Hawaiian Islands
Aloha! Imagine yourself in Hawaii. What will you discover? What adventures will you have? We offer these stories and articles about special places and real people, so you can experience the beauty and flavor of Hawaii, from an up-to-date, inside view. Whether you're looking for adventure, relaxation or romance, our goal is to help you find the beaches, restaurants and things to do that will make your Hawaii vacation all you want it to be. Come discover your island spirit.
Arts & Local Culture
From museums and galleries to historic sites and festivals of all kinds, Hawaii offers rich cultural excursions.
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Beaches
Whether you like to surf, swim, snorkel, or just soak up the sun, Hawaii has a beach for you.
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Food & Drink
Saimin. Spam. Manapua. Mochi. Loco moco. Lomilomi salmon. Huli huli chicken. Ahi poke. This is what makes up Hawaii's ono kine grinds.
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Hiking & Land Activities
Take a helicopter tour to an active volcano, go hiking, try ziplining, or swim in a waterfall pool.
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Music & Entertainment
Music by moonlight at the museum. Slack key guitar by the sea. Kamehameha Day Parade. Hula festivals. Rodeos. Hawaii has it.
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Romance & Honeymoons
Plan a Hawaiian wedding on the beach at sunset. Or visit some of our favorite romantic spots, restaurants, and spas.
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Sightseeing & Shopping
A historic whaling port. National parks. Cultural sites. Oh, and natural scenic beauty. All abound.
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Snorkeling & Water Adventures
Snorkel with endemic fish or dive to explore underwater lava tubes. Or stay topside and try surfing, paddling or going for a sunset sail.
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Spa & Massage
Enjoy traditional Hawaiian massage in a luxurious spa, a cabana by the sea, the privacy of your hotel room.
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A Few Ways of Looking at a Blackbird*
Newell’s Shearwaters (NESH) are another story altogether. Known to Hawaiians as 'a'o, the seabird measures approximately one foot in length with a wingspan reaching nearly three times that. As seabirds go, kinda small. It has a sharply hooked black bill, good for snagging fish and squid several hundred miles off-shore, and claws that are equally sharp and hooked for burrowing out nest sites and climbing atop trees to launch into flight.
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Indigenous Soap Can Change Your Life
Love Chance was a sophomore at the University of Hawaii when she got into soap. Really got into it. She says she was going through her hippie phase at the time, studying lomilomi massage and Hawaiian medicinal plants. She wasn’t looking to start up a business. Soap would be fun to make soap, she thought, and mixed up her first batch with a friend on top of a washing machine in her home. They named their soap Aina. That was almost 10 years ago.
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Makana is on the Move
Playing gigs across Hawaii and on the Mainland. Recording new material in Los Angeles. Even meeting President Obama at the White House. His incredible slack-key guitar skills are on display for those lucky to catch one of his live shows.
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What? There's Another Whale Besides the Humpback?
At the marina, six biologists popped out of their van, hauling a dozen waterproof Pelican cases of all sizes and colors. They stashed their gear on a 27-foot Boston Whaler with military precision. Within a few minutes, we pushed off and motored out of the harbor. I took my spot on the fly bridge, the extended prow of the boat--think hood ornament of a car. My job as a volunteer on board would be to look for blows, breaches, lunges, dorsal fins, logging or any other whale behavior at the surface of the ocean.
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Lomi Pohaku Massage Melts Stress
I walk away from some massages feeling light and lively, like I’ve finally dropped a super-size suitcase, one that any airlines would slap me with an overweight baggage charge. Other times, massages leave me in a deep slumber, and when I do come to my senses, I slink off the table and speak gibberish for the remainder of the day. I left the Lomi Pohaku at Serenity Spa at Outrigger Reef on the Beach feeling like an ice cube that had just melted.
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From Catching Fish to Providing Electricity
But there is another kind of marine debris, one that hasn’t received quite the attention that plastic has but one that is just as harmful to our oceans, coastal ecosystems and the animals that live in them: Ghost nets. Also called derelict fishing nets. They are like giant balls of spaghetti swirling through out oceans and washing ashore, and endangered Hawaiian monk seals, sea turtles and humpback whales, among a variety of other marine animals big and small, can and do get trapped in them and die.
