Waikiki

I landed in Honolulu (pronounced hoe-no-lulu) after hurtling through the skies in a metal tube with wings with lots of other people for 9 hours and 20 minutes. It was Qantas so it was not a bad experience and I was booked into the Aston Waikiki Joy Hotel so didn't see much of Hoe-nolulu as I was whisked away to the playground. Usually big crowded places drain me and I cannot wait to get away, not so Waikiki, I loved it from the minute I stepped into the street across from the hotel. The hotel was quite nice, I think it was 3.5 stars but it is difficult to tell star ratings in Hawaii as they seem to assign their own. I managed to get my room for 6 days at a bargain rate of US$79.00 per night and later found out normal room rates are about US$160.00 . It was in a great location. It is a good idea to check with Trip Advisor as people who stay in hotels put reviews of their experiences. I also found that I got the best rates at Hawaii Inter Island Travel

I had a sleep and then went out in the afternoon for a look see and had only gone one block when I heard live Hawaiian music so I followed my ears and came across a free hula and fire dancing show in a shopping mall. The hotel was very close to everything, its near the Hawaiian Centre and a couple of blocks from Waikiki Beach. The International Market place was just around the corner so I went to see what they were selling and found all the souvenirs and gifts I wanted right there. T shirts were very cheap, they had some tacky stuff as well as some very good stuff. I put tags on the pictures so point at them for explanations.

Well, the things you learn, above Mike and Marian are posing with their Panama hats, we had hours of fun in this shop. Mike has been here before and bought a hat, this one is on loan for the photo but Marian did buy the one she is wearing. Anyway, getting back to learning things, apparently Panama hats are made in Ecuador but were sold in Panama so that is how they got their name. We learned a lot from Sam Franzella and he obviously loved Panama hats he's been selling them for years. The hats are woven in one piece from toquilla straw, the straw is split, the finer the split the finer the weave the longer it takes to make one, the more they cost. Simple really. There was the Panama Hat Story book in the shop as well as a hat block with a half woven hat on it and lots of pictures of old movie stars wearing their lovely Panama hats. Ranging from a couple of hundred dollars to about US$15,000.00 I am sure there is a Panama hat there to suit you. The shop is called Newt at the Royal I had a bit of trouble getting the web site to work so will put a bit of their Spiel here for you, I am sure they won't mind

"The exquisite classic Sombrero Montecristi Panama Hat is a living art form. All of the finest Panama hats are hand woven in and around the ancient town of Montecristi in Northwest Ecuador. It takes months of painstaking work to prepare the special materials and hand-weave a single hat. The result is breathtaking: practical, comfortable, stylish, a work of art, a link with the past, a living demonstration of caring craftsman-ship produced by a true artisan"

and I agree of course. As well as hats you can also get hat bands in gorgeous feathers and cotton hat bands and bandanas that match the shirts they sell. The hats come with their own hat boxes like in the olden days so we had to dispatch Mike to take it back to the hotel. while Marian and I meandered on and found another free Hula show.

This one had a boy Hula dancer, here he is below. Once upon a time hula dancing was only for men and yet we in the west only think of Hula Dancers as being female. Hawaiian music is great too, it is quite happy and soothing and they have falsetto singers too so it can be quite surprising to see a big burly Hawaiian bloke suddenly start singing in a falsetto voice, I loved it. The bloke below holding what looks like a bass, he is behind the female hula dancer, he was the falsetto voice of this band and very good he was too. Hawaiian Hula dancing is not the flashy kind although they have some fast dancing it is the Tahitian Hula that is the flashy sort with the big grass skirts, lots of hip movement and big headdresses, have a photo somewhere so keep scrolling and we will get to it.

We went to the Punchbowl which is an old volcano crater. There is a cemetery there for service personal and Marian's mother (Jeanette) has her ashes interred there so we went for a visit. The picture below is the view from the punchbowl across to Diamond Head which is a prominent land mark from Bairiki Beach and it too is the remnants of a volcano. Bairiki Beach is slightly right of the Centre of the picture

Around the Island of Oahu with Mike and Marian

Mike and Marian hired a car and we drove off to the other side of the island. We were headed for the Polynesian Cultural Centre which is on the Windward side but we had a few other stops along the way.

