Our Week in Hawaii (part 5)

This morning we fought our way from Kailua to downtown Honolulu so I could give my talk. Hawaii is a funny place in many ways, not least because the traffic is amazing. First, it is dense. There are sometimes bumper-to-bumper messes that last seemingly for hours.

Then, there is the speed limit, which is no higher than 45 MPH on most roads, including the "interstate" freeways, and a maximum of 55 MPH for only short stretches. Also, there a resolute politeness here, far exceeding Minnesota drivers even in the old days (and vastly exceeding them now as they race across lane changes in dramatically aggressive fashion), where it is rare when, at an intersection, when the other driver does NOT wave you ahead to go first. This doesn't just happen once or twice a day, or it wouldn't be worth mentioning, it happens CONSTANTLY. One time, while leaving a parking lot, I saw a guy with a trailer intent on following his partner, who was also in a truck and trailer rig. I waved him on. He waved me on. I waved again, saying, "no, no, you first, stay with your convoy", and he waved me ahead AGAIN. I could see this was going nowhere, so I went ahead. Someday when I have more time I'll wait it out, and see what happens when you absolutely refuse to be out-polited.

Another surprising thing about this place is their treatment of traditional native culture. It's not like the mainland, where Native Americans have pow-wows among themselves, practicing native dance, and protecting their image from ridicule (by, for example, objecting to team mascots like the UND Sioux, doing parodies of war dances to inspire the football team, or objecting to the Atlanta Braves use of the "tomahawk chop" as a way of rallying the late innings). Here, they seem to have no objection to people jazzing the culture to make money.

This is a thorny issue, and not one I'm very prepared to remark on. So I'll just say this: it was a remarkable contrast to see the treatment given the traditional hula by the showmen at Paradise Cove as compared to the visiting artists, also demonstrating the hula, who appeared at the Bishops Museum while we were there. At Paradise Cove it was heavy pounding, exaggerated motion, skimpy costumes on both men and women, and an especial emphasis on fire sticks. At the Bishops Museum it was a Mom and Pop thing, with three sons and a daughter doing graceful hand movements and a light cheery patter between tunes, with a gentle humor: "my daughter makes a mean pot of rice ... except when she forgets to rinse the soap out of the pot."

Today's adventure commenced with a drive through heavy traffic to get from Kailua to the Waikiki Sheraton for my conference talk. Traffic was really miserable, at 9:30 in the morning, and we were creeping along for miles. Then we came upon a police barricade with flares on the ground, that re-directed us away from our goal. So we improvised a new path, only to meet another barricade. There were police everywhere, we saw, with firetrucks and other machinery. "A water main burst" one policeman told us, but I wondered what all the ordinance and street closings were about, for a water main. Later we learned it was a major gas leak, as an 8-inch pipe had been severed, and several buildings were evacuated while the entire downtown area was closed to incoming traffic. As my time was growing short, I ended up leaving the car and walking 20-30 minutes in order to get through the cordon and to the hotel where my talk was scheduled. It's warm here, and by the time I arrived I was a running river of perspiration. Oh, what we sacrifice for science!

Afterwards I rendezvoused with Rita at the Honolulu Zoo, which was our agreed meeting place, and we headed out to the west side of the island, looking for Electric Beach in hopes of snorkeling and perhaps seeing a Spinner Dolphin. We arrived at the west end of the island in good shape. This is the poorer part of Hawaii, and there did indeed look to be ramshackle dwellings in such disrepair that even we could afford them.

By the time we hit the west coast a lunch was in order, and we found a fine place with burgers to sell. Afterwards we elected to continue up the west coast, as we were within about ten miles of the place where the road stops. We continued in that direction until, indeed, the pavement became dirt road. As we moved along there were several times we saw low-slung rodents scamper across the road ahead of us. I said to Rita, "No! not mongooses!" but she said that's what they appeared to be. I was non-plussed because I though Mongeese were large, but these appeared to be, in the distance, no larger than smallish squirrels such as we see in the Midwest. Rita said "no", that's how big they are. This was a difficult argument as the little rodents, if such they are, were scampering across at such a distance as it was difficult to make them out. They might have been chipmunks, or squirrels for that matter. We were always to far off to tell for sure.

