*Hello hello! So I live in Australia, south of just about everywhere (aka the Butt of the World). Having spent the bulk of my adult years travelling, I like to muse about my wanderings. This piece is about the southernmost of all the States – Hawaii. It might be a little too honest, but I don’t know any other way to write.
*SLS edited to reflect relevant phrases (lol)
The Islands of Weed and Mushrooms
Hawaii sat on my visit-sometime-when-the-stars-line-up list for years, abruptly becoming reality when one day I saw it from a different angle. Not as a standalone, expensive, mainstream destination – but as a cool stopover between Australia and Canada. It was about time I learned what all those airline magazine articles fussed about.
I must have read a few of them: pangs of déjà vu accompany aerial views of Oahu’s volcano-dominated topography, strolls along Waikiki Beach, and aromas of grilled shrimp from Giovanni’s food truck on the North Shore. Here, millionaires rub shoulders with terminally-sixties hippies, and pet piglets rub noses with pedigree puppies. Just as described.
Of course, I’m not planning to hang around Oahu for too long. I leave that to the package tour and cruise-vacation crowds and embark on a week-long hitchhiking, Couchsurfing hop around the islands.
My first stop is Kauaí, which immediately knocks my socks off. While Kalalau Valley on Nā Pali Coast beats every mountain-meets-the-sea terrain I’ve ever come across, it’s inexplicably deserted, and I need to climb under ropes plastered with No going past this point signs, tread mud, and grab onto tree roots for the best views of the rugged waterfall-covered mountains opening out to the ocean. It’s a superb spot to have an epiphany, make a decision to quit one’s job or dream up some wild fantasy, but all I can come up with are little yelps of joy.
The island’s social scene is outré, amounting to a band of mavericks drinking Laughing Dog and Lucid Dream cocktails at a make-shift roadside stall. “Got ma whole life in this backpack,” boasts cocktail-fuelled Henry, who hasn’t shaved or probably showered in some months. “Don’t need nothing else here on the island jus these.” He starts dragging some old shirts from the bag. Not all job-quitting decisions end well, I decide.
My Couchsurfing host, organic fruit farmer M., is achingly single-parenting a two-year-old daughter in between his weed-smoking sessions. This basket case has even built a treehouse – not for the kid, but to hide from her when he’s smoking. Personally, I would not have trusted him with a kitten. We disagree on most topics, and after a particularly heated discussion, I swiftly move out, leaving a few things behind in a rush.
M. makes it very difficult to get them back. He’s not answering my messages and yells something incoherent when I call, leaving me with no choice but to pick up my power bank, shoes, and jacket when he is not home. Doors go unlocked on Kauaí, so technically, I’m more of an uninvited guest than a minor criminal. Still, the island is losing its paradisiacal appeal by the hour.
My new host for a couple of nights, Ryan, offers a quantum leap upward in sanity and comfort. He is a local newspaper reporter and a budding writer. His favourite film? Jurassic Park. Favourite book? The only one he’s read – Jurassic Park. Ryan has a point. Why read when you can write? He’s a kind, soft-spoken man, and a wonderful host. The rest of my stay on Kauaí is all about papaya thickshakes, panoramic walks around the island, and Jurassic Park trivia.
Jesse, my host on the Big Island, is a lover of beer, weed, and whatever pleasures life has to offer. Housework isn’t one of them – his luxurious condo with Romanesque statues and pools is a dive. Jesse spends our first evening together moaning about Couchsurfers being a messy and smelly lot. I want to protest, but nothing comes out, and I just sit there with my mouth open like a beached fish. Two days later, tired of working my way through a month-old pile of dirty dishes, cooking for my host and his beer-drinking buddies, enduring lockouts and empty promises to show me around the island, I decide that I don’t have to do this. Maybe Hawaii isn’t made for Couchsurfing. I count my losses, pack my things – all of them this time – and get the hell out. We need people like Jesse on our path to be able to take a deep, happy breath when they finally get off it.
A hotel bed and a pricey island tour with Cuzzin Jeff bring my equilibrium back. Jeff is a greater authority on Hawaii than Grandpa Google – ask him about a stone or a tree, and he’ll tell you a story. He zooms a small group of curious souls around the Big Island’s eleven climatic zones, poking noses into one of the smokiest calderas on Earth, watching Hawaiians perform rituals at ancient raised platforms, and treating us to his humorous rendition of Captain Cook’s demise.
Next up is the island of Maui, Hawaii’s second-largest. I’m almost disappointed by the lack of blockbuster scenery I’ve grown used to on the other islands. Locals and visitors seem pretty chilled, but I’m hungry for a challenge. How about going around the western part of the figure-eight-shaped island in a day? Not renting a car – that would be a lonely thing to do – but taking buses and hitchhiking.
Minutes into the project, luck runs me into beard-intensive Saff, a photographer and emergency response specialist. Born in Japan, raised in Malaysia, he worked in Pakistan and lasted two weeks in Cambodia on eighty-five dollars. Right now, Saff is on a break from studying international law in Canberra, Australia’s comatose capital city. Despite his impressive curriculum vitae, he’s only twenty years old – a star companion for the conquest of Maui. The two of us are decidedly paleo-cave people amongst the luxury hotels and manicured lawns of the Gucci-clad island.
After the sixth bus ride of the day, we march into the five-star Ritz Carlton Maui and set up on the terrace as if we were the Beckhams. The real rich and famous splash in the pool below, while Saff empties the contents of his beat-up backpack on the plush honeydew-green chairs: a tired plastic water bottle that has been on the road for three years, binoculars, tent, and the 1877 edition of Frederick Burnaby’s A Ride to Khiva. My new friend borrowed this manuscript from the library and is now dragging it around the world, convinced from the heart that travel can never harm anyone or anything.