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Not Your Grandmother's Muumuu
When you think of a muumuu, you probably think of a heavy cotton dress with puffy sleeves and a shapeless tunic that falls to the floor, maybe with a ruffle around the bottom. You probably think of Hawaii and big, colorful floral prints. And you definitely think of your grandmother. Am I right? Well, Deb Mascia is here to show how wrong we both are. Because I’m pretty sure Cameron Diaz, Cate Blanchett, Michelle Obama and Susan Sarandon wouldn’t be caught dead wearing their grandmother’s muumuu.
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Learning to Surf
Growing up, Oregon native Neil Kopp swore to all of his surfer buddies that riding the waves was one thing he'd never do. But then he visited Hawaii and guess what happened?
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Get to Know Hula. Get to Know Hawaii.
Hula is a uniquely Hawaiian dance performed with oli (chant) and mele (song) to convey the many stories and traditions of the Hawaiian people. These stories might be light-heared. They might be sensual. They may evoke a spiritual or worshipful essence. They may be told at breakneck speed or a hypnotic pace.
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Hula Is A Celebration of Life
Hula is the highest form of respect. Kia says, “For us hula is life, because we can learn everything about life--everything about morals, everything about ethics, everything about our daily life, everything about how we should live--through hula.” In an oral tradition, hula served as the textbook for life. But it also took a more poetic, less didactic turn. Whether to serve as mnemonic memory devices or make the telling more interesting, the direct meanings that were intended to be conveyed in hula were cloaked in metaphors, illusions and personifications.
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Ten Fascinating Facts about Seahorses that I Learned from Ocean Rider
On three oceanfront acres just south of Kailua-Kona airport on Hawaii (Big) Island, an unusual fish farm quietly operates. For 13 years, Ocean Rider has bred and raised seahorses. That’s right, seahorses. They really do exist.
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NASA Astronauts. Scientists. And Hawaiian Gods & Goddesses.
Mauna Kea rises to 13,796 feet above the sea, centrally located in the middle of Hawaii’s largest island—Hawaii, also known as Big Island. It is the tallest mountain in the Hawaiian archipelago and, measured from its base at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, is the tallest mountain in the world, besting Mt. Everest by a whopping 4,441 feet.
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Taste Hawaii's Finest Flavors
Maine has its lobster. Alaska has its crab. In Hawaii, it’s all about the fish. There are more than a dozen local fish you might find on a restaurant’s menu here. It can get a bit confusing.
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Our Precious Reefs
Pioneering undersea explorer, Dr. Sylvia Earle says that every breath of air we take comes from the sea. The ocean is important, because without it, we would not exist. “There’s plenty of water in the universe without life, but nowhere is there life without water.” And at 97% of the Earth’s water, the ocean is the life-support system for all creatures on our planet. That’s a pretty clear reason why we should care about and for our seas.
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The Be-All, End-All Guide to Where to Do What on Waikiki Beach
Waikiki Beach contains a world of beach adventures to keep you exploring for days and weeks on end. So here's what you need: the be-all, end-all, grandaddy list of all lists for the best spot along Waikiki Beach to do just about whatever it is you could imagine doing.
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Beyond the Rim: Hiking Volcanoes National Park with a Guide
Kilauea is like that. It engenders deeper exploration. So you may hike Kilauea Iki Trail, you may walk through Thurston Lava Tube, and you may even make the 36-mile round-trip drive down Chain of Craters Road at sunset to—hopefully—witness distant streams of surface lava flowing to the sea. But then what?
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Volunteering + Vacation = A Dream Come True
When Julie Honnert comes to Kauai on vacation, she doesn't sit on the beach and read a book. “One of my messages is volunteerism. I always tell people I am on vacation. Most people have never thought of it—volunteering on vacation. Many turn to their spouse and say, ‘Oh, honey, we should do this.’"
