Party Animals

Here's a final retrospective post about the first round-the-world ticket I ever bought. This time we're off to the USA, that is, Los Angeles and Honolulu, the final two stops on my three-week global-trotting circuit. 

I visited Los Angeles for the first time as a 17-year-old exchange student in July 1983. It was my first time overseas. Along with more than a hundred students from Australia and New Zealand, I spent a week undergoing an orientation program while housed in student accommodation at UCLA. AFS, the organisation responsible for our exchange program, typically conducted this program to help non-native English-speaking students adapt to American life. However, for us Antipodeans, brought up on American films and television, the week was a bit of a joke.

Much to our frustration, we never got to explore the city. As a result, when I finally returned in 1996, I was determined to see as many of the city’s iconic sights as possible. As was my habit, I collected a fistful of brochures at the airport and mapped out my sightseeing schedule. I flew in from Frankfurt on October 22 and was scheduled to fly out again two days later to Hawaii. I’d just spent seven days attending my brother’s wedding in Austria and travelling through Prague and Berlin with my parents. With less than 48 hours on the ground, I had plenty of bucket-list sights to tick off in a relatively short timeframe.

I decided to book a full-day LA highlights bus tour. The tour initially took us to the city’s historic Spanish quarter for a walking tour (that's the LA Town Hall in the opening image of this post), then to the original Farmer’s Market in Melrose for another wander. With Halloween barely a week away, the market was filled with pumpkins and appropriately themed displays. It was the ideal location for a classic taste of America’s enduring obsession with Halloween.

Our next stop was West Hollywood, where we visited Mann’s Chinese Theatre to walk the pavement littered with the footprints and handprints of hundreds of celebrities. There's something special about spotting the handprints of Hollywood stars from a bygone era like Humphrey Bogart and Will Rogers. Like all first-time tourists, I was also delighted to finally see the giant Hollywood sign in the nearby foothills. Although it was much smaller than it appears on television!

The tour then ventured up into the hills to the Hollywood Bowl lookout for an iconic view of the city's smoggy skyline stretching south along the Pacific Coast. The tour then concluded with a drive-by tour of celebrity homes in Beverly Hills. To be honest, most of the time all we could see were high walls, security gates and hedges. We finished our tour of Beverly Hills with a final stop at Rodeo Drive, where I was in awe of the exclusive designer labels and their equally eye-watering price tags. That's me on Rodeo Drive above. 

I also recall spotting the equally famous Beverly Hills Hotel from our bus. Back in the days when celebrity was worn with the elegance and grace of diamonds and mink, this hotel was where the stars played. W.C. Fields, Humphrey Bogart and the Rat Pack tippled at the bar; Katharine Hepburn did a backflip into the pool in her tennis clothes, and Elizabeth Taylor honeymooned six times in the bungalows out back. Howard Hughes famously kept one bungalow permanently available for himself.

The following day, October 24, I boarded another flight, this time bound for Hawaii. Once again, I was off to explore a destination I’d visited in transit in 1983. Back then, Air New Zealand’s Boeing 747-200 couldn’t reach the USA in a single leg. As a result, our flight stopped in Honolulu for a couple of hours to refuel in the middle of the night. However, passengers had to disembark and congregate in a secure, nondescript transit lounge before reboarding and continuing to Los Angeles.

For this return trip, with four days on the ground, I was keen to finally see Oahu. However, I ultimately saw very little of the island. A few hours after landing, a good friend flew in from Sydney to join me. Richard took one look at the pile of brochures I’d collected at the airport and laughed. They went straight in the bin. He was in town to celebrate his birthday (October 27) – and what a celebration it was.

We booked ourselves into the Hotel Honolulu, an LGBTQI friendly venue. Back then it was promoted as Hawaii’s only gay hotel, and was renowned for its somewhat camp and kitsch decor. The hotel had a sundeck on the roof. It also assisted travellers in the pre-internet age by sharing gay information. Each room featured a thick guestbook where visitors could add their comments about friendly restaurants, cheap clothing outlets, gay bars, rip-off merchants, and gay-friendly everything worldwide. They were compulsive reading. 

We were allocated a Japanese-themed room on the top floor directly below the sundeck. It was called the Samurai Room, which we accessed via a small faux-Japanese arch bridge. The walls were also decorated with appropriately illustrated panels. Within hours, Richard had turned our room into party central, and for the next four days, that’s all we did.

We hit the local LGBTQI-friendly bars at night, continued the party back in our room after they closed, and eventually ventured out to bask in the sun along Waikiki Beach before repeating the cycle. I took the photo of the beach posted above to prove we actually made it to the beach at least once. By the time we were done, we’d collected a gang of three new American friends who did their best to keep up with us. 

This included a guy called Ken, who kept pace for four days straight. That's him above. We christened him Kenisha in honour of our room. Richard's nickname was Doodle (He was a Graphic Artist), and mine? The Mad Kiwi. The other two lads simply gave up after two days.  Hand on my heart, it was the most decadent overseas experience I've ever had.

