Vacation - How about Hawaii?

In late 1977 Sally and I arranged a trip to Australia, stopping over in Honolulu for two or three days. We stayed at the Hale Koa on Waikiki Beach. The Hale Koa is an Armed Forces Recreation Center - read "military-only resort hotel" - across the street from Fort Derussey. I can tell you it was, and probably is, quite the treat for a soldier or sailor on R&R. On the return trip we had a three hour layover and didn't leave the airport. I've never been back.


The Hale Koa was the second in a string of hotels on Waikiki running west to east towards Diamond Head. From our section of beach most of Diamond Head was blocked by the other hotels so, to get the recognizable shape, I could either walk half a mile down the beach or go next door to the Rainbow Hilton and take the picture from their dock. Choosing the latter, I was able to include more beach in the picture.


There was a very pleasant shopping village somewhere within walking distance of the hotel, though I can't find it on Google maps now; lots of boutiques and souvenir shops. In one of them I became fascinated with a cork carving in a glass case, just the thing for your mantelpiece if you had several hundred dollars to spend. Sailors I knew couldn't afford something like that, but that didn't keep me from taking a picture of it.


These three shots were taken one after another one evening as the sun set. There's nothing really special about them - they're just like 1000 postcards - but at the time I took them I thought, "I can't believe it's so beautiful. Not a cloud. The color's perfect." After all these years I still think,"I'm glad I was there and got a chance to see that."


We rented a car for a couple of days - spent one morning at Pearl Harbor and drove all around the island. We saw the porpoises and whales at Sea Life Park, the hula dancers at the Polynesian Village, and the Dole pineapple fields in the interior. We even enjoyed the light 20 minute rain showers that cleaned the air each afternoon.


There's a lot of beautiful things to see on Oahu and even more on the other islands, I understand. I find, however, that I'm ambivalent about Hawaii - and have been since that first visit.

You can sit on the beach in front of your hotel and marvel at how great everything is. You can stand in awe of the waves on the north coast and be repeatedly startled by a blowhole in the rocks over towards Kaneohe. But you have to be dismayed at the poverty apparent in the shacks and unkempt yards that seem scattered across all the spaces in between. It's as though everything here is a façade; all the great stuff might not even be real.