The story of the pine trees of Lanai is one of the interesting stories I come across when traveling that shows how people can find innovative solutions to their problems.

The first thing you need to know is Lanai is a rather dry island. It has the least amount of rainfall of all the Hawaiian islands because the mountains on Molokai and Maui capture most of the rainfall which comes its way.

The first pine tree on the island was a Norfolk Pine which was planted in 1878. In 1911, manager of the ranch on Lanai, George C. Munro, noticed that water was dripping from the pine tree onto a tin roof. George figured that the pine tree was taking water out of the fog and condensing it. He figured that if they planted more pine trees, it could bring much needed water to the island and make use of the heavy fog which would often collect near the high points on the island.

The pine trees they received weren’t Norfolk Pines, however, but rather were Cook Island pines.

The reason why pine trees are uniquely suited to extracting moisture from the atmosphere has to do with the surface area of the pine needles. For a normal broad leaf tree, the surface area would be the area of each side of the leaf. Pine needles are much smaller and so have more surface area for a given volume of leaf. To get a good idea, just think of the amount of butter it would take to cover an uncut loaf of bread vs. a loaf which as been sliced. The sliced loaf has a much greater surface area.

Nature uses this trick in many places where surface area matters. Some of the best examples would be the lumps and ridges in your intestines (to maximize the area where nutrient absorption can take place) and the surface of your brain.

Today you can see Cook Island pines all over Lanai City and on the highest ridge on the island, Lanaihale. It is estimated that each tree creates 200 gallons of fresh water for the island each day, all of which is taken right out of thin air.

If you ever find yourself on the island of Lanai and you take a drink of water or use the shower, take a moment to remember the humble Cook Island Pine which is making it possible.

Front St. in Lahaina

You are also probably aware that in the end (thankfully) not much happened outside of Japan.

Nonetheless, it was an extremely hectic night and I learned several valuable things from it.

I went to go get something to eat last night around 7:30pm. Lahaina is a tourist town and there was a cruise ship in port so all the restaurants were busy. I ended up going to Famous Dave’s for no other reason than they had immediate seating.

Just before I was finished eating, I received a text message from a girl I met in Maui that said there was a 8.3 magnitude earthquake in Japan and that there was a tsunami warning. Almost at the same time I received a message from Jodi Ettenberg who is in Chiang Mai, Thailand saying the same thing.

I mentioned it to the server who already knew. It seemed that everyone in the restaurant already knew about it. I was notified at 8:30pm and the wave wasn’t scheduled to arrive in Hawaii until 3am, so we had 6.5 hours to sit around or totally flip out, depending on your inclination.

At this point I should give you a bit of background: before I started traveling I studied geology for two and a half years. I had some background on earthquakes and how waves work, so I wasn’t just flipping out. I was going to spend the next six hours to try and get more data and hear what people were saying from all over the Pacific.

Wave size predictive map released on March 10

However, that doesn’t mean it will create a horrible tsunami. Waves don’t necessarily go out evenly in every direction. Also, Hawaii is a long way from Japan. By the time any wave reached Hawaii, the energy would have been dissipated at least somewhat.

Also, I was in Lahaina. If you look at a map of Hawaii you’ll see a shallow area which is surrounded by three islands: Lanai, Maui and Molokai. Lahanina juts into this straight. Any wave hitting hawaii is going to either hit the opposite side of one of those three islands. If you had to pick a costal area where you’d want to be during a tsunami, Lahaina would be it. I did some quick Google searches and couldn’t find any historical examples of a tsunami hitting Lahaina, which was the former royal capital of Hawaii. Records should go back here for at least 200 years if not more.

Also, waves on this side of the island are always smaller than what you see on the other side of Maui. A drive around the island on almost any day of the year will demonstrate that.

Also, there is a seawall approximately 2m in height in Lahaina. Any wave would have to go over the wall to get to where I was several blocks away, which was another 2-3 feet higher than the wall. I was also only about half a mile down the road from the tsunami safety area, so in the event something should happen, I wasn’t that far of a walk away.

