Hawaiian Aye!

The Cloying Insincerity of travel brochures in overromanticizing a land that needs no breathless clichés to espouse its merits has done terrible damage to the world's image of the Hawaiian Islands. The new arrival may be traumatized by having Honolulu served up as his first—and perhaps only—taste of Hawaii. Honolulu is a glittering neon and plastic town. Through it pass the busy transpacific air routes. Here's where the cruise ships dock and photographers snap bemused beleied tourists with hula-hip girls. Most tourists see no more than this real-estate man's ferroconcrete dream; and yet beyond it lies a group of tropical islands with surf-roaring beaches, lush valleys, oftfiery volcanoes, rain-forest villages and resorts as secluded as any in the Pacific.

The 50th state is made up of a score of islands and islets that begin with the island of Hawaii and stretch 1500 miles northwest. Hawaii's more remote isles will eventually play a part in its daily life; but at the moment, the state, for all practical purposes, consists of an eight-island cluster that spans 375 miles. Two can immediately be written off your itinerary: You can go to Niihau only if you are a friend of one of its 254 inhabitants or of the Robinson family who own it, and you can stay on Kahoolawe only if you are a U.S. military practice target. Two others are of somewhat limited interest: Lanai, which is more or less one large pineapple plantation, has one hotel; Molokai, famous for its leper colony, has two hotels and the Puu-O-Hoku Ranch, which charges $68 a day, meals included, and provides 14,000 acres of hunting ground for axis deer, wild boar, goat and game birds. Few package tours or individual tourists ever invade either Lanai or Molokai; the solitude seeker should remember, however, that even on the most densely populated islands, it's easy to find a beach, a valley or a forest all to yourself.

Which leaves the state's four main islands: Oahu (containing 80 percent of Hawaii's population), Hawaii, Kauai and Maui. Each has its own flavor and texture and it is impossible to say that one is "best" or "better" than another, or that one is more desirable than the next.

On my last visit, made at a time when the Hawaii Visitors Bureau was marking up new records on the tourism charts and visitors were sleeping in the lobbies of Honolulu hotels, it was possible to tour each of the four main islands on foot, by car (Hertz, Avis and other autorental firms are abundantly present), plane or helicopter and to cover mile after mile of pristine landscape, some of it as breath-taking as any I've seen. White sandy bays were lapped by long flat rollers from a sea that looked hand painted in an improbable shade of deep blue and aqua; valleys, canyons and plateaus that could be reached only on foot and innumerable unnamed waterfalls and rivers that pour into the Pacific across untrod beaches.

It is incredible that Hawaii seems so empty even at the height of the winter season, but it may be due to the fact that most of the visitors appear to be too old to venture very far from hotel lobby or tour bus. They arrive, many of them, as members of a package and it is as a package that these elderly cargoes move from Island to island, aiming the Instamatic for a quick snapshot of something as pulse-pounding as a palm tree, taking a free hula lesson and a dollop of poi, then moving on.

It's unnecessary to join a tour to enjoy all that Hawaii has to offer, and it's a shame that the average tourist doesn't get the opportunity to encounter what is perhaps the state's most charming asset, the Hawaiians. There are pure Hawaiians, but not many, and there are part Hawaiians, which includes everyone else of Hawaiian birth, whether his ancestors were New Englanders or Japanese.

If you should want to rent a catamaran for interisland cruising or if you need the most up-to-date information on the newest hotels on the less-developed islands, get in touch with the Hawaii Visitors Bureau. They have offices in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles, as well as throughout the islands.

United, Northwest and Pan Am all provide regular satisfactory air service from the West Coast. When you pay for your round trip from the mainland, buy an island-hopping ticket, which will enable you to visit all the main islands at a price far lower than individual trips would cost. Armed with this and, wherever possible, confirmed hotel reservations, you're ready to go.

Oahu

The isles of the Hawaiian archipelago lie about 2100 miles from the continental U. S., stepping stones to Australia, the South Pacific and the Far East. Honolulu, on Oahu, is still the principal gateway from the United States (though there is now nonstop jet service from the West Coast to Hilo, on Hawaii) and I would recommend making your entrance there; it's a lively, sprawling and sometimes raunchy city and there's nothing remotely like it on the outer islands. If you're traveling alone and you want to remedy that situation, Honolulu is filled with remedies; migratory birds on college and work vacations flock there in droves in the summer, and the balconies of the luxury hotels along Waikiki Beach are festooned with bikinis drying in the sun.

