BOX 200: Hawai'i 3: O'ahu, Kaua'i and Maui.

As Anne and I were walking down the beach at Hanalei Bay, on the island of Kaua'i, we were struck by the sight of a group of people (11 to be precise) carrying a large tent, no doubt to set it up for a beach party. This was our third trip to the north shore of Kaua'i, part of what was becoming a biennial visit to Hawai'i, where we primarily stayed with Anne's brother and sister-in-law, Bob and Tripit, in Waikiki. During this 1996 stay we made excursions to Maui and the Big Island as well, revisiting some favorite places and exploring some new ones, as my slides will reveal. During this trip I took a concentrated summer course at the University of Hawai'i, Manoa Campus, on Portrayals of Asian Americans in Film--a topic that tied in with a course I was teaching at UW-Sheboygan. I didn't bring my camera to campus--too bad, since it's a fine-looking place--but I did have it on hand for people and places.

Each of my slide boxes of previous Hawai'i trips began with a photo of Anne newly arrived and 1996 was no exception, except that I heedlessly focused on the bookshelf instead of Anne; I'll include it anyhow for the record. A better "bookshelf shot" is one of Bob and Tripit's notorious cat, Poi:

Another of Anne's brothers, Jim, and his wife Lisa were also living in Waikiki, in an apartment a block away, and they now had two young children. Here is Eric, the older:

Eric looks like he has just neatly laid out the numbers 2 through 9 and is wondering where to put the zero. Here are more pics of him, with Jim and with Anne:

As you can't help but notice, their apartment had a spectacular view of the Manoa Valley beyond the Ala Wai Canal. Meanwhile, here is Eric's younger brother, Adam, who seems to have just drooled on his mother's shoulder:

One of the places Anne and I went to on O'ahu was the Waialua Sugar Mill on the North Shore. The Waialua sugar cane plantation was one of the island's biggest in the days when sugar was the dominant industry and chief export of Hawai'i, and thousands of immigrants from China, Japan, Korea, Portugal and its islands, and the Philippines worked on the land. Anne and I had both been studying the local literature of Hawai'i, much of it set in or around the plantations, so we were especially interested to see a working sugar mill. The one in Waialua could hardly be said to be prosperous at this point, however: it was the last remaining plantation on O'ahu and would close down a few months after we took these photos:

The plantation grounds seemed nearly deserted. We felt a bit guilty or voyeuristic taking this next photo of the rundown general store, but it did strongly match scenes portrayed in the local fiction and history we were studying:

We noticed neatly managed gardens but also dilapidated buildings:

Hawai'i plantations usually had a small town on the outskirts--we had seen a number of them on other islands, some prospering as they adapted to tourism or local trade. Waialua had a former bank that had become the Sugar Bar, which sometimes had live music that drew people in from Honolulu. If you look closely at the next photo you can see the new name of the place as well as some whimsical signage:

Not far from Waialua (where now, coffee and cacao are grown) is the town of Hale'iwa, which had (and still has) a famous shave ice place. I assume Bob or Tripit took the next photos:

For our side trip to Kaua'i we stayed at a hotel on the northeastern shore; here's a view of the mountains from the nearby beach:

Before driving into the Hanalei Valley on the north shore, I couldn't resist taking yet another photo of it. Those are mainly taro patches you see:

Besides the tenters at the top of this post, here are more views of the beach at Hanalei Bay, including a pier and a distant waterfall:

Farther west along the north coast we visited the Limahuli Garden and Preserve, which had just opened to the public the year before. (Look here if you want a detailed history of the site.) Here's a view looking down on a beach from the Garden, which is dedicated to preserving native species:

And here are terraces built for taro patches by early settlers many centuries ago:

Beyond these terraces are the fantastically shaped mountains of Kaua'i:

This photo of a stream has one of the peaks showing beyond the trees:

And finally, looking back toward the shore:

We must have flown directly to Maui from Kaua'i, since my next slides are of that island. On our previous visit we had driven part of the narrow, twisty road toward the small town of Hana on the east coast of East Maui; this time we took the whole route: about 50 miles, requiring about 2-1/2 hours of demanding but extremely scenic driving. We stayed two nights at a b&b cottage a little west of Hana; here's a view of the road and the bay beyond from the lanai:

And here's the living room:

We spent a lot of time out on the lanai:

There's not much to show of the town of Hana itself, but the dark-sand beach at the shore is certainly attractive:

There was a smaller, more secluded beach, but we decided it wasn't worth the steep climb down to it:

There was one grand and exclusive hotel in Hana--here is a glimpse of part of the grounds, with Haleakala looming in the background:

And here are a couple of scenes from beaches south of Hana; note the surfer in the second shot:

The most famous attraction south of Hana is the so-called Seven Sacred Pools: a series of pools formed by a stream pouring down from the slopes of Mount Haleakala. Here's a view from the bridge that crosses over the stream:

Some of the pools are deep enough for diving:

But we were content just to swim in one of the lower pools and enjoy the views. In the next three shots you can orient yourself via the bridge:

From the road near the Seven Pools there were fantastic views of the slopes of Haleakala:

The road continued south, winding its way clockwise around Haleakala, but it got increasingly narrow, as you see in the soft-focus view to the right, and we'd read that it got much rougher as well. So we returned to Hana and then our cottage before heading back to the rest of the island. We wanted to make another visit to the Ka'anapali coast in West Maui, which we'd enjoyed on our previous trip to the island. Since I'd taken a fair number of photos on that trip I took only three this time: one of the Pioneer Inn (1901), Lahaina's first hotel; a view of the mountains of West Maui; and a shot in the opposite direction, of the island of Lana'i from a terrace:

We returned to Honolulu, but evidently didn't stay long before taking another excursion--my slide box has just one photo, of Tripit and Bob in silhouette (I should of course have used the flash, but at least you can see that their Waikiki apartment had a rather good view too) in between ones of Maui and the Big Island. I'll report on that excursion and also on the time we spent with family on O'ahu in my next post.