So to summarize things at this point: something very bad was potentially coming but I was far away and in a good location should something actually hit.

All of that was the geologist in me.

The traveler in me has been to most of the nations in the Pacific. I knew if anything was heading towards Hawaii it would first hit Guam, Saipan, Majuro and Micronesia. Guam would probably be the canary in the coal mine for Hawaii. Guam has a big enough population that there would probably be people on Twitter providing updates. If Guam got hit hard, then Hawaii would get hit hard. If Guam was spared, then Hawaii would be spared.

As the zero hour approached Guam, I began searching Twitter for tweets with “Guam”. It was difficult to sift through the information because so many people were retreating the same BBC update with the word “Guam” in it. Eventually I found several people who were in Guam who reported that nothing serious happened.

Over the next few hours I got dribbles of information from islands who were scheduled to get hit before Hawaii. Okinawa reported a wave 0.2m in height (less than 1 foot), Taiwan reported no damage, Saipan reported a 2 foot wave, Batanes (the northern most province of the Philippines) reported no damage, and Wake Island reported a wave 1.5 ft high.

Basically, nothing was happening. Multiple locations closer to the epicenter than Hawaii were reporting small waves and no damage. I had some data, I had confirmed personal updates from people on the above listed islands, and at this point I wasn’t really worried anymore.

Then the sirens started going off….

The street in front of the hostel where I am staying was packed with cars and the gas station across the street was full of people trying to get gas. Police set up a position in the intersection to direct traffic. One guy who was staying in the same place I was, was trying to bargain with the manager to rent a car as if he had to feel from a biological outbreak.

Around 1am I decided to go to bed. Warnings were getting called off in Taiwan and other islands and the data pouring in seemed to indicate that we dodged a bullet.

Then another siren went off…..

A group of Europeans across the hall from me went into panic mode. They began hurriedly packing all their things and putting it into their rental car. They said they were heading to high ground (mind you, the wave was still at least 2 hours away) and asked if i wanted a ride. I said no because there wasn’t going to be a tsunami. Nowhere in the Pacific was reporting any damage, and in the event something did happen, I didn’t have to go up the mountain, I only had to walk a few hundred yards to safety.

I decided to stay up and see what was going on. At this point I wasn’t so much worried about the tsunami as I was just people watching. At 2am the streets were empty. The cops at the intersection were just goofing around.

By the time 3am rolled around, the time the Tsunami was supposed to hit Hawaii, I walked up the street to see what people where doing. A few people were sitting in their cars and listening to the radio. There were no reports of anything major hitting Kauai. By 3:30am, the time the wave was supposed to hit Maui, no major damage was reported in Waikiki and nothing appeared to be happening on Maui. By 3:45am I decided to go back to bed.

Most of the evacuation precautions taken in Hawaii were prudent. A tsunami will effect different parts an island differently, depending on the topography of the island below the water. You can’t know with a fine degree of certainty what will happen where. A boat don’t need much of a wave to have damage done to them. A six inch wave was enough to damage boats in Santa Clara, California this morning. The sea rose and knocked the boats against each other. As far as I know, all the boats in the Lahaina harbor were sent safely out to sea several hours before anything happened.

The information provided by CNN, BBC, and Al Jazzera was great at first, but as the tsunami was moving across the Pacific they really didn’t have much in the way of new information. They just kept showing the same footage from Japan over and over, and talking to geologists about general tsunami issues. I was getting better information via twitter. I’m surprised they didn’t have contacts established in some of the smaller countries like Micronesia or the Marshall Islands. They might never need to use them, but when they do, they would be invaluable.

Neither the media or the government did a good job of updating people about conditions after the initial tsunami warning was released. After the initial warning, at least here, it seemed that things went on autopilot. I can understand for emergency purposes why that might be a good idea, but disseminating more information might help reduce panic and worries. Most people on the mainland seemed to think this was some sort of armageddon tsunami. The information they were getting was what I mentioned above: slow and not up to date.