Below is a picture taken at the Nuuanu Pali State Park. This area is the scene of a great battle which occurred because Chief Kamehameha the first wanted the islands united and guess what, he wanted himself to be king. This occurred around 1795 and prior to that the islands were ruled by different chiefs with the occasional battle fought between islands pretty much as always happens when it comes to humankind and bit of property. 400 warriors were said to have died in the battle and there is a picture of them on a billboard at the site being thrown off the cliff. Nice. Anyway it appears that Maui's Chief Kalanikupuñle lead his forces on O'ahu having won a similar battle on O'ahu 10 years before. Both sides fought with Hawaiian spears and western firearms but Kamehameha's cannon gave him the edge and thus, after this battle, an agreement was signed which made him the first King of Hawaii.

We were lucky with the weather (sounds like my trip to the Uk doesn't it?) it is often very windy up here and they had these hand rails on the walk up there, Mike told me that it was so windy you could hardly stand up and people had been blown back down the path. I found it hard to believe at the time but I saw something on TV later on which showed people struggling against the wind to get to this lookout, they were, in fact, losing their battle and being blown backwards down the path just like Mike said, sorry Mike how could I have doubted you but you have to admit that there was hardly a breeze when we were there. So lucky me, it was a perfect day and the view was magnificent. It is very moody up here, I love those imposing mountains eroded into interesting crevices , the mountain tops lost in the clouds.

The mountains in Scotland moved me as did Snowdonia in Wales but each of these mountains is different somehow, they all have their own character, magnificence and power. I always felt alive when I was in areas like this on Hawaii but did not like some of the volcanic desolate areas you will see later on the other islands.

We came to Aotearoa (photos below) and met these two nice girls at the entrance. Aotearoa, for those who do not know, is the Maori name for New Zealand. They have shows at different times in different "villages" in between there is much there to look at and as you can see by the photo below the crowd had not yet arrived, when they did the area in front of the building and all around was full of people, all standing in the hot sun. I though it was a bit slack of the Mormons who run this place not to think of their patrons comfort, it is a hot country but there was not many places to get out of the heat which distressed me a bit. The building below is a Whare Rununga, a structure which is the centre of Maori culture. There did a welcoming ceremony, well not welcoming, they showed how they found out if visitors were friendly or not by putting down a leaf and if the visitor picked it up he was friendly and if he stomped on it he came to fight. They did the Haka which is a traditional dance and quite scary with lots of tongue poking out, eyes flaring and chest slapping. Aussie's see it all the time if they watch football matched between the All Blacks and OZ because the All Blacks perform it before each of their matches.

The show inside the Whare Rununga was very good but it was so hot I almost fainted and there were not enough seats with people crowding down the sides of the building. I took some videos of the dancing and chanting, it was very good and the two gals below were part of the show, the little one sure had a fiersome voice, I wouldn't mess with her I can tell you.

I had lost Mike and Marian because I tried to keep to the shade and they had gone in the back door and I went into the side entrance but we found each other afterwards and headed around to the next show which was Tonga and it consisted of a sort of shack with a verandah which was the stage, they were drumming here, they got three volunteers up and did a sort of entertaining show. The pamphlets seem to promise a lot of interactivity such as drumming but three people out of hundreds got to drum when we were there but at least we were sitting under trees by this time. They seem to have a 10 hour package thing so if you go for the whole 10 hours you get to see the all village shows, have a luau dinner and an evening show. We were pretty well soaked to the skin with sweat and exhausted after an hour and a half. The next scheduled activity (hate these planned things) was to be the show in the water course in the middle of the centre, didnt have a clue what would happen so we found some shade and hung about. Then dancers and musicians came out on barges, each of the Polynesian regions were represented, the Tahitian one is below. Hawaiian Hula is not all that flashy, it is gentle most of the time but they do have some faster dances. Tahitian dances are more dramatic and have flashy costumes too it seems.

We headed for the imax which was air conditioned. Althought I enjoyed the Aotearoa show this ended up being the highlight of my visito to the Polynesian Cultural Centre and it wasn't even cultural. They were showing MacGillivray Freeman's Coral Reef Adventure and being on the Imax it was like diving without getting wet. I really enjoyed that as I don't like getting wet but the reefs are fantastic..

It costs between $45.00 and about $120.00, more if you include transport from Waikiki, to get into the Centre, I was lucky because Marian managed to find a free entry ticket somewhere and she and Mike joined as Kama'aina (local or resident (derived from Kama meaning child and aina meaning land) and got in cheap too.

