For Christmas 2003 we set off on our honeymoon to Hawaii. From California it was just a hop. We visited three of the seven Hawaiian islands (Oahu-Honolulu, Kauai, Big Island), peeked into the maw of an active volcano, and found out that even in the tropics it can be cold and that the flu is no fun even in Hawaii.
We've got the travel diary somewhere, we just have to find it and type it up:)
For now at least some facts about Hawaii, as written by Jirka Pertold in their annual report:
Hawaii is a paradise on earth and in the sea. Mark Twain put it better: “The loveliest fleet of islands that lies anchored in any ocean.“
Hawaii lies on the twentieth parallel, 2300 km north of the equator in the middle of the Pacific. Thanks to that, even on the shortest day of the year (exactly when we were visiting) it's light from half past six in the morning till half past six in the evening. Hawaii is the most remote archipelago in the world. The nearest mainland is 4000 km away. Thanks to that, and thanks to the sea currents, the temperature is almost the same (room temperature) 25 degrees Celsius day and night. A tramp used to chilly continental mornings before dawn takes a long time to get used to the fact that he can sleep all night in just his undies and without a sleeping bag. (_Well, this description comes from the Pertolds, we got our fill of cold nights and days, shamefully so..._)
The time difference from the Czech Republic is 11 hours, so we're spending Christmas almost on the opposite side of the globe from the rest of the family. Probably because of the distance and because of Christmas, in 16 days we didn't meet a single Czech.
90% of Hawaiian plant and bird species occur only here. On average, one species arrived here across the sea once every 100,000 years. Many species had no predator here, so evolution ran differently than on the continent,
Over the last 25 million years, lava welled up from the earth almost always in the same spot. Meanwhile the Pacific plate was shifting to the northwest and thus a chain of islands was created. It follows that the oldest islands are in the northwest (these are also the most eroded and therefore the smallest – 137 uninhabited islands in total). The younger 7, inhabited islands are in the southeast of the archipelago. The youngest, largest, least overgrown and still growing is the island of Hawaii (the so-called Big Island). In fact, another 45 km southeast of the island of Hawaii a new island, Loihi, is growing; so far it's 4.5 km tall, i.e. 935 metres below sea level, and it should poke out into the light of day in 10,000 years. It holds quite precisely for the Hawaiian archipelago that towards the southeast the area of the islands and the height of the mountains increase, while towards the northwest the depth of the canyons and the amount of vegetation increase.
The Polynesians sailed to Hawaii (the word Polynesia means many islands) around the year 500 AD. King Kamehameha united the archipelago under one rule in 1810 and named it after his home island of Hawaii. Captain Cook was the first from European (western) civilization to discover this “westernmost“ civilization. In 1778 the Hawaiians welcomed him as a god, since he arrived clockwise exactly during the holidays when they were expecting the arrival of a saviour. In 1779 he came again. This time counterclockwise, so they killed him. His fault for not knowing how to arrive properly. Emigrants from Europe, America, Korea, China, the Philippines and Japan then poured into Hawaii for work on the sugar cane, rice and pineapple farms (in that chronological order) and gradually outnumbered the natives, who were dying out from infectious diseases previously unknown to them. In 1893 the local white farmers deposed the king and asked to join the USA so they wouldn't have to pay import duty in the USA. At first the USA refused. Hawaii has been a territory of the USA since 1898 and one of the United States only since 1959. Ethnic composition: whites 22%, Japanese 22%, Filipinos 12%, Chinese 5%, full-blooded Hawaiians 1%, mixed Hawaiians 30%. It's sad with regard to the Hawaiians, but otherwise it's an amazing mix of races and civilizations. Racism is almost non-existent, which is documented by the fact that 50% of the inhabitants marry someone of a different race. Although the infrastructure matches the US standard, the culture and inhabitants of Hawaii differ a lot from mainland Americans. The “Hawaiians“ are more laid-back, less hard-working, worse at driving, better at surfing and they have the traits of a small nation, which we Central Europeans find quite likeable. Hawaiian has seeped into the local English and changed it a bit, so it sounds funny to us. Hawaiian uses only 12 letters, 5 of them vowels. The same syllables often repeat in words (Honolulu, Waikii, Kamehameha), so the language sounds pleasant.
