Yesterday we decided to see the island of Oahu beyond what our tour guide the other day called the “armpit” of the island, the city of Honolulu. I feel that was a bit harsh on Honolulu since it seems like most tropical cities I’ve been to in that the combination of congestion and vertical construction contrasts starkly with the natural beauty of the surrounding island, but there is nothing offensive about the city from what no can see. In fact, since we are staying on Waikiki, it would be hard to describe that are as anything but glitzy and touristy with a Kon-Tiki theme. It feels like Miami Beach, which has its tolerability limits, but is more fun than nasty. We are assessing the place as a venue for a visit next summer for the granddaughters, and we have concluded that they will like it. But once you get out of the city, the nature of Hawaii really comes through quickly. I liken it to driving inland from our hilltop into the San Diego ranch country, which is truly beautiful and very different from the city that gives it its anchor.
We started our drive to the North Shore by going through the Ko’olau Mountain Range, which is the eroded remains of a single shield volcano, the same broad, gently sloping kind of basalt volcano as Mauna Loa on the Big Island. It was built by lava flows roughly 2.6 to 1.8 million years ago, and it has been extinct and wearing down ever since. The Ko’olau Range is a volcano, but it no longer looks like one, for three reasons. To start with, half of it collapsed. The volcano’s caldera was near today’s Kailua and Kāne’ohe on the eastern side of the island. A huge landslide, the Nu’uanu slide, carried the northeastern half of the volcano into the ocean, and its debris is spread over the seafloor far offshore. The sheer windward cliffs, the Pali, are what was left behind. We will visit the Pali later today, but yesterday we drove through the range. Also, over the millennia, rain carved the fluting onto the sides of the mountains, making them look very dramatic. Trade winds drop heavy rain on the windward side. Over a million-plus years, waterfalls and streams cut the cliffs into those vertical ridges and grooves. And then the range was later dotted with small follow-on eruptions. Much later, a “rejuvenation” phase of volcanic activity produced Diamond Head (which at will drive around today), Punchbowl (the military venerate we drove through the other day), Koko Head and Hanauma Bay. These are tuff cones and craters sitting on the old Ko’olau shield. The Wai’anae Range on the west side of Oahu is a second, older shield volcano, but we will not have the time to visit that on this trip. The saddle between the two ranges is the central plain where the pineapple fields and Wahiawā are.
As we pass through the range, we can see the highest of the Ko’olau peaks, which is Pu’u Konahuanui, at about 3,100 ft. We were heading to the Byodo-In Temple, which allowed us to see the collapsed cliffs up close in all their dramatic beauty. The Byodo-In Temple is a replica of a Japanese Buddhist temple in Kāne’ohe, set against the Ko’olau cliffs. It’s a smaller-scale copy of the Byōdō-in in Uji, near Kyoto, which was built in 1053 and appears on Japan’s 10-yen coin. The Hawaii version opened in 1968 to mark 100 years since the first Japanese immigrants arrived in Hawaii. It isn’t an active monastery and has no congregation, and visitors of any faith are welcome. It sits inside the Valley of the Temples Memorial Park, a cemetery, so we drove through the cemetery grounds to reach it…on Veterans Day. The main hall holds a large gold-lacquered Amida Buddha, carved by the Japanese sculptor Masuzo Inui. There’s a big pond full of koi, plus black swans and peacocks wandering around. A large bronze peace bell stands near the entrance, and I gave it one good band with the rammer. From there, we headed north along Rt. 83 through all their slightly scruffy, but very quaint island villages. With the dramatic green cliffs to the west and the wing-blown, high-surf bays to the east, it was a spectacular drive.
We drove through La’ie and its Polynesian Cultural Center (next time) and rounded Kahuku Point, where the big waves have attracted surfers for years. Then we turned into the Waimea Valley. Waimea, “The Valley of the Priests,” gained its title around 1090, when the ruler of Oʻahu, Kamapuaʻa, awarded the land to the high priest Lono-a-wohi. After that it belonged to the kahuna nui (high priests) of the Paʻao line until Western contact and the end of the old Hawaiian religion. It was a religious center where chosen students trained to become kahuna. Several heiau (temples) from this period survive. One is Puʻu o Mahuka, Oʻahu’s largest heiau, on the ridge above the bay. Another is Hale o Lono, a reconstructed temple to Lono, the god of agriculture, at least 300 years old. In the 1770s the priest Kaʻōpulupulu was chief advisor to Oʻahu’s ruler. Hawaiian tradition credits him with predicting that foreigners would arrive. After Kamehameha conquered Oʻahu in 1795, he gave Waimea to his own high priest, Hewahewa. Hewahewa was the last kahuna nui in the line and died there in 1837. After Western contact, people left their taro fields to cut sandalwood in the upper valley. By the 1860s disease, floods and famine had greatly reduced the population. The valley later became a commercial park, and the North Shore community protested plans to develop it. It was purchased in 2006 with $14 million pooled together by city, state, federal and private sources. The Office of Hawaiian Affairs now owns it through a nonprofit that manages it as a cultural site. This year marks 20 years of that arrangement.
Waimea Valley was densely populated at the time of first Western contact. In late February 1779, Cook’s ships stopped at Waimea Bay, just two weeks after Cook was killed on the Big Island. Waimea Bay was the only O’ahu anchorage visited by the expedition. The name means “reddish water,” from the red soil that washed into the bay during heavy rains. We saw that red tide on this day of high surf.
We had purchased tickets for the Toa Luau, which included free admission to Waimea Valley. We walked up the 3/4-mile round-trip trail to the 40-foot waterfall, where we could have chosen to swim in the tropical pool (not today). The botanical garden that they have created was interesting to us as gardeners and the variety of tropical plants was pretty amazing. At one point we saw a huge tree with what we called “Tarzan vines” draping down from its massive branches. And then we ended the night with a traditional Hawaiian luau complete with Mai-tai’s and Pina Coladas and plenty of Hawaiian pork and chicken. The only disappointment was that they didn’t offer any poi, which must come from experience in trying to serve “Howlie’s” the mashed purple taro root starch. Poi is a traditional Hawaiian staple made from taro root (kalo), which is steamed or baked and then pounded into a smooth paste, with water added until it’s thick and pudding-like. Poi is actually a pale purple-gray paste. It tastes mild and starchy when fresh. Over a few days it ferments and gets more sour. People describe its thickness by how many fingers it takes to scoop it up: “one-finger” poi is the thickest, and “two-finger” and “three-finger” poi are thinner. You usually eat it as a side dish rather than on its own. It’s supposed to go well with salty foods like kalua pig, lomi salmon or laulau, because its blandness balances the salt. Poi is almost always on the table at a luau, but not at Toa Luau, apparently. By the way, a “Howlie” are actually a “haole,” the Hawaiian word for a non-native person. Today it usually means a white person, especially a mainlander or tourist. It’s a Hawaiian word that originally meant “foreign” or “foreigner.” It was used for any outsider, plants and animals included, before it came to mean white Westerners in particular. That’s as opposed to a “Kama’āina”, which means a longtime resident, whatever their background. “Local” refers to people raised in Hawaii.