Searching for information on Twitter was horrible. Too many people talking about the event made it hard to find the people who were in the middle of the event. Moreover, most of the tweets were the same BBC message retweeted over and over. Twitter needs to do something to filter searches. Jeff Jarvis recommend a different type of hash tag for people involved in an event.

I also have to confess the whole thing was rather exciting. When you have a 6 hour lead time and you are only a few hundred yards from safe ground, there really isn’t much to worry about. I could have easily dragged my bags up the hill and protected my person and my possessions if it was necessary. Despite the tragedy in Japan, the whole event shook up what otherwise would have been a very boring evening.

I’ll be writing much more about Lanai in the next few weeks but suffice it to say it was a very different experience from what I’ve had on other Hawaiian Islands. Lanai is really a small town with only 3,100 inhabitants. It is on the opposite end of the spectrum from the in your face tourism you will find in Waikiki. Lanai calls itself the Pineapple Island, but it really should get another nickname. Something like “the hidden gem island”, or “the best kept secret island”. The fact that they don’t grow pineapples there anymore only supports this fact.

I am still kicking myself for not having taken the time to go to Lanai when I was first in Maui back in 2007. It is a very easy ferry ride and you can easily make a day trip out of it if you are in Lahaina. I thought about doing it back then, but for some reason (sloth) I never did.

I went off-roading for a day in a rented Jeep, skeet shooting, saw an enormous pod of dolphins (I’d guess 30-40), saw a whale give birth (I think. I’ve never seen it before), and had two really great SCUBA dives in lava tubes off the shore of Lanai.

I’m currently back in Maui where I’m spending two days in Hana, which is on the far east side of the island at the end of the famous Hana Coast Highway. Hana, however, is another story….

Here are a few photos I took from Lanai on my iPhone (SLR photos will be coming later):

My trip to Lanai was sponsored by the Lanai Visitors Bureau.

Oil Slick from the USS Arizona

1. The USS Arizona is still leaking oil. Sunk on the December 7, 1941 during the attack on Pearl Harbor, the USS Arizona has been leaking oil for almost 70 years. The leak is obviously small and the fuel tanks were full when the ship was sunk. No one has any idea when the leak will stop.
2. Hawaii is growing every day. About 55,000 dump trucks worth of new Hawaii are being created everyday from the Kilauea volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii. Since 1990, 540 new acres of land have been added to the Big Island. The vast majority of the new volcanic rock ends up in the ocean and falls to the sea floor. There is in fact a brand new island being created under the water off the coast of the Big Island, called Loihi. It will rise above the ocean surface in about 10-100,000 years. [*] [**]
3. Hawaii boasts 11 different climate zones. Because of the mountains on the islands, precipitation and temperature can vary dramatically over short distances. On the big island alone you can find rainforests, deserts, grasslands and even an alpine climate on top of Mauna Kea. The east side of the Big Island averages 20 inches of rain per year and Mt. Waialeale on Kauai averages 486 inches a year. The record high temperature in Hawaii (100F, xC) is the same as the record high temperature in Alaska. [*] [**] [***]
4. Hawaii has a 5th county. Most people think Hawaii has four counties: Honolulu (covering the island of Oahu), Maui (covering the islands of Maui, Lanai, and Molokai, and Kahoolawe), Hawaii (covering the Big Island), and Kauai (covering the island of Kauai and Ni?ihau). However, there is technically a 5th county which has only 147 inhabitants: Kalawao County. Kalawao is a small peninsula on the island of Molokai which is only accessible by a mule trail. It was used during the time of the Kingdom of Hawaii as a leper colony (now called Hansen’s disease). It is also the location of the Kalaupapa National Historical Park. The only elected position is sheriff. All other governmental functions are taken care of by the State of Hawaii Department of Health.
5. Hawaii is one of the largest states in the United States. Most people only consider the eight main islands which make up Hawaii. However, there are approximately 130 islands which make up the state of Hawaii that extend over 1,600 miles, making it one of the largest states in terms of distance from end-to-end. The northern and western most island is Kure Atoll, which is also the northern most coral atoll in the world. It is also 100 miles to the east of the International Date Line. The only island in the Hawaiian Island chain which is not part of the State of Hawaii is Midway Island which is a territory of the United States and is controlled by the Department of the Interior. All of the islands which are not part of the main Hawaiian islands are part of the city of Honolulu, which makes Honolulu one of the largest cities in the world in terms of distance. [*] [**]