Would I recommend people go? You can probably tell I was less than impressed mostly because of the heat and it wasn't as exciting as the advertising made it out to be. I also expected more cultural stuff and although we did get it in a show presentation form I would have preferred something more earthy and villagy like people doing what they did back then rather than this showpiece with its timed shows and also the lack of shade and unbearable heat made it unpleasant for me. I wanted to go to see Hawaiian culture but in the end I learned more about Hawaii at the free Hula shows I saw everywhere we went and also on the bus tours I took on other Islands. I can't put my finger on it but the place also had a strange feeling about it which I did not like. That is my gripe, perhaps you need to go and find out for yourself.

Back in Waikiki we obviously had dinner at Senor Frogs that evening, we went to many restaurants for dinner and lunch over those few days including the Cheesecake Factory which I had thought was a smallish cafe with some tables out the front but it turned out to be cavernous as we were lead way into the back to a booth which was near an open window looking out into the entrance of a shopping mall. The menu was huge, it had so much on it I found it difficult to choose and the food was good too. I found the food portions in Hawaii way too big for me and couldn't eat a whole meal. We had fun in and out of shops and things including a gallery where I almost bought a $5,000.00 bronze and enamel statue. I will show you Philiipe III later.

The man on the right (below) is Cyril Pahanui. Marian and Mike had flown back to the Big Island of Hawaii with loads of excess baggage, two new Tiki's and the didjeridu I brought with me as a gift. They were disappointed in one way to be leaving before Friday because that is when Cyril plays at the Waikiki Outrigger hotel and they told me to go and listen him so I did. When I got there just before dusk there was lady sitting by herself so I asked if I could sit at her table rather than us hogging two tables and other people would not be able to sit down. Her name was Maxine, she turned out to be a Cyril fan and was there to listen to him too so we got chatting, then another fan arrived, a bloke called Bill who hobbled in with a walking frame so he joined us too. I liked Cyril's music and introduced myself to him because Marian had said his wife wanted to meet me but she was not there that night. Mike had explained to me that Hawaiian guitar is known as slack key guitar. The guitar was introduced to Hawaii via the Mexican cowboys who came over to teach Hawaiians how to work with cattle. They left eventually and left guitars but had not shown Hawaiians how to tune them to keys so they made their own system up and I Iiked the sound. I still do, I came home with loads of Hawaiian music including some of Cyril's.

Did I tell you about the advertising on the television, perhaps not. When I travel I always find that the television tells you a lot about people who live in places. I was amazed though to find a lot of crap on the television but enjoyed watching old, old shows like the Golden Girls and Seinfeld. During my whole visit of one month I watched free to air TV and also Pay TV and I was very glad I didn't have to live over there and watch TV, it was awful. One day a helicopter and plane crashed over the Hudson river and Mike had the TV on and the news presenters went on and on about whether or not the plane crashed in to the helicopter or whether the helicopter had crashed into the plane, I mean they went on and on and on and on and that is what the news channels were like. I am so used to professional news reporting which mostly has the facts as they are known and a promise of more later when more is known. I felt very sorry for Americans, not sure why their TV is like that, do they really like it? I forgot to take a poll to find out.

Anyway back to the advertising, they advertise all these drugs on TV like Lyrica and Levitra and there are some nice pictures and words such as "do you suffer from Depression, anti depressants not working? try XXXXXX" and then it says a couple of nice words and then the nice pictures continue as a voice over begins to tell you all about the side affects like this product may cause drowsiness, migraines, high blood pressure, nausea, sweating, impotence, hallucinations and even death and on and on it goes for longer than the part of the advert that is trying to sell you the product. First time I saw one I burst out laughing because I could not imagine taking the product based on the advert.

Australia doesn't have adverts like that nor does England and I hope we never do. Seems a bit pointless really to advertise a product and then run it into the ground but I guess it is government legislation that obliges them to do that.

Windward Oahu with Sandra

I had mentioned in my email that I was interested in sacred sites and cultural things so Sandra singled out a couple of places to take me. One of these was the Kukaniloko Birthing Stones, Oahu Hawaii. Birthing Stones areas are an important part of Hawaiian culture, for 800 years or so Ali’i (Chiefs) and their wives came to these places for the birth of their children. A child born at Kukaniloko and other Birthing Stone sites throughout Hawaii were assured high ranking status. The stones themselves are situated in the middle of a rural area, there are no special fences or signposts, a simple sign tells you its name and that it is a sacred site. There is a small dirt area where the vehicles are parked and a dirt track leading towards the site, I was fortunate that Sandra knew where to find them. We walked up the track to the area, there were some people already at the stones. I did not feel anything especially strong or spiritual but as I approached the stones I did feel like there was a sense of peace here. I walked past the stones and looked at the mountains behind, Sandra said that the mountains had a profile of a pregnant woman lying down. I could see her face and her hair, her breast, her swollen body quite clearly.

