Discovering Paradise: Oahu’s Enchantment
Does anyone remember the television series Magnum PI? This series, which was very popular in the late 1980s, was one of my favorites because it was filmed in Hawaii. I cared more about the Hawaiian landscapes than the series. So, when they mentioned Hawaii, I remembered Magnum. When Hawaii 5O started on TV, it was on our TV series list. We watched them regardless of the content in our house.
One evening, we were watching the beautiful palm trees and the deep blue beach on Hawaii5O. My husband turned to me and said, “Why don’t we go to Hawaii?” Without hesitation, we began planning a 10-day trip to Hawaii.
When you live in California, you don’t crave palm trees and beaches. Palm trees are in my backyard. You can also visit beaches like Santa Cruz, Halfmoon Bay, and Carmel in half an hour. But, of course, swimming is another matter. It’s been a long time since I decided that the sea in Northern California is for watching. This is true even in summer. It’s not for going crazy and going in. Even in the north of LA, the ocean water is cold enough to freeze your insides when you step in.
We split our Hawaii vacation into two islands to see more places. We went to Oahu, where Honolulu is located, and Maui. Our first stop was in Honolulu, Waikiki.
When you land at Honolulu airport after a 5-hour flight from San Francisco, the hot air and sun hit your face. The beautiful flower scents tell you have arrived in a new place. When we got on the shuttle bus sent by the hotel and set off, we entered the peaceful and calm atmosphere of the island. Honolulu is a big city with over a million people. But, for some reason, you don’t feel the hustle and bustle you feel in other big cities initially. Everything is calm and slow. And sometimes too slow. For example, the shuttle driver calmly chatted with the groundskeeper almost half an hour after he closed the doors.
Living in the Bay Area, it’s hard to see why people say Honolulu traffic is horrible. But it is a fact that the traffic is bad. Sometimes, you can’t do anything but watch the highway for minutes. But the people are very calm. You can see that only the tourists in a hurry make a fuss in the traffic.
Our hotel was in Waikiki. We checked in and went to our room very calmly and slowly. Of course, we had no time to waste in the room, so we rushed to the reception desk again.
I usually make a huge to-do list before we go somewhere. It’s not a bucket list; we usually don’t follow anything on this list, but it gives us an idea of what to see and where to go. Then, we don’t wander around like headless chickens.
We talked to the young man at the hotel reception and declined some of his suggested tours. It wasn’t our style to rush around with 30 people trying to see things, but we said we wanted a car for the next day. Our travel package included a car for all of Maui but didn’t include one on Oahu. They assumed we would stay in Waikiki. We made our reservation at the place the boy suggested so our car would be ready the next day.
As soon as you step into the street, even in the tourist crowds of Waikiki, you can hear the birds sing. You can also feel the scent of the flowers rising from the plumera trees. We watched a group dancing Hula on the corner. We decided with joy that we had chosen Hawaii well for our vacation. The airplane’s sandwiches and peanuts had already worn off. So, we started looking for a restaurant. There were as many varieties as you could want, but we needed help to see a sign mentioning a Hawaiian specialty.
Finally, I jumped when I saw a sign under a building that said kalua pork. Before we arrived, we knew about Hawaiian food. Our son’s mother-in-law is Hawaiian and had previously made us authentic Hawaiian food.
We bought our kalua pork and rice in this small shop. We settled at the table outside. A young man appeared beside us with brochures to sell tours. He showed us a bunch of different activity tours on the island. Finally, my husband said that we didn’t like tours. He said we would visit the places on our own. But the young man still gave us ideas about what we could do. It had been a year since he had come to Hawaii. He loved living here, but life was very expensive, and selling tours was his second job.
One of the things everyone insisted on was not missing the sunset in Hawaii. The red sun sank into the sea as we sipped our drinks on the beach. Fires played in the torches on the beach. The soft tones of that very special Hawaiian music came from the bars. These sights and sounds were etched in our memories.
Hawaii is a special place with all these details. Still, this is especially true if you only go to Waikiki without a car. Tourists will see it as a vacation spot. It has beautiful natural features and a few tropical attractions. Like all resort towns, Waikiki is a typical beach town. You bump into a tourist at every step. It is crowded, noisy and of course expensive. The whole coast has high-rise hotels. You can find all kinds of touristy things on the beach. The beach stretches as far as the eye can see.
In the morning, we packed our beach bag and headed to the rental car place two steps away from the hotel. The streets were much emptier than in the evening. Suddenly, I turned to my husband and said, “Is it raining?” There was a wetness as if someone had sprayed, but it was not the kind of rain we knew. The Hawaiian woman who passed us on the sidewalk, probably on her way to work, smiled and corrected me. “This is not rain; we call it Blessing.” We smiled at her. Yes, “blessing” is a more accurate word for this natural event. Two minutes later, the sun shone. The rain stopped. Suddenly, the best and most beautiful rainbow I have ever seen appeared. It was over the skyscrapers in Waikiki. This was our first rainbow in Hawaii. For the rest of the days of our vacation, we saw one or more rainbows almost every day, in all different forms. Hawaii was the land of rainbows. Nature was so green and vibrant because of these sudden sprinkles. They also brought the gift of rainbows to the Hawaiians.
