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Honolulu has many other things to offer. Here is a photo of the Ala Moana Shopping center. Just your average mall, right? No really, it's beautiful! And that's very difficult to achieve in a mall, I'd say. |
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Ala Moana is of course pretty upscale. So it's one of the main shopping places for tourists. Not like the Aloha stadium where I went... let me think: Wednesday and Sunday morning? That's a great place to get stuff *cheap*. The Aloha shirts your hotel sells you for $60 can be found there for $10 - $15, for example. |
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If you like history, check out historic Honolulu. There you can visit Iolani Palace, the *only* royal palace on US ground! Kalakaua, the last Hawai'ian king was a very interesting person. I'm too lazy to write much here, but make sure you go to the visitors center in the barracks and watch the video. You'll be amazed. |
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These are the barracks of the palace. Now they contain the visitors center. |
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I couldn't go inside the palace myself, because I was too late (you have to be there in the early morning). Here is just one view of the inside. From the photos I've seen I'd say Iolani palace could sit in any European city and nobody would notice that this building is from a little island in the Pacific... Quite something! The palace is being restored to its original splendor (as much as possible) by volunteers. |
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This is the coronation pavillion, a little bit to the side of the palace. The little sign at the entrance contains another important Hawai'ian word: "Kapu". This means "Taboo". Don't disturb a place that is kapu! |
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The royal emblem (or whatever you call these things). Talking of "kapu". One of the kapu things for tourists is to take volcanic rocks home as souvenir. Ms. Pele, the volcano goddess of Hawaii really doesn't like that. When you get to Hawaii you certainly will have a tour guide explain to you that this brings bad luck. The Hawaiian post office supposedly gets thousands of letters with little lava rocks in them every year, sent by tourists who beg Pele to lift her curse that has befallen them since they left the island. So don't annoy Pele! Mahalo (that means "Thanks" in Hawai'ian). |
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Across the street from the palace is the statue of Kamehameha I, who united the Hawai'ian islands. The decisive (very bloody) battle took place on O'ahu, but the spiritual support came from the big island. Right next to Spencer beach park, were the annual Hawaiian Vaudeville festival is held there is a large Hawaiian temple which was built to gain the gods' support for that war. As a kahuna told me on my first visit, it's an evil place, full of bad magic. Of course it is very kapu. There are actually three temples right next to each other, but the big, most obvious one is dedicated to this war. The kahuna told me that tourists often put flowers and other small gifts near the temple, not realizing that they bring sacrifices to a war god, whereas the other two temples, one for the sea gods and one for gods for life don't get any donations. But maybe that's a sign of our times...? |
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As the last picture shows, Honolulu is a modern city. If you really want to see Hawai'i, you have to go elsewhere though. The best way to see Hawaii, is to go hiking. Way too few people do that and they don't even realize what they are missing. Hawai'i is so much more than just Honolulu and pretty beaches! Just about an hour drive from Honolulu is Maunawili trail. It's fairly unknown and leads through mostly untouched areas of O'ahu's windward side. We were a group of 4 people and we met only one other group the whole afternoon. Here we are on the way to the trail, at a very touristy place: Nu'uanu Pali State Wayside, at the Pali lookout. This location is only about 6 miles from Honolulu. To the right of this platform there is a 1200 foot drop down to sharp rocks. It was here that Kamehameha I won his war, by chasing the entire enemy army into the deep... |
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What is typical of the windward side is the steep
rocks with their deep ravines -- signs of erosion by lots and lots of rainfall.
The humidity is much higher here than on the leeward side -- see the mist
around the mountain tops?
Does this type of landscape remind you of something? Jurassic Parc maybe? The movie was filmed not too far from here in a little valley near the road to the north shore. |
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After our hike we drove along the shore north. (This image was taken actually a bit south of Honolulu. To give you an idea of scale: what you see on this photo is approximately 300 ft (100m ) across) |
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The north shore is the Hawai'ian surfer paradise. This photo shows wimpy 2 - 3 meter high waves. That's nothing. October is not a good month for surfing. At this time, there is a lot of sand out in the water, deposited by gentle currents all over the summer and fall. In winter different currents and also some storms wash all this sand away. THEN you get nice waves here (in spring). When you see photos of surfers in a "banzai pipeline", these photos are often taken on this beach, but definitely not in October! |
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Rainbows are very common in Hawaii, especially on the windward side. We had probably 10 little showers while we were frolicking at the beach, then the sun came out again. Then it rained some more. You see lots of rainbows! A Hawaiian saying goes "No Rain, No Rainbows". If you look closely you see that there this is actually a double rainbow on the photo. Here on the north shore I saw the only triple rainbow I've ever seen! |
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We made our way back on one of the three highways
that Hawaii has to offer -- all of them on O'ahu. It was dark already so
I couldn't see the pineapples growing along the road. It's here, the inner
part of O'ahu, where the Dole pineapple is grown. Just the right amount
of rain and sunshine, with protection by the mountains around and the right
type of soil.
The Hawai'ian highways are a strange thing. They are, of course, part of the Eisenhower interstate highway system. Only they are the only highways that don't lead to any other states. So why don't they call them "intrastate highways" then? Unfortunately this pretty much concluded my trip to Hawaii for this time. |
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One more thing: should you come to Hawaii, or if you
only have a layover in Honolulu, check out the japanese garden in the middle
of the airport! It's beautiful and the best place to relax while waiting
for your flight!
I hope could give you a little glimpse of how beautiful it is here and maybe you'll understand better why I can't wait to go back to Hawai'i!!! Aloha! |
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Here are a couple of links you might find interesting: |
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last modified 3/2000
