Oahu is Hawaii’s metropolis, multicultural, financial centre, shopping mecca, where there are posh hotels, seedy bars, great university, has the surfing glitz of the north shore, 3 lane motorways.. it is also where everyone is happy to talk to each other, tourists and locals alike – a feel good island..
The people
Hawaii is has such a diverse population, I really didn’t know which part of the planet I had landed on in the first couple of days. Initially populated by Polynesians AD 300 – 600, they lived off the land until the arrival of Captain Cook in 1778who bought Hawaii to the world’s attention (and he was also killed on the Big Island in 1798 – there is even a town called after him). Since his arrival, missionaries and whalers started to arrive, and by the 1850’s, the sugar planation owners recruited heavily from China, Japan and Portugal. After US annexed Hawaii in 1898, Oahu’s plantation owners recruited labourers from Porto Rico, the Philippines and Korea.
So you can see, there is no one look – infact I had to pinch myself sometimes that I was infact not in Japan, China or Korea but in Hawaii (in the Honolulu area anyway..). And then to top it off with all the tourists who come from far and wide, it is the South Pacific melting pot.
Nature’s bounty around Honolulu area
Hawaii is an amazing set of tropical islands. Created by volcanic activity, and then eroded over time once the volcanos became inactive (although the one on Big Island is still very active), an amazing biosphere developed. The botanical gardens outside Honolulu is a case in point, the volcanic hills rise up at 90 degree angles and then there are these lush rain forests everywhere… The Manoa Valley and waterfalls are dwarfed in huge trees, plants growing up barks, wet rainforest walks up to the falls. Waterfalls seem to hold a special place in the American’s heart, as any waterfall walk is like a pilgrimage.
Random people I’ve met in Honolulu
I met American people my age who were attending a military conference, a Brazilian who was eagerly waiting for his Japanese wife to come over, whom he was due to marry the next day; a South African doctor who has been flying 22 hours for the last 10 years to take his family on holiday on the islands; a Hawaiian of Japanese decent taking photos who confessed that he does not know any Japanese as it hadn’t been passed down by his parents; the crazy artist who divulged his life story to me as I was sipping my iced coffee at Starbucks in Honolulu.