. It’s a good idea to check the gas to make sure the tank is filled because gas stations, along with other luxuries like food, are seriously limited on the island. Seriously.
Before proceeding further, honesty being the best policy, it should be admitted that tourism is not encouraged on Molokai, another good reason not to go there. Whereas all the other islands roll out the welcome mat for pale faced visitors from the mainland, it may be said that on Molokai they brandish a broom and want to sweep unwelcome visitors back where they came from. There are reasons for this, one being that most people who live on Molokai are poor, and if the standard of living rose they might have to leave, and where else is there to go in the middle of the giant Pacific Ocean? You could argue that if they had better tourist attractions they would have a better chance at earning income, but since there isn’t much to do on Molokai the argument devolves into a chicken and egg situation. Which comes first? Meanwhile, it’s mandatory to have a place to sleep or bring a blanket and curl up in the back seat.
On Molokai there is not a single traffic light, and the only vehicles that might be called traffic are a few run down pickup trucks waiting for a parking spot along the three-block-long main street of the island’s single town, Kaunakakai, population roughly 3,000. Somewhat more than 7,000 people live spread out across the island, about 0.5 percent of the state of Hawai‘i’s population of 1.4 million. There are only a handful of restaurants more ambitious than burger shacks over the island’s 38-mile length. You have been warned.
Nearly a third of local families use food stamps to survive. With few exceptions, young people looking for more than minimal prospects leave for other islands or to the U.S. mainland. The character of the opposition towards tourism is fierce, the core members being people of Native Hawaiian descent. Their commitments, tactics and goals are rooted in the “Hawaiian Renaissance Movement” of the 1970s, which revived traditional Hawaiian culture, language and ritual, and demanded recognition of sovereignty for Native Hawaiian people. You want the “old Hawaii,” this is the place to find it.
On leaving the airport, you are welcomed by a hand-painted sign: “Visit, Spend, Go Home.” This approach to tourism has had an undeniable effect. The number of visitors to “the friendly isle,” as tourism promoters once laughingly dubbed it, has declined 43 percent since the Hawaiian revival began. According to experts, Hawaiians first came to live on Molokai about 650 A.D. Those first settlers most likely originated from the Marquesas, with later migrations, in double hulled canoes, from Tahiti and other areas in the South Pacific. They first landed on Halawa Bay, and traces of their lifestyle can still be seen, hence my interest in going to the last place in the world without a McDonalds.
Our first destination was a cottage east of town hugging the ocean shore, available as a B&B if you begged the Tourism Board for information. It had no sign or number, which required a keen eye on the odometer. Some groceries were available at a nearby tiny store called Manae Goods and Grindz where we stopped for coffee and an opportunity to allow me to leave my hat behind. There was nowhere else to eat. The sunset at the cottage was spectacular, as was the overwhelming silence. There was a beach to wander at low tide, but it was high tide. There were no people on the beach and no other housing as far as could be seen. Suffice to say, it was spooky. Welcome to Molokai. Visit and go home.
The drive to Halawa Gulch is spectacular, winding back and forth next to the ocean. On the eastern end of the ocean locals were taking advantage of the storm to surf the heavy waves. There was barely enough room to pull over, park and watch and there were no hellos. The highway shrank up to the size of a goat track, but at least it was paved. Then the highway turned inland and proceeded to climb, up and up, to arrive at Puu O Huku Ranch, where food and drink and rooms were theoretically available but sorry not today.
It’s a working ranch and meditation retreat overlooking the sea far below. They also pride themselves for native plant cultivation as well as biodynamic farming practices. We had a nice tour and envied the cottages were you could stay if you could stay but not today. It’s difficult to make assumptions based on a short stay of a few hours, but Puu O Huka looked to be a place where time stands still. If you are looking for the “old Hawaii,” this might be the place to find it, but if you have an itinerary to follow then you must adhere to it, and we were due at Halawa Gulch for a hike.
On the island’s northeastern tip, where the winding road that leads east from Kaunakakai finally comes to an end, ancient Hawaiians gradually established one of Hawaiʻi’s earliest settlements. With its fertile plains for growing taro and abundance of flowing fresh water, Halawa was a place that not only offered the basic resources for survival but also housed a protected cove for launching boats and canoes. It’s believed that Hawaiians inhabited Halawa as early as 650 AD, and over 1,350 years later it’s currently Hawaii’s oldest spot known to have been settled and continuously populated.
Though the valley today is only home to a handful of off-grid residents, there was once a time when verdant Halawa was home to a village of thousands. All of that changed abruptly, however, in 1946, when a devastating tsunami flooded the valley and ruined the soil with saltwater. Many of the valley’s homes were destroyed, and with the groundwater tainted for growing crops and a sudden lack of food, many of Halawa’s longtime residents were forced to get up and go. Archeological remains include 17 heiau (temples), irrigation channels and ancient walls and terraces.
Permission is required to visit the valley. Anakala Pilipo Solatorio is the last living Hawaiian descendent to be born and raised in Halawa who still resides there. We met at his house. He said he was chosen at the age of five to be the cultural practitioner for his family. This meant he was given the responsibility of carrying on their traditions and cultural practices. Today he does this by educating both kama`aina and visitors through his stories, songs, hula, and aloha.
Greg is one of Anakala Pilipo’s six children and the only son currently residing in Halawa Valley. Like his father, Greg too has been chosen to perpetuate the Hawaiian culture. Greg was supposed to guide us to Mo’oula Falls, approximately 1.7 miles each way, but he had just returned from the hike and was averse to doing it again, so we had a coffee and a chat. A handful of locals were attempting to bring the tao crops back into cultivation. Pigs wandered the valley. A small handful of tourists came to lie on the beach and listen to the thunder of the waves amidst the overwhelming silence. Neither Greg nor Philip wished for a tsunami of visitors. They tolerated the choppers from Molokai hovering overhead like giant mosquitos once a day, and I kept quiet about my own chopper tour lest I get my ears boxed.
If there is any destination on Planet Earth that can truly be described as “the end of the road,” Halawa Valley is it. Beyond the back of beyond, the last remnant of true Hawaiian culture hangs on by a thread. Should you forget to put gas in your tank back in Kaunakakai, your own existence may hang by a thread as well. We left in time to make the drive back to our lonely little cottage by the shore well before dark, because you don’t want to drive highway 450 in the dark. The last vestige of pure Hawaiian life is a long way to go, and I’d still like to know what happened to my hat at Manae Goods and Grindz, where you can buy a frozen Hawaiian pizza to bake in the oven in your cottage, if you have an oven in a cottage in which to cook, but remember to ask nicely when you do.