I recall one night Richard and I went out to the infamous Hula's s, a bar built around an enormous banyan tree in the Kūhiō District. At one point we got separated. I went off to party with a group of American flight attendants, while Richard disappeared with a newfound friend.  Hours later, I found myself wandering the streets of Honolulu. I was completely lost and couldn't find our hotel. At 2:00 a.m., I rounded a corner, and who do you think I bumped into? Richard, coming home from his own adventures. Fortunately, he knew how to get back to the hotel.

After partying nonstop for four days, I caught a late-evening flight back to Sydney on 27 October, while Richard stayed a few more days. It was another eight years before I returned to Honolulu and finally ventured out to explore Oahu. This time with Garry in tow. Let’s just say our return visit in 2004 was a more civilised affair! Sadly, Garry never got to experience Hula's in all its glory. Developers bought the land a few years after my decadent holiday. It reopened at the opposite end of Waihiki Beach, but the new location lacked the quirky character of the original venue.

I finally landed back in Australia early on 29 October 1996, having completed my first-ever round-the-world ticket. What an adventure it had been. Aside from relentless partying in Hawaii, I’d also gone on safari in Africa, flown a microlight over Victoria Falls, walked the cobblestone streets of Kitzbühel and Salzburg, explored the medieval heart of Prague and shown my parents where I’d once chipped off my own piece of the Berlin Wall.

The Jurassic Coast

I've previously posted about our time on Hawaii's Big Island in April 2005. Our hike out to the lava fields of the Kilauea volcano was certainly memorable.  However, this experience was subsequently matched by an equally awe-inspiring helicopter flight over Kauai. We flew in from the Big Island shortly after 1:00pm on Wednesday 13 April, checked into our hotel, and then returned to the airport for a 4:00pm aerial tour of the island.

The 50-minute flight proved a perfect introduction to the oldest, and most dramatic, of Hawaii’s main islands. Kauai looks nothing like the classic Oahu beach scenes so often synonymous with most people's image of Hawaii. Our scenic flight took us over the rain-soaked Mt. Waialeale, the plunging ravines of Waimea Canyon and the breathtaking emerald spires of the rugged Na Pali Coast. The scenery was, at times, beyond words. 

The Na Pali Coast was a genuine highlight. It’s anecdotally known as the Jurassic Coast after appearing in Steven Spielberg’s iconic dinosaur movie. This desolate coast is almost inaccessible. There are no roads in the area and the only coastal hiking track, the Kalalau Trail, extends just 11 miles along the northwestern coast to a small remote beach at Kalalau. In essence, more than two-thirds of the Na Pali Coast is only accessible by sea or helicopter. 

I'm glad we decided to fly. The view from the air was truly magnificent. Our pilot flew over the rim of the dry and barren Waimea Canyon and into an untamed tropical landscape of soaring sea cliffs dissected by deep, and lush, green valleys. Our route took us along the coast below the cloud line before turning into a spectacular mist-shrouded valley framed by near-vertical rock walls.

The verdant landscape reflects the area’s incredibly high rainfall. More than 450 inches falls annually making it the world’s second-wettest place. Our helicopter flight included a leisurely pass over the dramatically splayed Hanakāpīʻai Falls which cascade almost 100 metres into the valley below. Our tour then finished with a circuit over the agricultural slopes of the northern Princeville region before returning along Kauai's jungle-clad eastern valleys.

While on Kauai, we hired a car and spent several days exploring every corner of the island. Our first excursion saw us venture into the Waimea Canyon State Park. A narrow, winding road follows the western rim of this dramatic canyon up to its northernmost reaches. 

The road eventually ends at the Puu o Kila Lookout, almost 1200 metres above sea level. Here you’re teased with a brief glimpse of the wild Na Pali coast. Unfortunately, on the day we visited, the area was obscured by a rising mist.  However, this still created a spectacular sight of its own.

On our second day, we ventured north to Princeville and onto the end of the road at Hā'ena State Park. I decided to hike the first couple of kilometres of the Kalaulau Trail that winds its way along the Na Pali coast. Garry chose to hang out at the beach while I ventured into the wild. After about 45 minutes of hiking, I was finally rewarded with a truly stunning cliff-edge view of the rugged coastline we’d previously seen from the air.

During our journey north we made a few detours along the way to check out the iconic Kilawea Lighthouse and the gossamer cascades of the Opaeka’a Falls. We also stopped to sample a cold Otai on the Hanalei Bay Dolphin Centre’s umbrella-shaded lawn. This is a popular Polynesian fruit drink made from a blend of water, coconut milk, and any variety of pulped tropical fruit such as coconut, watermelon, mango, and pineapple, although it’s almost always watermelon.