Seen from the air at night, Honolulu, the state capital, spreads like a flow of illuminated lava, except that the flow starts at the bottom of the hills and creeps upward. Pearl Harbor is today a storied suburb of Honolulu.

Kalakaua Avenue is lined with high-rise hotels, night clubs, bars and restaurants. Between it and the beach is the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, a pink ginger-bread relic from an era when all tourists arrived by boat and the Pacific was still visible from the street.

Just now, everyone is arguing about the conservation of Honolulu's chief landmarks, especially Diamond Head; but since the mountain has long been hollowed out with man-made caverns for civil defense and the high-rises and splitlevels are already slinking across the lower slopes, it seems to be an empty dispute. Every plane arrival brings a fresh consignment of real-estate developers who, cunningly disguised as human beings, scout the city for acreage on which to erect newer concrete Edens; alas, the voice of protest and reproach is carried away on the rustling breezes that accompany large transactions in folding money.

You can eat well in Honolulu (as, indeed, you can on all the main islands); if you're a devotee of Japanese food, you'll have to travel all the way to Tokyo before you find a restaurant that compares with Kyo-Ya. Reserve a zashiki, or private room, for your party and ask the owner, Madam Clara, to choose your menu, which is what Marlon Brando does when he eats there. There's gracious, attentive service by delightful Japanese girls. Allow a couple of hours for the banquet you'll get and make sure to ask Clara to start you off with her chawanmushi, an unsweetened egg custard over a broth containing chicken and vegetables.

At the Tahitian Lanai on the grounds of the Waikikian Hotel, you might like to sample the e'ia aota, tuna marinated in lime juice and mixed with coconut. Elsewhere on the islands, you should watch for lilikoi chiffon pie, made from the juice of passion fruit; saimin, a clear soup with noodles; and mahimahi, a delicious fish, which you should make sure is fresh rather than frozen. If you like to experiment with national liquors, Hawaii's is high-octane okolehao—pungent and aromatically bitter—which is made from the root of the it. The leaves of the ti are used as table mats and also for wrapping certain dishes in the luau. Of the three functions, it's not easy to say for which it is most suitable. You should attend at least one Hawaiian luau, but I'd suggest you save it until you reach the outer islands; Honolulu luaus, especially those organized by the hotels, usually include a bunch of half-naked men running around waving flaming torches and blowing conch shells, which is distracting if you're hungry.

If you stay overnight in Honolulu, stroll through the International Market Place, one of the city's busiest tourist landmarks, dominated by a huge old banyan tree in the branches of which is the world's smallest restaurant. (Hawaii is full of places that are the world's biggest, smallest, wettest, etc.) The Tree House holds only two and the door locks from the inside, a thoughtful touch, in view of the couch provided for seating, or whatever. In the Market Place itself, there is a large open area filled with gift shops, restaurants, bars, snack counters and a stage where nightly exhibitions of Polynesian dancing are held. You should go to Duke Kahanamoku's and listen to Don Ho if he's in town. There is plenty of lively entertainment there and along Kalakaua Avenue; and if you go over to Queen's Surf, a giant show-and-supper center, you'll have a threefold choice of Polynesian jive dancing, Hawaiian cabaret and mainland-style rock groups.

Save the other things you want to see and do on Oahu—and these could include anything from a hike through the Koolau mountains to riding the big surf at Waimea Bay—until you return from the out islands. There'll be plenty of time on the way home to tour Pearl Harbor or even to take a boat out and watch the divers plunge for the coins flipped by tourists coming in on the liners. You'll notice that the old pros won't go after anything smaller than a quarter.

Hawaii

By far the biggest of the Hawaiian archipelago and, relative to size, the least populated, Hawaii is perhaps the most intriguing island of them all. It has few beaches. Much of the coast line consists of sheer cliffs of multilayered lava. Its hotels are, with a few notable exceptions, useless; but never mind, it has Kilauea and Mauna Loa, Hawaii's two active volcanoes.

In 1960, the island grew by another 500 acres formed when lava broke out near the village of Kapoho, destroyed it and flowed to the sea. Nine and a half years earlier, a fissure opened in the southwest flank of Mauna Loa and in 23 days disgorged enough lava to pave a four-lane highway four and a half times around the globe. From the air, these newer flows look like gigantic blots of black ink spilled across the land, while the older ones, grown red and gray with age, are dotted with the hardy ohia, the lava tree, usually the first plant to take root in the inhospitable pumice.