Green Sand Beach on the Island of Hawaii

6. You can find beaches with four different colors of sand. In addition to the famous and common white sand beaches, you also find beaches with black, green and red sand. The Green Sand Beach is located near the South Point of the Big Island of Hawaii. The green comes from a mineral olivine which can be found in small amounts in most volcanic rock on the Big Island. The black sand can be found at Punaluu State Park on the Big Island, and it comes from crushed volcanic basalt. The red sand is found at Kaihalulu Beach off the Hana Road on the Island of Maui. The red comes from oxidized iron the rock.
7. The Captain Cook memorial on the Big Island is British Territory. Captain Cook was killed 1779 in Kealakekua Bay. The land on which the obelisk which sits is owned by the government of the United Kingdom. In exchange, the British government gave the land underneath a JFK memorial in Runnymede, England to the United States. [*][**]
8. The Kingdom of Hawaii lasted less than 100 years. Final unification of the Hawaiian islands and the creation of the Kingdom of Hawaii took place in 1810 under King Kamehameha I. The last monarch was Queen Liliu?okalani who was overthrown in a coup organized by Dole Pineapple company. It was the only state to have previously been a monarchy and the Iolani Palace is the only Palace in the United States.

It has been over three years since I was last in Hawaii. My previous trip was the interregnum between my South Pacific and North Pacific adventures. After a marathon day in August 2007 where I went from the Solomon Islands, Nauru, Kiribati, Fiji (and having denied entry to Kiribait which was the cause of the whole day from hell) I holed up in Honolulu for two weeks before setting off to Guam.

When I was thinking of a place to go to work, Hawaii immediately came to mind. I have good memories of being here and I wanted a place where I could just relax. The last several months I’ve been moving constantly, meeting with people and for the first time in a long time I can be by myself with no obligations, meetings or people to deal with.

Over the next few weeks, expect to be seeing a lot more from me on the website. I have an enormous backlog of photos and articles to write and I plan on getting up to speed on all of them.

I also am working on just being more productive with my time. As my website gets bigger, the demands on my time get larger as well and I don’t have anyone I can off load work to. I have to be more productive and make some changes to my schedule to balance travel and work. It will probably mean me saying “no” to more travel opportunities so I can better document the trips I do take.

If you are in the Honolulu area and would like to meet up, feel free to contact me. I’ll be here until November 19th when I leave for Thailand.

Danyelle in Hawaii

Hello fellow readers of Gary’s wonderful travel blog Everything Everywhere! When I read that Gary wanted guest bloggers to help out, I jumped at the chance to be a part of his great undertaking. Now, I haven’t been to nearly as many places as Gary, but I did have a little adventure of my own on the Big Island of Hawaii during a week long vacation there from March 22-29 last year. I asked to write about it because I wanted to share my experiences as they were not the same as Gary’s. They weren’t entirely positive. I’ll try to be as accurate as possible about the specific places and times I was there.

The trip started off with a full day of airplane travel. I flew out with my family from the Las Vegas, NV airport on Hawaiian Airlines early Saturday the 22nd. It was a five and a half hour flight from there to Honolulu. Right off the plane we headed to the gate at the airport for the small plane that would take us to the Big Island. It was dirty and smelly and we waited there for hours with only a little bar and a snack stand for food. Once past the gate there were no shops or anything. Just a big dirty room we sat in for hours.

Body surfing on one of the few Big Island beachs

In order to get around the Big Island, you need to rent a car. It is named the Big Island for a reason. It’s huge. The drive, going across the island on the bumpiest road I’ve ever been on in my life, is a good 4 hours. The road around the island and from the airport is better kept, though longer. However, to get from Kona to Hilo on the better road is still only 3.5 – 4 hours since the road across the island isn’t well taken care of. This is a big downside for a vacation. Going back and forth across the island at least three times, I calculated at the end of the trip a total of at least17 hours spent driving in the car alone. That doesn’t include the normal day to day driving around we did either.

