Second installment? That's right, because there is another Hawai'i travel report on my site. It's from my trip the the WebNet'99 conference. That travel report is here.
While the WebNet report shows images from O'ahu, the "island of gathering", with places like Hololulu, Waikiki Beach, The Banzai pipeline etc. (and many many tourists), this reports features The Big Island, as it's often called, or simply Hawai'i (that's the name of the island. I assume everybody calls it the big island, because a) it IS the biggest island, b) to not confuse it with Hawaii in general, c) to show that they know what they are talking about).
Contrary to Maui and Oahu (for simplicity I'll use the simplified spelling of names in most places, just so you know) Hawaii is much less developed. Geologically it is the second youngest of the Hawaiian islands. Actually it is still growing, as it has active volcanism! The youngest Hawaiian island, Loihi, is actually not an island -- yet. It is an undersea volcano, just 20 or so miles south east of Hawaii and it's expected to become a real island in a matter of 60 thousand years, give or take a couple thousand. That's really no time at all (in geological terms).
The reason for this trip was not work, but vacation, vacation and vacation. On the big island, in the Puna district (where the "Punatics" live), near Pahoa, there is an area, called BellyAcres. You won't find it on a map. It's address is just relative to a rural route.This is the place where I spend 10 wonderful days at the first annual Hawaiian Juggler's Luau.
I might have mentioned that there is an annual (well, almost annual) Juggling festival in Hawaii. This festival is put on by the BellyAcres folks. A long time ago, after the first Hawaiian Juggling festival, many of the participants fell so much in love with the Islands that they kept coming back. At some time, they decided to buy land. The land is located in a Kipuka, which means an "island of trees", in a recent lava flow of the volcano. This land they called BellyAcres and over the years they turned it into a jungle paradise, with jungalows to live in, and even a couple of real houses.
BellyAcres is not in an official subdivision. It's not regularly developed land. So there are no water pipes leading there. There is no electricity either, but there is a telephone.
So how do people live? Simpler than other people. Water comes from rainwater captured in cisterns. Electricity comes from a generator or you use a flashlight. Nobody has aircondition. It's simple. It's very quiet and peaceful.
Here are a couple of impressions from my vacation. It's not a consistent story, so you can read them pretty much in any order.
Aloha!
Start -- [Hawai'i] - [Activities] - [The Luau & BellyAcres] - [Cooking Hawaiian Style] - [Lava]
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This is where almost everybody's Hawaii vacation starts... the famous WikiWiki shuttle at the Honolulu airport. WikiWiki means "fast". It can also be used as a verb, meaning "to hurry". Or course this is Hawaii, so WikiWiki is a relative term :) I really like the Honolulu airport because it has a very nice garden in the middle, a great place to wait for your flight. And it's definitely cheaper than walking through the airport and see all these nice (and totally overpriced) things you could buy. |
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Yes, that's in the airport. It's especially nice at night when all the gas torches in the garden are lit. If you wouldn't hear the announcements every now and then (and the muffled roar of the planes) you might think you are near some Hawaiian village... From HNL you can get connecting flights to all the other islands. This time I was stupid to pre-book my flight because I forgot what I had learned on my previous trips: go to Honolulu, take care of interisland flights there. These flights work more like buses than regular flights. You buy tickets at vending machines or some stores (a lot cheaper than if you pre-book!) and then just wait in line. First come, first serve. No seat reservation! You want a window seat? Fine, just get in line early. Only: it won't help you much: the windows of all these planes are totally scratched -- forget about taking photos from the plane.
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I learnt from Kiko, that Hawaii was one of the very first places in the world where air travel really took off, because the islands are some distance apart and because the sea between the islands is often very rough. This doesn't make boat travel very pleasant. And then, some of the islands have very steep cliffs around most of them (Lanai'i in particular), so entering the island from the inside is the logical choice. To give you a sense of the distances see the map of Hawaii below (lifted from the online version at mapquest). The 8 islands shown on this map are what most people associate with Hawaii. However, the Hawaiian islands stretch about 1000 miles further NorthWest till the Midway islands and the Kure atoll, and I still have to find an atlas that shows that area -- the only map I found of it was in a National Geographic on Hawaii. Which shows again that there are still more or less uncharted spots on this planet ;) Honolulu is, as I mentioned, on the island of O'ahu, where also my WebNet99 trip took place. But this time I took a flight on Hawaiian Airlines to the Big Island, Hawai'i, to Hilo, to be exact. And there Kiko, Joyce and Andy picked me up and we drove further SouthEast towards Pahoa. |
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Start -- [Hawai'i] - [Activities] - [The
Luau & BellyAcres] - [Cooking Hawaiian Style]
- [Lava]