The stones had fresh flower lei’s draped over them so it was obvious that the site is maintained by someone who has a spiritual connection to them and it was nice to see that they were left largely undisturbed in their grove of trees. Too often agriculture and development destroys such sites and sometimes tourism robs them of their special energy too. I was happy to see that efforts were being made to restore traditional Hawaiian sites so there will be a lot more for people to experience in the future. The energy I felt at the site was powerful but also energizing rather than forceful and I felt that same energy at another place on the Big Island of Hawaii but more about that in another story. For now I am grateful that I had the opportunity to travel physically to Hawaii and spiritually to the essence of the people who once gave birth at Kukaniloko.

I have done a full feature on this site for our other web site Mystic Wanderer directions are also given on this web site for those interesting in paying the birthing stones a visit.

What is obvious when you arrive at the site is that the stones are encased in a rather tasteless marble house, possibility a well intentioned act to help protect the stones, but in Hawaiian history such things were always open to the elements and did not need to be mounted or enclosed by anything which might restrict their powers. The leaflet also said that these stones needed to be washed by the evening rains to cleanse them, as they have a roof over them now this does not happen naturally and likely the carers of the site who place the fresh flower lei’s most likely give the stones their rainwater cleansing from time to time. It was sad to see them imprisoned in this way but I did discover that this did not detract from their energy. I have a featured article on Mystic Wanderer about these stones and this includes directions if you would like to visit them yourself.

Sandra drove me right around past Waimea Bay as well, it was very beautiful there but it was Sunday and bedlam on the roads and we couldn't get a parking spot but Sandra, I was very happy to be in your company and to have visited the healing and birthing stones so thank you for taking me there.

I did some island hopping after 6 days on O'ahu but I spent The weekend in Waikiki just before flying back to Australia on the Monday. This time I stayed right across from the beach at the Aston Waikiki Circle Hotel, not as nice as the Joy but very convenient and reasonably priced for a hotel across the road from Waikiki beach. I hit the streets again, I just loved the place, I went to the international market and bought all my souvenirs and generally just enjoyed myself. There was a new show on at the Kodak stage across the road and it included some little dancers who were just gorgeous. What a setting, people sitting around with their backs to the beach, watching the show with the silhouette of palm trees against the sunset.

The last photo in the four below is The Healing Stones and The Stone of Life ( Na Pohaku Olakapaemahu A Kapuni)

The legend of the stones says that four Kahuna - powerful healers from Tahiti came to Hawaii. Their names were Kapaemahu, Kahaloa, Kapuni, and Kihohi. These healers lived in the Ulukou heiau which is a religious compound or site. When these Kahuna wished to return home they asked the people to erect four monuments made of bell stone. Bell stones are a basalt stone and when struck make a ringing sound that can be heard from a great distance, Bell stones were rung when royal births had occurred too, it was a way of letting people know an event had taken place. The Tahitian healers were said to have transferred their spiritual healing power to the stones so that the stones could continue to heal in their absence. The Stone of Life is a small one donated by Tahiti when this monument was made, the stones just sat on the beach and had a building built over them which was torn down in the 1960's so people just sat on them and hung their towels on them and one day someone decided to enclose them as they had such cultural significance.

Follow the links to my other island adventures on Kauai, Maui and Hawaii known as the Big Island.

I had arranged with Sandra that we would catch up before I left Hawaii so I caught a pink shopping trolley to the Ala Moana shopping centre on the Sunday and met her and husband David. We had lunch in the Pineapple Room at Macy's. Sandra and David are astrologers and I met them through the conjunction email list. We got on very well and were soon chatting on and on about the astrological world and other things, it was hard to believe I had only really had contact with Sandra a month or so before I arrived on Hawaii after I had mentioned I was headed that way. Lunch was good, its an Alan Wong restaurant and apparently he is a celebrity chef. the Pineapple room was popular and we had to wait a while before we were seated but it was a nice experience I can recommend to others.

Mahalo Sandra and David for a nice lunch and your wonderful company. a hui hau