I stayed in a time share in Kona-Kailua. There are a few things you should know about Kona before you stay there. First off, let me say, that this was still Hawaii, so the weather the entire trip was incredible. It was warm and humid, but not too humid, and it only rained a couple times I was there. Even the rain is beautiful. I loved the weather. With that out of the way, let me describe Kona-Kailua. It is a tourist spot, no doubt about it. There are lovely shops, but nothing authentic. Everything is made for tourists. There are tons of great restaurants, I remember there being an Outback and Bubba Gump Shrimp along with a smaller sushi place and more, a supply shop to rent gear from in the middle of the shop area next to Outback Steakhouse with a huge pool in the back for scuba lessons, clothing shops, jewelry shops, a huge gallery of art store with beautiful and extremely expensive island art, two tattoo parlors that I saw, and tons of souvenir shops. The thing to remember though is that everything closes very early in the evenings. There wasn’t anything to do at night at all. I suppose if you are over 21 there are bars, but that’s it. At least while I was there in March anyway. Kona also has all the regular city stuff, blockbuster, IHOP, etc., but the place you mean when you say “I stayed in Kona” is the little area on Kailua Bay where all these shops are.

The other thing to know about Kona, and the Big Island in general, is that there are very few beaches. What I mean is that the damn things are small and scattered all over. It’s not how you’d picture Hawaii, miles of beautiful, bright blue waters with white sandy beaches. There are barely any beaches at all around Kona. I spend a total of 3 ½ hours on a beach the entire week I was in Hawaii. Partly, this was my group’s fault as we never made it to the northeast part of the Island with all the expensive shops where, I was told, had some lengths of beach. We also never made it to the black sand beach. If you do go, and you want to visit this, make it a priority because driving to and from it is a trip on its own and, as I said above, we’d spent enough time driving around. The one beach we spent time on is one of the tiny, wave-crashing, overcrowded beaches in Kona-Kailua called Magic Sands beach. It was small and, apart from the water being warmer and bluer, it was no different from any beach I’ve been to in California, except maybe smaller.

The first day I was there we all walked along the shops and, in addition to the regular shops, there is a great little outdoor market set up in the mornings. It isn’t every morning, I forget how often it was there, but it was there a good number of mornings. A bunch of stalls are set up like an outdoor swamp meet and you can go and buy tons of things. There was a lot of fantastic fruit for really cheap sold by the local farmers there along with clothing stalls, jewelry stalls, tacky souvenir stalls selling the same stuff as the shops like wooden bookmarks and ukuleles. I got a dress I really love at one of these stalls.

Wherever you are in Hawaii, no matter the island, you must experience a luau. I went to a great luau at the King Kamehameha hotel. There was great food, leis made of fresh flowers (for an extra fee), and great entertainment. The one I was at had dancers from all different islands in the area, even Maori dancers from New Zealand, doing performances.

Lava tube entrance

I had two snorkeling experiences, one good and one terrible. We rented our own snorkeling gear one day and drove to this beautiful, pristine bay that the place we rented from told us about. Now, I looked up places to snorkel online and its not there. It was a bit of a drive from Kailua-Kona, it didn’t have a beach, and it didn’t have any boat docks. I would highly recommend renting your own gear and finding a recommended bay from locals and diving right in. This was the highlight of my trip. The other time we went snorkeling, it was a paid for tour, traveling to a spot by boat with a big group, and it was terrible. They took us to a part of the island where its some sort of preserve, they mentioned something about it being set aside for the children of the island. We had a tiny rectangle of space between the boat and the waves crashing dangerously onto the rocky shore in which to snorkel. I could literally watch the fish being swept back and forth as the waves moved. I’ve never gotten sea sick in the water before, but here I did.