Kauai is certainly blessed with plenty of falls. Perhaps its most famous is the twin cascade of Wailua Falls. This scenic spot is known the world over thanks to its appearance in the opening credits of the 1970s TV show, Fantasy Island. The Wailua Falls are accessible by road so we stopped for a photo while driving to Waimea Canyon. 

I've also opened this post with an image of the Hanakoa Falls on the Na Pali Coast. This ribbon of water, dropping more than 300 metres, is accessible only via the Kalalau Trail with a special permit. Why the permit? Apparently, this particular section of the trail isn't for the faint-hearted.

Our final day in Kauai also marked the end of our Hawaiian vacation. On Friday, 15 April, after visiting the north coast, we dropped our rental car at the airport and caught an evening flight back to Honolulu. Shortly before midnight, we boarded an overnight flight back to Sydney. Although thanks to the international dateline, we missed Saturday entirely, landing at about 10:30am on Sunday morning.

I had to include this final image simply for its historical value. It’s all too easy to forget that in the pre-wifi and early internet days, we never ventured far without a trusty guidebook. Back then, the go-to book for the savvy traveller was always the Lonely Planet guide. We used it to plan almost every excursion, uncover quirky road trip detours and score a decent meal. Two decades later we still have shelves of Lonely Planet guides gathering dust in our home library. How times have changed. 

There she glows

My last post about our trip to Siding Springs in 2005 brought back memories of a second expedition Garry and I made a month later to the summit of Mauna Kea on Hawaii’s Big Island.  Manua Kea is considered one of the world’s best sites for astronomical observation thanks to its altitude, dry air and stable airflows.  It also enjoys an average of 325 clear nights per year.  As a result, since 1964, a total of thirteen telescopes have been erected on its summit, funded by at least separate 11 nations.

In April 2005, while visiting the Big Island, Garry and I booked a tour up to the summit, more than 4,200 metres above the Pacific.  Like every other soaring mountain, Mauna Kea’s peak is a chilly, uncomfortable location. The tropical heat of Hawaii’s coastal regions never reaches such giddy heights.  In fact, it seems that only tourists are foolish enough to venture this high.  Even the astronomers avoid the place.  They sensibly operate their observatories remotely from warmer, more accommodating locations. 

Our tour was timed to coincide with sunset. This meant we were treated to spectacular skies, along with a chance to see the giant observing instruments quietly spring into life.  Perhaps one of the most astonishing sights is that of the mountain’s shadow just before sunset.  A soft grey triangle stretches out across the surrounding cloud tops creating the illusion of a twin peak rising in the distance.  If you time your arrival just so, you can stand on the shadow’s rim, wave your arms and witness your movements on the shadow’s edge.  Very cool!

We spent less than an hour at the summit.  Our guides were constantly on the watch for the symptoms of altitude sickness. The risk is real.  Years later Garry and I witness how debilitating it is when members of our Peruvian tour party suffered as our tour bus crossed a mountain pass above 4,000 metres. In Hawaii, our tour guides try to reduce this risk by making a compulsory stop for an hour halfway up the mountain at the Visitor’s Information Centre. 

 

This small service building sits about 2,800 metres above sea level, just below the cloud base that regularly shrouds Mauna Kea's summit. The smooth, paved highway also ends at this point.  From here, the road turns to gravel and winds its way precariously up the mountain’s desolate rusty volcanic rock flank. Incredibly, Mauna Kea is only considered a dormant volcano.  It last erupted 4, 600 years ago. 

The Big Island does boast at least one active volcano, nearby Kilauea.  Garry and I trekked out to the site of this volcano’s active lava flow to witness its glowing, viscous lava slowly ooze towards the sea.  Reaching the lava flows involved a three kilometer trek across rough, uneven piles of old lava.  The rock is deadly to footwear. It’s sharp, glassy edges simple tear shoe leather to shreds.

We trekked out from the end of the road late afternoon. Dusk is considered the best time to view the lava as its ominous glow is far more spectacular in the fading light.  This certainly proved to be true.  As the sky darkened we soon realized there were giant streams of hot lava cascading down distant slopes we’d barely glanced at earlier in the day.

 

The lava is safe to view.  While it’s extraordinarily hot, it moves at a slow pace.  This meant we could move from location to location without fear of our route being blocked, or our observation point being suddenly engulfed.  However, as we retraced our steps, we discovered our route had taken us across active lava flowing several feet below our feet.  In our efforts to reach visible surface flows, we’d inadvertently cross a “bridge” of cooled lava. 

It was quite a shock to discover lava glowing deep down in the odd crack.  Earlier in the day, this faint glow had been completely invisible. It was a timely reminder that nature remains the master of its own domain.  We meekly reassured ourselves that we were probably never in any real danger given how many other people had made the same trek through the day.  We decided the ever-present National Park Rangers would have closed off the area had the risk been significant.

Follow this link for the next leg of our Hawaiian adventure on the island of Kauai.