There's a hotel on the rim of Kilauea—Volcano House—and it has the distinction of being one of the world's few hotels that use volcano steam in their steam rooms. If you want to see Kilauea, which is currently the most active, I'd recommend booking a room there so that you can watch the action at night, when it's even more dramatic. You can drive there directly from Hilo Airport in less than an hour. If you haven't seen an active volcano before, take my word and be prepared to spend an hour there.

For a complete guide to the other bizarre attractions of the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, stop at the National Park Headquarters, where you can watch movies of a full-scale eruption and pick up maps and guides. If you return to Hilo (rather than follow the highway around the southern perimeter and north to the resort beaches of Kailua-Kona), go back via the Chain of Craters Road and take the little-used coast highway that runs across the lava plains, past the black sands of Kalapana and through what used to be Kapoho village, now nothing more than a level field of cinders. You can rejoin the main highway north of Pahoa, an old town whose falsefronted wooden buildings and uneven planked sidewalks suggest a frontier cattle town. A few doors along from the one-room office of the Bank of Hawaii—its only furniture, a high wooden desk and a wall calendar—is the town bakery, inscrutably identified by a sign that reads Restaurant; the proprietor turns out nifty doughnuts and Japanese pastries.

There are no hotels in Pahoa, and Duncan Hines might faint from shock if he passed this way; but if you're not too fussy about decor, you can get an appetizing meal of local food in one of the town's small and friendly cafés.

Getting back to Hilo, you should try to time it so that you don't spend the night there; though if you do stay on, give the Naniloa Hotel a miss—it's dull and impersonal and the management maintains the offensive and impractical policy of asking guests to pay in advance. For dining in town, go to Roy's Gourmet, a big bare—but friendly—barn of a place that's much to be preferred to the overpriced hotel restaurants. Before you leave Hilo, try to get up to Akaka Falls: It's an impressive sight and sound and is perhaps the most spectacular of all the accessible waterfalls on the islands, with a sheer drop of 420 feet.

On the opposite side of "Big Island" from Hilo is the Kailua-Kona coast; Kona is the island's main beach-resort and big-game-fishing area. Kona itself is a pleasant, languid town with one main street and one of the liveliest bars in the Pacific, Akamai Barnes. From Kona, you can either drive down the coast until you reach Ka Lae, the southernmost point of the United States, or, if you want to lose sight of a steering wheel for a few days, hop aboard a Royal Hawaiian Air Service Cessna and fly to Kona Village, a unique hotel made up of thatched huts grouped around a short stretch of beach. There is no road to Kona Village (though there are plans to build one in the near future). You land on the hotel's own airstrip and taxi right up to the reservation cottage. Service is relaxed and informal: American plan, which means that meals are included in the cottage rates.

Kona Village is built at the site of Kaupulehu, an old Hawaiian village that has long since been obliterated. One of the few remaining traces is the communal eating place, still littered with sea shells from the last meal consumed there. A few yards away, partially obscured by a big slab of lava, is the entrance to the burial caves. Nobody seems to know very much about these caves, even the guides from the hotel. There are skeletons inside, men lying on canoes, women and infants on planks and in rough coffins. Four of the men are bound and gagged. It's believed they were crew members of the Fair American, a ship that put into Kaupulehu in the 1790s. Their lanterns lie by their bones; one man has a pipe, another wears a gold watch around his neck, stopped at 10:45. An old bottle bears the raised lettering Sarsaparilla, Myer Bros., Boston, Mass., which suggests that the men were New England whalers. It's not known why they were bound and gagged and there are the usual legends about white men abusing the islanders' hospitality and being put to death after an argument over a theft.

If the idea of crawling around with a flashlight in somebody's grave doesn't appeal to you, there's skindiving at Kona Village and the necessary equipment for shallow underwater exploration. They have luaus often, minimum of ceremony, maximum food satisfaction. Make sure to book well in advance; next to the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel at Kamuela—construction of this Xanadu cost $100,000 for each of 154 rooms—Kona Village is the most exclusive hotel on Hawaii.

Kauai

Kauai is the most westerly of the main islands and, so far, the least developed. It is perhaps the greenest of any Pacific island and probably prettiest in the state, which is why many tropical epics—among them South Pacific, Sadie Thompson and Naked Paradise—were filmed there.