Steam plume from Kilauea

The last experience I want to talk about is visiting the volcano on the Big Island. By far, this was the biggest waste of time of the entire trip, including the day we drove all the way to Hilo only to find out that the path to the waterfalls was closed. The hikes in the volcano park are really beautiful. You can look down into the crater from one of them, which is impressive. You can hike down into the crater in one long hike, and there is some beautiful rainforest to see. That being said, rainforest is rainforest. While beautiful, it’s not exactly exciting to stare at all day long. Really, the reason to go is to see the lava flow! Well, this isn’t always possible as lava isn’t exactly controllable. After hiking around the park, we were directed to another area, far away, where they were letting people walk to to see the lava drop off into the ocean. To make a long story short, hours of driving and waiting for the path to open up later, we got to hike to the cliff and look at a tiny speck of bright lava flowing into the ocean through a telescope.

If you have any questions about my trip feel free to email me. There was lots of stuff I couldn’t cover. I had some good times there too!

It’s as psudo-american as taro pie!

I’m lumping McDonald’s for Hawaii, Guam and Saipan all together. They are pretty much the same and all share the one unique thing I find interesting.

The McDonalds in Waikiki did something I liked an haven’t seen anywhere else. They gave you a free package of diced pineapple with every meal: breakfast or dinner. It was a descent sized portion of pineapple too. A similar sized package cost $3.99 across the street at a convenience store.

Waikiki, Guam and Saipan all served Spam and rice for breakfast. In Guam they also served Chamorro sausage and Portuguese sausage. I tried them both (not at McDonalds) and couldn’t really tell the difference. They are both rather spicy.

The idea of rice (and even fried rice in some places) is something which you wont find in the mainland United States, but is something you get used to pretty quick. In fact, I have really come to like rice and eggs.

What all three places have in common at their McDonald’s is they serve taro pie. (see photo)

I guess taro pies were originally served in Asian McDonald’s then picked up in Hawaii and later in the Marinas. The idea of a taro pie isn’t shocking, but serving it as a dessert sort of is. Taro is a root vegtable. It’s like a potato or perhaps a sweet potato. Usually if a pie has potatoes in it, it would be joined with meat and served as an entree. (One of my favorite dishes are pasties which are Cornish pies that are really big in Northern Michigan)

The McDonald’s taro pie is sweet. It is designed to be served as a replacement for the apple pie. The sweetness comes from the purple, jelly like filling that is inside the pie. It is far sweeter than a sweet potato is sweet, so its not coming from the taro itself.

The other reason I’m surprised they have taro pies has to do with the difficulty of taro cultivation, at least in the Pacific. Taro is probably the biggest staple food in the Pacific. Growing it can be a real pain. Often, if you live on an atoll, you have to dig very deep pits to access fresh water to grow the taro. I don’t know how they do large scale cultivation of taro, but I can only assume they don’t have to dig enormous pits.

I would really like to see a McDonald’s cassava pie….

I am very much ready to leave Hawaii. Waikiki has grown sort of stale and I’m ready for something new. I have absolutely no preconceived notions of what Guam will be like, so it should be interesting. I’ll be flying in and out of Guam several times as I visit the neighboring countries.

My schedule for the next few weeks includes Saipan (Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands), Majuro (Republic of the Marshall Islands), Kosare (Federated States of Micronesia), Phonpei (FSM), Chuuk (FSM), Yap (FSM) and Palau.

Many people have a very romantic view of island life. They can think of nothing better than sitting on a beach with palm trees. That is their version of paradise. You go to the mall and in some kiosk is a guy selling cheesy back lit signs showing that very scene. You can find it on calendars, t-shirts, desktop wallpaper, etc. You take some personality poll online and one of the questions is: would you rather spend your time at the beach or on a mountain?

Having been to much of the Pacific now, I state categorically that there is a downside to island life that most people don’t consider in their fantasy. Every Pacific country (I can think of no exceptions) have remittances as one of, if not the largest, part of their Gross Domestic Product. That is a fancy way of saying that the chief export of most Pacific countries is people. (I say that thinking of Charelton Heston screaming “It’s PEOPLE. The chief component of their GDP is PEOPLE!!”)

