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THE EIGHT-DAY
HAWAIIAN AIR PASS
Adventures in inter-island travel
By Tim Baker
I don't know if they do this any more, but if they don't they should.
Back in '93, it was possible to fork over to the good people at Hawaiian Airlines the sum of US$180 (when the Aussie dollar was worth 75c US, so say $240 Oz) and in return they would give you an open ticket that allowed you to fly anywhere within the Hawaiian island chain, as often as you liked, for eight days. Kauai, Maui, Big Island, Molokai - the fabled world of the outer islands with their carefully guarded surfing secrets and rich, unaffected culture, and teeming natural environments, all spread out before you like a great Polynesian smorgasbord. It seemed too good a deal to refuse. So I didn't.
I had been on the North Shore for six weeks and the eight days ahead of me on the outer islands would prove to be the highlight of my two monthys in Hawaii. Maui was my first stop, and I'd been there before. I knew the quaint tourist town of Lahaina and the picture perfect rights of Honolua Bay. What I was more interested in was the mystical allure of the mighty Haleakala Crater and its surreal moonscapes, and the stories of the great god Maui lassoing the sun from its peak. And my determined rental car marathon around the island revealed a stunning natural landscape that ranged from dense rainforest jungle on one side of the island, to the barren, arid, rock strewn flanks of the volcano on the dry side. Luxurious holiday resorts neighboured ramshackle fishing huts. The windsurfing epicentre of Hookipa offered fun beach/reef breaks and small town charm. I well and truly lost myself in it all over a couple of days as the kilometres slipped by.
I flew to Kauai in the afternoon, picked up a white Mustang rental car, and began my circumnavigation of the island heading north, anti-clockwise, until I reached the end of the road at the famed Na Pali coast. Back-tracking slightly, as light faded, I found a little offshore reef that, after a short paddle, revealed fun four foot barrelling rights with a handful of locals and not a hint of a bad vibe as the sun set over towering coastal mountains. This turned out to be one of the island's best waves. I returned to my hire car on dark, containing all my belongings, and discovered the key still dangling from the driver's side door.
I flew to the Big Island and saw the mandatory lava flows cascading to the sea in showers of steam and molten rock. I stopped in a small town for lunch and wondered what all the fuss was over a group of motorcyclists surrounded by local kids in the main street. A shopkeeper told me it was, the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, who were recording an album.
I walked through a town in Molokai and turned heads as the only haole to be seen, and felt what it was to be a conspicuous racial minority. I saw huge rights thundering down a jagged coast in front of an exclusive holiday resort I'd snuck into in search of surf, and watched them close out on a dry rock shelf. A few game bodyboarders expertly picked off some short rides, pulling out moments before disaster, but I thought better of it.
I stumbled upon a scenic lookout at the top of towering ocean cliffs, overlooking the Kaulapapa Peninsula, and the infamous leper colony I'd read about in James A. Michener's Hawaii. I joined a guided tour down the winding goat trail that zigzagged the cliffs to the colony and walked its almost abandoned streets. Those suffering leprosy had been dumped here like human refuse during the most fearful days of the epidemic and some had chosen never to leave. Now old and cured, it remained the only life many had ever known and they preferred to remain isolated here than confront the outside world. Who could blame them?
My final night of my eight day air pass, I found myself in one of those slightly cheesy, mid-range holiday resorts with faux, thatched rooved cabins and carved tikis in the gardens. Somehow I found myself at the bar next to a bizarre cowboy character slurring a story about getting lost in a snow storm with his horse somewhere back on the mainland. Days into his ordeal, without food or water, he and his horse close to death, he realised it was going to be either him or the horse. He cut his horse's throat, gutted it, pulled out its entrails, and slept inside its carcass until the blizzard passed. "I loved that damn horse," he very nearly sobbed. Bullshit or not, it made my own journey seem rather tame. If worst came to worst and I couldn't find affordable accommodation as darkness fell each night, at least I could sleep inside my hire car without having to kill it.
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