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Humpback Whales: The Not So Gentle Giants of the Sea
At 7:30 one March morning, the sun glinted off the ocean like a field of diamonds. Three minutes outside the Lahaina Harbor off Maui, Captain Karl of Maui Adventure Cruises nosed the boat northwest. He had already spotted our first humpback whales of the morning. Thar she blows.
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Ono Farms Delivers on Organic
Thirty-five years ago, Chuck and Lili Boerner left Honolulu for remote Kipahulu on East Maui to start a family-run, organic farm at a time when most farmers were selling their land and moving to town. “It’s actually staggering for us to even comprehend. I hardly remember doing it. You just do it because you love it,” said Lili.
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Come. Join Donna Kahakui.
When you ask Donna Kahakui where she comes from, she answers, the ocean. “I come from a family of fishermen. To me, the ocean is my best friend,” she says. “I am more coordinated in the ocean than I am on land.”
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No Task Is Too Big When Done Together
It was a cloudy Saturday morning. My weekend to-do list was as long as some of the lengthy street names around Hawaii, but weeks before, I had agreed to help weed a taro patch this morning. I looked outside at the cloud-shrouded mountain in my front yard and considered my options. Do I really want to pull weeds in the rain?
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Get Lost in Kauai
How do you experience the real, unseen Hawaii? Start by heeding the words of Gary Smith, Kauai plantation expert and preservationist. Hint: it involves ignoring guidebooks.
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Diamond Head State Monument and Park
Panoramas from this 760-foot extinct volcanic peak extend from Waikiki and Honolulu in one direction and out to Koko Head in the other. This 360-degree perspective is a great orientation for first-time visitors. On a clear day, look to your left past Koko Head to glimpse the outlines of the islands of Maui and Molokai.
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Red: The Color of the Night
The first time I was scheduled to dive the area known as “Tunnels” on Kauai, there was an extremely low tide producing strong currents as the incoming water rushed back out to sea through a narrow channel. Another night, there was Hurricane Daniel, which was eventually downgraded to a Tropical Depression when it bypassed the island.
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Slurp. Swoosh. Spit. Its the Kona Coffee Cupping Event.
For the past 25 years as an importer of green specialty coffees from around the world, John King has started his day—and sometimes spent entire days on end—cupping coffee. If you’re going to cup coffee, it doesn’t get much better than the annual Kona Coffee Cupping Competition, held every November.
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Shaken, Stirred and Moved by Manta Rays
I have long wanted to dive with the manta rays off the coast of Big Island. In Hawaii, dive operators claim the experience is the number one night dive in the world, and I have heard many stories about it.
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Kauai Reefs: Teeming with Life
The boat rocked from port to starboard and back again, as regular as a
metronome. A diminishing south swell that shut out all dive boat
operations for the past week still churned the water—and my stomach.
That may have explained my deadpan response to Captain George’s dive
jokes, but that wasn’t all. It was early.
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Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge: For the Birds
The walk to the historic lighthouse at Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge takes me about three minutes from the parking lot. As I top a slight hill, a panoramic view of the blue Pacific Ocean and a coastline of serpentine cliffs opens before me, just as if someone drew back a pair of heavy theater curtains.
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Zipping Across Maui's Treetops
I’d signed up for the Upper Mountain Loop Adventure at Kapalua Adventures in West Maui. It included crossing the highest and longest suspension and five parallel ziplines. The longest zipline was 2,300 feet in length; the shortest 800. All ziplines “sky-surfed” across valleys a couple hundred feet above the ground.
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Kauai Evokes A Sense of Place
The sun rose at our backs and escorted us down Highway 50 on Kauai toward Port Allen, our embarkation point for a day’s adventure on the Pacific Ocean. Our journey would take us to Kalalau Valley along the iconic Napali Coast. Then, we’d traverse 17 miles of a sometimes rough ocean, crossing Kaulakahi Channel, to drop anchor on the north side of the privately-owned island of Niihau. When I asked my friend Laura, visiting from Loomis, California, whether she wanted to join me on a boating excursion to Napali and Niihau, she didn’t hesitate. “Yeah, baby,” she said.
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