Islands are expensive. You have to have everything shipped in, usually at great expense. They are isolated. You are months if not years behind the rest of the world in cultural and economic matters. They are poor. There are few opportunities and natural resources available on most islands.

Yet everywhere I went, I’d meet a very small number of white westerners who have made an island their home. More often than not they ran a hotel or a restaurant. (a surprising number of businesses are owned by foreigners). Sometimes they married a local. They are the ones who actually went out and lived out their dreams of living on an island.

Hawaii is a totally different animal from the rest of the Pacific.

Hawaii, with perhaps the exception of Noumea, is the only place in the Pacific that doesn’t have the downside that other islands have. (I suppose I’m leaving New Zealand out of this discussion. I don’t really consider it a tropical island) In Hawaii, you can have the best of both worlds.

You can walk around Waikiki and see a mix of Japanese tourist, sailors, families on vacation, and young couples on their honeymoons. You also see a small group of people who look like they showed up a few years ago and just never left. I got to meet several of them when I was in Maui. They tended to be younger people who were all looking for whatever job they could find and spending their time not at work at the beach. They are all sort of freaks with tans that put them in a league with George Hamilton.

As you can tell my by silence the last few weeks, I find Hawaii to be a very seductive place. The weather here is perfect. By far the best I’ve seen in the Pacific. You have all the benefits of living on the mainland with none of the downside of living on an island. I’ve been eating every other day at a seafood buffet that has all you can eat sashimi. How can you not love that?

I could totally see myself living here someday. Before that occurs however, I have the rest of the world to see…

Iolani Palace, home of the Hawaiian Monarchy in the 19th Century

I’ve been pretty lax this week about updates, so here is one big one to cover my week in Honolulu. I’m sitting at the pool at my hotel room doing last minute stuff for leaving the country and waiting take a cab to the airport.

Overview

I’m not that impressed with Waikiki. Not at all really. If you’re idea of a good time is sitting around on a crowded beach and shopping, then this is the place for you. Other than that, there isn’t a whole lot here. Diamond Head is really nothing compared to natural sites you can see on the Big Island.

It’s very expensive, which really comes as no surprise. What is surprising is the price of Hawaiian stuff. I would have thought that macadamia nuts would be cheap, but it costs more to buy them here than it did at the grocery store in Minnesota. I found this to be true on every island I visited.

The number of Japanese tourists here is astounding. I guess the exchange rate actually makes this a much cheaper trip for them than it is for me. Also, its the closest part of the US to them besides Guam or Saipan*. The large Japanese community in Honolulu doesn’t hurt either, I’m sure.

One thing that surprised me were the gun clubs in Waikiki which advertised directly to the Japanese. I guess their image of the US is cultivated from TV and movies, so they think that an American thing to do is to come and shoot guns. The brochure I got on the street even had a Japanese guy in a Kevlar helmet with an AR-15. (It should be noted that most of the packages you could purchase involved shooting nothing more powerful than .22′s or 9mm weapons) I suppose it would be like an American visiting Japan and wanting to buy a Samurai sword or a ninja outfit.

Most of the businesses in the area have signage in Japanese and/or have employees who speak Japanese. There are also a ton of Japanese restaurants. I’m not talking about the Japanese restaurants you see on the mainland: sushi bars and teppanyaki. These are mostly noodle restaurants. The equivalent to American hamburger stands or diners.

I have a very large post on ramen I was going to write, but I’m going to save it for when I’m in Japan.

Pearl Harbor

The one thing you have to see if you’re in Honolulu is Pear Harbor. In particular, the USS Arizona Memorial.

I don’t know why, but the first thing that stuck me was the number of Japanese tourists visiting the USS Arizona memorial. It struck me as odd at first. Then I thought about how odd it would be for me to visit Dresden or Hiroshima, and I thought “not very odd at all”. As my dad pointed out, “it’s part of their history too”. Most Japanese today were born after the war and have no greater particular attachment to anything from that time period than we do.