Things grow on Kauai. There are miles of golden beach, glassy lagoons, deep, impenetrable valleys and wide brown rivers that flow from the mountains and into the sea. There's mile upon mile of sugar cane and pineapple, and Waimea Canyon, which is justly described as the Grand Canyon of the Pacific. Unless you hike, jeep in or take a helicopter (the best service is located just outside Lihue Airport), you won't see the finest scenery. The highway encircles most of the island; but up in the northwest corner, it stops suddenly, frustrated by Na Pali Cliffs, a tract of unnegotiable mountains and canyons. There's not a building of any sort in sight, nothing but sheer cliff and trackless forest and maybe a sparkle far below, where the sun suddenly hits the water.

"Down there," said my helicopter pilot, pointing to a vast, wooded section that ended at the sea's edge in a steep drop of several hundred feet, "down there lives our hermit, Dr. Wheatley, Ph.D. He's a philosopher. Nobody sees him but once a year. And over there is what we call the Valley of the Lost Tribe. Bunch of hippies moved in and settled down, but we soon ran 'em out. Beats me how the hell they ever got in."

There are wild goats and boar on Kauai and in one of the valleys, so the story goes, the remnants of a herd of 300 cattle brought over for grazing from the private island of Niihau. The cowboys tried to round them up after three weeks but succeeded in catching only two. There's also a rumor that the hippies planted a large crop of pot in their valley, but nobody's been in to check.

Kauai was the first Hawaiian island sighted and visited by Captain Cook. He landed at Waimea Bay, a spot that, except for the addition of a couple of modest houses and a neat patch of grass marked with the warnings No Vehicles No Animals No Golfers Please, Can have changed very slightly. You'll pass that way if you take the road to Waimea Canyon.

Hanalei Bay, a wide, sweeping curve of palm-fringed beach, was the location for much of South Pacific. On the low slopes along its eastern curve and commanding a fabulous view of mountains and sea is Hanalei Plantation, a collection of large and expensively equipped cottages. If you want to base yourself in a hotel while you're on Kauai, this is the place: but my own preference in accommodation—at least for a handful of days—would be to rent a camper truck from Island Rentals, buy and cook my own food and park wherever the mood took me. If you have a comely companion who can also cook, so much the better.

In case anyone should think I am prejudiced against hotels, I am; there aren't many anywhere that manage to avoid giving the impression that all guests are a royal pain in the ass, although Hanalei Plantation (like its affiliate, Coco Palms, farther down the coast) is one of the rare and notable exceptions. Service there is of the highest; the staff make a real and successful effort to make you comfortable and welcome and the food is abundant and excellent. Mainland hotels could learn a lot about hotel management if they studied the Hanalei operation.

Maui

There's still more scenic grandeur, as well as Haleakala, which is not just a mere extinct volcanic crater but the world's largest extinct volcanic crater. There are charming towns, too, with a taste of New England architecture, especially in Wailuku, the county seat. Hana, on the eastern tip of the island, is noted for a more universal style of construction; namely, its women, whose beauty is one of Maui's traditional and justified boasts. Drive there from Kahului; in the three hours you should allow for this 52-mile trip—the roads curve and twist, so forget about speed—you'll quickly understand, especially as you approach Waipio Bay, why this coast line was such a popular vacation resort with the Hawaiian royal families. Jungle, dense with guava and hau, choked with breadfruit, fern and rubber trees, slips by the windows; and if you'd like to ride in a real outrigger, leave the highway and drop down into Keanae or Wailua, where you might be able to persuade one of the local fishermen to take you out and then bring you in over the surf. Exciting.

Maui is the current focus of the touristindustry boom. Land that sold for less than $10,000 a year ago fetches $100,000 today. The old whaling town of Lahaina is the proposed site of a $10,000,000, 400-room hotel. Some restaurant and bar proprietors in Lahaina are on 30-day leases and few tenants would be rash enough to spend money on capital improvements in times like these. In addition to the carloads of tourists who visit Lahaina from the big hotels along Kaanapali Beach to the north, the town has a small population of surfers and young mainlanders who get along with whatever work they can find but who seem perfectly content to live off the fertile land when work becomes scarce. At sunset, surfers ride in on the big swells that start outside the harbor and subside just inside the entrance, their black silhouettes edged with gold against a purple sea. One of them, a girl, paddles in and shakes the long blonde hair from her wet shoulders. She wears a very small black bikini and everything else is lithe and trim. She is very beautiful. A middleaged couple watch her from behind as she walks along the jetty with the surfboard balanced on her head. The husband raises his camera and, in the deepening twilight, takes a flash photograph of the girl when she is almost out of sight. "Why'd you do that?" the wife asks. The husband starts walking back to the car. "Just wanted to use the last one on the roll," he says.