Our Week in Hawaii (part 6)
August 17, 2001, Kailua, Hawaii
Hawaii is a land of about three jokes, and you hear them replayed all the time. Here's one: a performer comes onstage, or a tour guide gets up to speak, or a driver gets on a tour bus (or, no kidding, a security guard sees a line form at the airport), and they say "Alooooo-haaa" real loud, and then cup their hand behind their ear, waiting for a response. The crowd, yells back, "Alooooo-haaa", usually not too loud, and the performer says "that was terrible", and then you go through it again, louder.
Thursday we discovered the Pali Highway, twice. Still vexed by the way roads lay out here, and the way Hawaii has decided to save money on road signs (by having very few, and always at the last moment before the turn), and working from maps lacking detail, we were stuck in a pattern that had us following the same tortured route out of Kailua. This meant, we came to realize, that we were going northwest on the Kameameha under Hawaiian Interstate Highway H3, then looping back southeast to get on the Likelike Highway, and then going under the H3 again, in order to travel southwest down to Honolulu emerging at the west end of town, meaning we had to traverse the full coastline from west to east in order to get through Honolulu to Waikiki.
We could see there was a better road, the Pali Highway, but we couldn't figure out how to GET to it. So we repeated the same twisted path several times (at least we were familiar with the road), which, not too surprising, took us through all the heavy traffic Hawaii and it's one million inhabitants has to offer each day. Rita had figured out we were doing things wrong, but the one attempt we made to try the new route, I missed the turn (late sign), and other, where we tried to jump on for the trip BACK, was defeated because the bottom end of Pali Road was one-way-the-wrong-way. Finally we got the nuts and bolts together, and found the way to get on --- and it sure was nice: our favorite highway, with lush vegetation on both sides, several twists and turns and steep rises, and a very cool, though short, two-piece tunnel (that we both think we've seen in movies).
The purpose of this trip to town, which after a few days you realize driving around the island is a treat, and driving into Honolulu is a torture, was to hook up with our last "scheduled" activity: the Diamond Head Bus Tour. Somehow, I had formed the impression this meant a visit to the Diamond Head Crater (a dormant volcano) and then a climb to the top, which we had seen listed as a "must see, must do" on Oahu. Not so. We got to the hotel and rendezvoused with the other conference folks, and headed out to the two mini-buses. After a short wait, the driver got on the bus. "Alooooo-haaa" he cried, with his hand behind his ear. "Alooooo-haa", we moaned. "That", he told us, "was terrible".
Once these preliminaries were out of the way, our driver/comedian started us out on a big loop through the south-east quarter of the island. The first part of this was a quick trip through the "VERY prestigious" neighborhoods adjacent to Waikiki, where the homes range in value from $500K to $30 Million. There were several short stops for us to ooh and aah over somebodies beach access, servant's quarters, and automobiles. At another point we stopped at the end of a road and looked up to where, over the rise and out of sight, Tom Selleck's house was, before he sold it and moved away. One interesting point was that most of the homes on the island are on leased land. When you buy a house in Hawaii, you probably don't buy the land underneath it (it's mostly owned by one of the wealthy families, like the Bishops, who had the good fortune to get here early on, and marry into a royal family --- later they financed the Museum, they can afford it). They also have a Hawaiian Homestead arrangement where, if you're 25% native Hawaiian you can lease a little land usually a 1/4 acre lot, for 99 years, for a $1, and then build a house on it. The catch? If, through death and inheritance, the owner is less than 1/4th Hawaiian, they must move the heck out and either sell the house or move it out.
We went to the Diamond Head Crater, and stopped long enough to take pictures of the famous climb and the people climbing it. This, we were told, was the location of the Elvis Presley film, "Blue Hawaii" (earlier we were informed that Paradise Cove was the location of the Elvis Presley film, "Girls, Girls, Girls") We continued in a counter-clockwise fashion, up the coast, past a couple of very high-tech looking research stations, to a lovely scenic overlook complete with a very dramatic looking inlet (the location, seriously, of that famous smooching-in-the-surf scene with Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr in "From Here to Eternity").
We continued up the coast, stopping and gawking at various natural wonders, including a very nice but touristy looking beach and snorkeling site (we bought t-shirts on the beach, in our theme of buying souvenirs from hucksters on the street rather than from hucksters in the mall --- a sound policy, I think, and one we stuck to this time), and then eventually turned inland until we found ourselves .... on the Pali Highway. This, we were able to see with the bus driver's narrative, was the site of a very old road through the mountains, some of which is still visible, precariously perched on the side of very steep hillsides above the current road. Further, we learned, there is an overlook if you venture off onto a very steep side road where a famous battle took place, when King Kamehameha united the islands in the 1800s. Fighting with clubs and firearms, this battle raged, incredibly, from the beach of Waikiki up the mountain several miles, to this spot where the losing side of about 1000 remaining warriors was offered the chance to join forces or get thrown off the cliff (very steep, very high, long fall), and about 400 of them elected to jump or get thrown off.