After I quickly adapted to the idea of Japanese tourists at Pearl Harbor, I realized one of the great strengths of the United States: we don’t hold a grudge. At no point in my life can I remember any politician, veterans group, citizens group, or anyone asking for an apology from the Japanese. Not for Pearl Harbor. Not for the Bataan Death March. Nothing. The war is over. They attacked us. We fought back. We dropped two atomic bombs on them. We won. We’re friends. Its over. Its in the past and neither side really dwells on it.

Compare that to the Koreans and Chinese who are to this day, still demanding apologies for various horrible things done to them over 60 years ago. I don’t think its that they can’t get over it, so much as they don’t want to get over it. There is no argument that the Japanese military did horrible things in Manchuria and Korea during the war. I’m not sure what apologies now will really achiever, however. It seems along the same lines as the University of Virgina who just recently apologized for its role in using slaves to build buildings on campus. Sure it was bad, but the people who apologized weren’t responsible, and the whoever is on the other end of the apology weren’t the ones who were wronged. The time for the apology was 150 years ago. I’m sure the Jews are eagerly awaiting the apology from the Egyptians for the whole pyramid thing.

You can still see the oil dripping out of the USS Arizona. I’m amazed that oil can still be leaking. Even if its only a drip, I’d have to think that after 65 years, it would have exhausted its supply by now.

Unlike most war memorials, the USS Arizona Memorial really hits home. Its not a big empty field with military souvenirs like a Civil War Battlefield. Its not a monument, statue, or a rows of white headstones. The memorial floats on top of the actual ship. Its right there below you rusting away at the very spot it sunk on December 7, 1941. Most of the men on died on the Arizona are still entombed below your feet. I can’t think of any other memorials like this off the top of my head, where they kept the remains on display to view. Its very powerful.

Underview

There were only a few things I didn’t get to do in Hawaii. One was getting to the north shore of Oahu and see surfers on the really big waves. The other was visit the island of Molokai.

In a few hours I’m off to French Polynesia’s capital, Papeete on the island of Tahiti. I’ll only be there about a day before I fly off to Easter Island. This will be the real start of my trip. I’ll be finally leaving the US and I’ve gotten all the stuff done here that I wanted to get done.

I’ll be on Easter Island for a week (due to flight times) so I’ll have lots of time to put of video (yeah, I know. I’ve been lax). Expect lots of repetitive shots of big stone heads.

Hawaii also marks the end of my cell phone service. If you had my cell phone number, you can get rid of it. If anyone (and I do mean anyone) would like to leave me a voice mail, you can call my Skype number. It’s available on the contact page.

Till I see you south of the equator, Aloha!

This is a photo of the jellyfish tank at the Waikiki Aquarium. The photo came out so bad, it actually looked sort of cool

I’m currently staying at a hotel about two blocks away from the Waikiki beach. I couldn’t get into a hostel but the hotel I’m staying at is only a bit more per night more than a private hostel room, and I get my own bathroom and a kitchenette, so its not so bad. Considering how much hotels go for around here, I’m not complaining.

I wasn’t hoping to be in Honolulu that long, but it looks like I’ll be here till Saturday. The Hawaiian Airlines flight to Tahiti only is once a week and if I take any other flight, it will cost at least $1,000 more, so I’ll just hole up here till then. This will give me the opportunity to get any final stuff done I need to get done, maybe apply for some visas, get my international drivers license, and do some video editing.

I should be on Easter Island a week from Monday if everything goes according to plan. If not, it will probably be Wednesday.

Sunday I visited the Waikiki Aquarium. The Waikiki Aquarium is probably the best aquarium in the world for coral and marine invertebrates. The coral they had in their tanks were enormous. Having had a coral aquarium for over five years, I can appreciate having coral the size of your torso. The Waikiki Aquarium has the luxury of using natural light for some of their tanks as well as natural seawater. They also have nice tanks with sea dragons and several species of jellyfish.

I have a lot of interesting stories about my first two days in Waikiki I’ll be posting tonight.