As a reward for getting up early, we could choose the car we wanted. When my husband saw the Dodge convertible in Hawaii 5O, he immediately chose it. Ten minutes later, we were heading out of the city in Honolulu traffic. The further you get from the city, the more you start to understand the atmosphere of the island. Everything slows down more. Traffic is slow. People smile and give way to you. Nature is very beautiful. You drive through kilometers of banana farms on one side. On the other are palm-fringed beaches. You really start to think you are in paradise. We stopped in a few towns on the east coast. We walked the main streets. We went into tourist shops and chatted with the shopkeepers. We bought fresh pineapple and fried bananas for breakfast. And, of course, we headed to the beach, which was the only goal of the whole vacation. We found a spot where a stream reached the sea, grabbed a beach basket, and threw ourselves on the sand. The ocean here was much warmer than the Mediterranean. And its water was much less salty. As we let the waves carry us, we kept telling ourselves that this vacation was a great idea. There are so many things to do on the beach. You can rent sea goggles from a small shack. You can spend hours watching the wonderful coral and colorful fish. Or you can rent surf and ride the waves they break before you get to the beach. Or rent kayaks and try paddling. We decided on kayaks and lazily paddled our way through the village and into the stream that leads to the beach. We paddled along the creek. The houses with grass gardens reached the creek. The sound of thousands of birds came from everywhere. A rainbow appeared over the banana groves ahead.
Hawaii is also a food paradise if you know what you want, especially if you like seafood. For lunch, we searched for a food truck a friend from Hawaii recommended. I was grateful for my friend’s recommendation as I ate the huge shrimp piled high on my paper plates.
Many different cultures have influenced Hawaiian food. Polynesia is the predominant one, but Japanese influence is also significant. And from this mixture, a very interesting cuisine emerged. Mostly seafood. For example, salmon lomi is a salad of fish cooked with salt and tomatoes. A poke is a salad of tuna seasoned with vinegar or lemon. This is a cuisine where you can find a lot of Japanese-influenced rice. Besides, chicken and pork dishes, which are abundant on the island, are among the foods you should try.
We should mention Hawaiian chickens when we talk about chicken. Like stray cats in other places, there are stray chickens in Hawaii. These wild chickens are everywhere you come across. Another interesting feature of these islands is that almost no harmful creatures exist. For example, Hawaii has no snakes. Hawaii also has strict rules about animals entering the islands. If you’re moving here and want to bring your dog, you must vaccinate and quarantine it for months. Rabies has never been seen here. Some types of animals are completely forbidden to enter Hawaii. In these islands, orchids and plumeria are everywhere. They are very fragrant flowers used to make Lei necklaces. You can observe that the plants we buy as houseplants try to grow like crazy.
On other days in Oahu, we visited the sights in the mornings and did beach activities in the afternoons. We visited Waikiki`s shopping centers and restaurants in the evenings for all tastes.
The most interesting ones were the Swap meet in Honolulu and Pearl Harbor. In this market, locals sell things on the island. We bought Kona coffee grown in Hawaii and Hawaiian shirts and dresses. They were sold ten times cheaper than Waikiki. During our visit to Pearl Harbor, we visited the museum. It showed the memories of the Japanese bombing. This event brought America into the Second World War. The museum also had the remains of the Arizona ship. It sank during the bombing. The port was bombed on a Sunday morning.
Before we left Oahu to go to Maui, I was looking for a restaurant serving real Hawaiian food while touring the city in our rental car. I found an address close by.
We found the restaurant where we least expected to find a restaurant among the streets. We told the local woman we wanted to taste local cuisine. She greeted us with a big smile and said Aloha. We had come to the right place. A few minutes later, she showed up with a huge plate of Lau Lau and a plate of poi. Poi is a puree made from the root of a plant called Taro, a custard. It has an earthy taste and is not to everyone’s taste. It’s a love-it-or-hate-it kind of food. For some reason, we liked it. It goes well with Lau Lau, which can be fish, meat, or chicken wrapped in taro leaves and cooked. Of course, it is always served with rice and then kalua pork. Kalua Pork is pork cooked in our tandoori kebab style. This meat is cooked well. The bones fall off. It is so delicious with special spices that you can’t get enough. After the coconut custard dessert, we had to run to catch the plane. But, the meal we had in this hidden corner, which we found by chance, was worth missing our plane.