One of the interesting things about this part of Oahu is how the terrain and even the weather is controlled by the mountains. We found, several times, that dry cloudy conditions on one side would turn into wet sunny conditions after passing through a short tunnel. On one side the vegetation is brown and sparse; on the other is a rain forest featuring, if you get off the beaten track as we did on this day, bamboo forests and eucalyptus trees (the politician's tax tree, our comedian tells us: you-clipped-us). Another of the three basic jokes, by the way, is "Muhalo does not mean "trash", even though it's written on every public trash can, it means "thank you".
At one point in the tour, our driver, Ernie, stopped the bus on the side of a rain-forest road and dashed across into a thicket of brush and flowers. He returned anon with a handful of yellow ginger flowers which he ceremoniously handed to each of the ladies on the bus. Then he launched into the third Hawaii joke: "If you put the flower on the left your taken, on the right you're looking, in the middle you're looking to move up, and in your teeth, you're desperate".
Another interesting thing is how steep it is through these small mountains. The elevation is "only" about 4,000 feet to the peaks, and the road never approach the peaks, while the city of Las Cruces, by comparison, is in a valley that's 4500 feet above sea level. Still, the roads are steep and it's interesting to see people with mountian bikes huffing up these roads, legs spinning furiously in a super-low gear while they move forward/upward by inches. It's annoying when these are able to pass your underpowered rental car (a Geo Metro), which struggles in the best of circumstances; and while we were never passed by anyone on a tricycle or in a wheelchair, I was expecting it and would not have been too surprised.
The highlight of this bus tour was the next-to-last stop, which was in a shopping mall which contained a Sumo Wrestling shop owned by the mother of the first Hawaiian to break into the highest levels of Japanese Sumo. His birth name is Chad Rowan, and he fought under the name Akebono.
The shop featured a lot of photos of gigantic Sumo men, and some trophies and such, as well as a range of Sumo "equipment" which is basically these little decorative aprons and those heavy twisted cloth garments the Sumo wear as a loin cloth (called a yokozuna belt, I now know). That, and a bunch of regular old Hawaiian clothing and some novelty items (we bought a refrigerator magnet). But hey, how many people have even been to a Sumo shop, much less seen Akebono's mother, who was presiding in the shop and who is, yes, a large woman).
Actually, the highlight of the tour was the last stop, which was an almost scary ride up a VERY steep and twisty road to what is called Mount Tantalus. From here you can see all of Honolulu and Waikiki, the airport, the dockyards, the naval base, and about a trillion miles of deep blue sea. Really a stunning sight on a sunny day, and impossible to describe.
Friday morning, and we're bidding a fond "Aloha" to the Rainbow State on a 3 PM flight. We do some laundry, and Rita takes a dip in the pool we've had just footsteps outside our door and have been too busy to ever plunge into. Packed and ready to go, we set out for our last liesurely cruise down the Pali Highway, aiming to take the H1 to the west and jump onto the airport to return the rental car.
But wait! There's one more confound. We're cruising along nicely with plenty of time, but no time to spare, when suddenly the airport turnoff is upon us, and then by us. We've missed it! (late sign).
Now we're being sluiced into unknown territory, and worse yet, we've been foolishly confident and the maps are all packed in our luggage.
"By now", we thought, "we're almost from around here". What can go wrong?
Now we're heading away from the airport (we think), and the clock is ticking ("if you don't check in by 30 minutes before the flight, your ticket is eligible to be re-sold", says our tickets --- it's a charter, taken to save money, which works great, IF YOU MAKE THE FLIGHT).
So I take the next exit. And as I do, I see a small green sign on a light pole: the silhouette of an airplane, and an arrow pointing ahead. We stop, we ponder (Rita didn't see the little sign, only me), and we look for someone to ask directions. But we're in a contorted concrete labyrinth, no place for people.
I follow the trail of little green signs, which leads us around several turns, through some underpasses, into concrete no-mans-land, and finally, ta-da, onto Nimitz Road which we've seen on the map but never been able to find, because, IT'S UNDER THE FREEWAY.
Like Lower Wacker Drive in Chicago, there's a road directly under another road, and if you drive along the topmost road, you might think you're on the Nimitz, but you're not. And unless you know where to look (don't look for signs...no signs), you never quite catch on.
The beauty part? The Nimitz leads right to the airport, if you keep an eye out for the little green airplane silhouettes, and it's actually a nice cool shady ride.
The rest, as they say, is history. We made the airport in plenty of time, had our bags inspected multiple times, and sailed onto the plane with a minimum of fuss. After complaining all week about the lousy Hawaiian road signs, I'm forced to take it all back, since the little green signs did indeed show up when I needed them most.
Rita got busted for trying to smuggle a Fuji Apple off the island, but they were nice about it: giving her the choice of eating it on the spot or tossing it into the pile of Fuji apples they'd already grabbed off others. To be fair, she didn't know it would be a problem until confronted by the very nice security man.
And that's pretty much the story. Except to sign off, I think I'll forgo the Hawaiian "Aloha", and go instead with that famous Hawaiian thumb and pinky salute which is "Shaka" in Hawaiian, but in English translates to "Hang Loose".
Shaka
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