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all photos © John Grove |
| Just before Christmas 1998, I
flew to Hawaii with the crew to film a "Lonely Planet" for the Discovery
Channel. The cameraman and I flew via an overnight in Chicago O'Hare,
then on to
Honolulu. The rest of the team were already there ahead of us, carrying out
reccies. I was somewhat sceptical about how I'd find Hawaii, with all the commercialism we hear about even in the UK I was expecting something like Las Vegas by the Sea. Some relief that the precise aim of this programme was to show the other side of Hawaii, and reveal the culture and traditions that prevail, away from the tourist resorts. |
Americans on Hawaii refer to the east coast of America as the mainland, even though the mainland is actually 2500 miles away! |
 By the time we left Hawaii we were convinced we'd been to another country - rather than just the 50th State of America! We travelled to four of the Hawaiian islands in the three weeks we were there, starting with Kauai - the most northerly. |
| Kauai is by far the most unspoilt and beautiful. I realise in thumbing through my photos, I took far more pictures on this island than any other - which just goes to show. On Kauai we met some genuine Hula dancers, who don't play to tourists. We filmed a sequence with them worshipping and chanting to Laka, the goddess of Hula. |
This is native New Yorker Megan - our presenter for the show - with Herb Faima. On Kauai we went kayaking with Herb, one of my favourite Hawaiians. He explained to us about the power of the land, something we were to hear about frequently on our trip. We kayaked up the river, then trekked through a very muddy forest - bitten by mosquitoes - to this beautiful waterfall in the middle of nowhere. Kauai is to be recommended, even in the midst of the jungle. |
| This is the island upon which Captain Cook first landed and discovered Hawaii. |
| A real cool guy called Danny showed us how to make a lei - pronounced "lay" - the garland of flowers. |
This is Megan on board an Aloha Airlines plane, after the third attempt to do a piece to camera in the ten minutes before take-off! |
| Next island we visited was Oahu, home for Honolulu, Pearl Harbour and the
famous Waikiki beach. Despite our attempts to build up the part - even playing tracks from
Elvis's "Blue Hawaii" - this place sucks! It's all too commercial, and damned
expensive. Despite all this, we did get some value out of Oahu, with some good people to talk to. Megan got teamed up with a charming 60 year old beach boy "Boots" to learn how to surf - and didn't she do well! Later, we filmed a gay wedding, and visited a friendly hostel in the town for back-packers. 5.30 one morning we filmed in the Honolulu Fish Market and the local China Town. We were greeted everywhere in Hawaii with the expression Aloha - for good health and luck - but it all became a bit tiresome in the commercial hubbub of the city of Honolulu. |
We were on Oahu on the anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbour by Japan, 7th December 1941. This marked the day the US become involved in the second world war. |
| We spoke to one veteran - before realising that he was actually miles from the harbour at the time! - but he introduced us to a sprightly old gent who was on board USS Arizona when a direct hit killed 1177 of it's crew. Despite all this, there were many Japanese visitors attending the ceremony. The people of Hawaii have long forgiven them for the invasion of 1941. In fact, there were many Japanese living on the island at the time of the attack. Now 20% of the population of Hawaii are of Japanese origin, and even the veteran we interviewed is married to a Japanese woman! |
| On the famous North Shore of
Oahu there was a major surf competition - the Quicksilver Roxy Pro Women's challenge.
North Shore is probably the number one surfing beach in the world. Unbelievably the surf was considered by the event organisers too dangerous, so the whole event was pulled for the two days we were able to film it! |
As luck would have it, while in the beach area we met four marines on a wild holiday in a wreck of an American car. |
| They agreed to us filming them for a mini road movie sequence to introduce us to the island. Megan didn't look so happy to share a car for several hours with a bunch of marines, but the sequence proved to be really good value. I guess it helped prepare her for the driving experience on Maui, with her own rusty old T-bird! |
| While at North Shore, we did
manage to talk to the sister of a very famous local surfer who was killed in the surf some
years ago. They are in fact planning to make a film about his life. The sister continues
to run the busy back-packers hotel he owned. Next island, Maui. The highlight of Maui had to be the Mule trek into the crater of a extinct volcano, Haleakala (see photo at the top of this page for the view). |
The morning before, we'd left the hotel at 4 am to drive two hours to the top of the same volcano to film the sunrise. |
| Last island to visit, Hawaii - or more commonly know as the "Big Island". Here we visited the largest privately owned cattle ranch in the whole of the States. We went about the daily duties of a Paniolo Cowboy - called so by the locals when they first arrived, a bastardisation of the name Espaniola (they were mostly of Spanish origin). They have 40,000 cattle on this ranch, and we went out with 4,000 of them! Megan even got a chance to see a bullock being castrated - yuk! |
| Apart from being home to the famous Mauna Loa (13,679 ft) and Mauna Kea
(13,796 ft), the Big Island is where there is much volcanic activity still. Kilauea
is one of the most active volcanoes on earth and has added 500 acres of land to the island
since 1983. After checking with the Eruption Hotline, we walked across miles of evidence of previous lava flows to get to the present lava flow from Kilauea. |
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The landscape looks like the scene after a nuclear war, with jagged hard black rock spewed all over the place. Four hours of walking was amply rewarded, with the opportunity to stand but 30 feet from hot molten lava flowing into the sea! |
| Further to this, our guide (Doug) reckoned this was the most spectacular
he'd seen in eight years!! Check out Doug Arnott's web site - he runs an excellent back packers hotel on the Big Island. He should have some more pictures of the volcano on the site. |
It was then we thought we'd be wise to step back to where our director was calling - some one hundred feet away! Quite a spectacular end to three weeks in Hawaii, huh?! |