Luckily for us, we came across an animal squashed in the middle of the road (not so lucky for the mongoose however), and being able to inspect the animal at close quarters gave me confidence that Rita was right all along. These were mongooses running back and forth (we saw at least 4 of them, one that was trying to drag an animal carcass into the weeds, I took a picture of this, but probably only got the carcass, and not the mongoose, and I did not have the presence of mind to photograph the dead one, so you have to take my word: we saw mongooses in the wild). The dead one was full grown, I guess, and about the same size as one of the bigger squirrels you see in Fargo. It was a tan color. The others we saw appeared to be smaller.

From there we went to the Electric Beach (named because it's cheek-by-jowel with an electric plant), and scouted for a place to go snorkeling. This turned out to be different than other places we have snorkeled, mostly because the egress was down a steep sandy incline. We usually have to clamber over rocks and stand in knee-deep water to get our gear on. This was different. We had a concrete wall on one side of us, and craggy volcanic rock on the other, with the tide sluicing up in waves between, in a sort of hallway effect, about thirty yards wide. So we could walk into the water, and try to put our fins on, but there would be a fair sized wave every few moments that would knock us off our feet, either driving us back to the beach or pulling us out into the cove.

Eventually we got ourselves ready and were able to paddle out into the cove, and from there into the clear waters of the reef beyond. This was a great place to snorkel, in terms of the fish and plant life we could see, but not so good in terms of the wave action which buffetted us pretty severely, and bobbed us up and down by several feet at a time. This is the downside to snorkeling, by the way: the waves make life uncomfortable when you're stuck on the surface (as opposed to diving), and it can look like a pretty calm sea, but it's still enough to make you motion sick and exhausted, just trying to move along a reef while swimming uphill against the waves. Out on the water we saw a variety of fish and coral, the fish very colorful: yellows, blues, silvers, reds; the coral mostly brown and grey.

After we snorkeled for a while, we came back to shore and discovered some crabs in the sand. Meanwhile, there seems to be a society that lives on the public beaches on the west end of Hawaii. We have encountered these groups in our wandering, and this was a pretty plain case.

All the public beaches in Hawaii are marked and equipped with a changing room for men and women, a life guard tower, a parking lot, and sometimes other structures. It's apparently legal to camp in these beach areas for extended periods, and we saw campsites today that looked almost permanent. Often they were comprised of a van with a canopy across the top and a lean-to attached, usually with a make-shift kitchen set up under the tarpaulin. At Electric Beach there's some of this, but there's also a fairly large pavilion too, with several benches and such, looking to be occupied by homeless looking people. Plus, in the parking lot, several run-down looking vehicles, one with a large man pulling fish net out of the trunk, repairing the holes for later.

In the water there was a man spear fishing and setting nets from an inner tube. I'd read about this being done in Cuba, where they call them "pneumaticos", but I'd never seen it before. Basically, you paddle out on your inner tube with fins and a spear, and as you catch fish you put them into a pail in the center of the inner tube. Meanwhile, the pavilion was populated by various destitute looking individuals, plus a warm outgoing woman who invited us in to look at their shell jewelry. Apparently they collect shells from the local beaches and create necklaces from then by drilling tiny holes and stringing them on fishline. We looked at her wares and Rita decided to buy a necklace -- it was $25, which if they made them by hand on the spot as they said, was a remarkable bargain.

In any case, this is, I think, the way to buy a memento of a trip; by finding something you like on the street, from an artisan in the business of making and selling such things, rather than from a mall or a department store. This way you have a thing, and a story that goes with the thing, and a memory of buying it, and of who you bought it from. We're leaving here soon. Tomorrow, Thursday, we're supposed to climb Diamondhead. Friday we start the long flight home.