The buses go no further; it’s mostly wilderness beyond the Ritz-Carlton. We cross expansive greens under a golf ball shower to reach the highway and barely stick our thumbs out before a pickup truck stops to take us to a nearby beach.
“Oh wow, this is too easy!” I’m quick to jinx it. We’re still on that beach an hour later. The drivers either don’t stop or make some lame excuse once they’ve had a closer look at us.
“I think we need to come up with a sob story,” Saff offers. “’Cause no one’s gonna believe we’re just randomly hitchhiking. I mean, people don’t do that here. Everyone’s filthy rich.”
“True that. How about we fell behind a tour group? That might work?”
We soon test our cover story on a family from San Diego. The parents are visibly disturbed to have two random adults sitting in their car boot, and after a fifteen-minute brainstorm stammer a chain of excuses before leaving us by the side of the road.
We enter a beautiful mountain village full of flowers and skinny geriatrics. Twenty-four kilometres separate us from our hostel, a five-hour walk. With no car in sight, we make a start, hoping to reach it by nightfall. Then, like an apparition, an indigenous Hawaiian couple whizzes past and reverses back.
Soon we are happily compacted in the back seat along with piles of trash our new friends have foraged on the beach, holding a cobweb-covered stool on our collective lap. Jude, the driver, is talking excitedly about his hallucinogenic dreams and pointing out his favourite mushroom-picking sites. As he warms up to his theme, gesturing with his hands, he turns to face us, eyes alight, to give us his take on the history of humankind.
“The Bible was written by mushroom-smoking prophets, and then Hawaii was taken by the Americans because Hawaiian religion proves the scientific fact that the first people on Earth fell out of the sky,” he explains, and we imbibe with an air of schoolchildren interest.
It turns out that the great Hawaiian ruler Kamehameha was brought up and educated by none other than the grandfather of our Jude, together with the grandmother of his tongue-tied girlfriend in the front seat. So it makes completely no sense why the two of them are not getting the respect they deserve, and where is the appreciation, and why doesn’t anyone listen to their ideas, or give them money to buy land to grow all the mushrooms they need to make this a happier place? Thirty miles and some light years away from the Ritz, we have the car wheels lightly hanging over the edges of the cliffs at sharp turns, and by the time we arrive, I’m a firm believer in Jude’s superpowers.
Saff and I attempt to drink a couple of cocktails to celebrate making it to home base. We pretend he is twenty-two, but those without ID cards can expect to be served alcoholic drinks only once they look decidedly over thirty, leaving the youngsters with little choice but to smoke weed and get high on mushrooms. Saff is sipping on juice while I’m enjoying my Mai Tai, and a Hells-Angels-looking band produces surprisingly choice reggae. An octogenarian in a miniskirt dances up to me, holding a drum under her arm.
“Never in my life I thought I’d be the owner of three drums!” She beams. “I’ve decorated them a little.” She shows off Christmas tinsel wrapped around her precious instrument. Surveying the heavily tattooed, largely toothless crowd in discernible contempt, she leans into me as if to share a secret: “People here are weird!”
I have to agree. I’m struggling to love Hawaii.
***
Years later, I roll into Honolulu in a wheelchair as part of an ill-conceived Christmas family holiday. Despite my broken foot, I’m determined to do a day trip all on my own to an island I haven’t seen yet. Which one? Let’s have a look here on the map… How about Molokai? The name has a nice lull to it.
A thirty-five-minute flight takes me from volcanoes, skyscrapers, traffic jams, and the holiday-making lunacy of Oahu to an African Savanna. Seventy-four hundred people live on this island, and all of them are friendly. Pastor Craig, who sat next to me during the flight, decides to adopt me into his church group for the day. I have my own take on religion and God, but that doesn’t bother them – my crutches give sufficient credibility. The theme of the Pastor’s sermon is close to my heart, as, for the last couple of weeks, I’ve been grappling with the idea of possibly never walking pain-free again.
“This is the day which the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it,” preaches the good pastor. “Remember the past – but not too much; anticipate the future – but not too much. The present moment is where we are, all we have, and all we can ever have.” I catch myself thinking that there’s no day – past or future – in which I’d rather be living right now than today, here, on Molokai, with these incredible people I’ve only just met.
After the service, I work my way through lunch invitations and home visits with my new friends before getting a local insights tour of the island. It is no ordinary place. The most populated part is all manicured lawns, cute churches, and palm groves. A mountain range completely cuts off the northeast of the island, with no road access – the mountains end abruptly, transmogrifying into the world’s tallest sea cliffs. Beyond them, on a small piece of flat land between the rocks and the ocean, is Kalaupapa – a nineteenth-century leper colony that still hosts a few residents. I see it from the escarpment: a few matchbox houses almost a kilometre below – a lonely, inaccessible realm on the edge of the world.
I fly back into Honolulu’s Christmas mayhem, clutching a laminated map of Molokai (a gift from my new friends), feeling like I’ve made my peace with Hawaii. I’ve found harmony in its muddle. Far from Mai Tais, Waikiki Beach, and tacky souvenir shops, from pet pigs and stoned Couchsurfers, it lives on Molokai’s quiet roads, soulful churches, and its no-nonsense cafeteria where they’ve never heard of iced coffee. But they can serve me some regular coffee with ice on the side if I’d like.
