
DATE: Sunday, August 24, 1997               TAG: 9708220102

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY STEPHEN HARRIMAN TRAVEL EDITOR 

                                            LENGTH:  367 lines

CRUISING HAWAIIHOW SHOULD A FIRST-TIME VISITOR SEE THE LUSH, FIERCE, BEAUTIFUL ARCHIPELAGO OF HAWAII? WHY, BY ISLAND-HOPPING ABOARD A CLASSIC CRUISE SHIP.

HAWAII, DISTANT HAWAII, had eluded me in my travel quest. Thanks to parents who believed, as I grew to believe, that travel is a delightful form of education, I had ``collected'' all 48 of the United States by my early teens, which was a long time ago. That's all the states there were.

Then Alaska and Hawaii gained statehood. No longer did I have a ``full house.'' I added Alaska to my collection several years ago. But Hawaii, distant Hawaii, remained elusive.

When I realized recently that I had been on the soil of more than 50 foreign countries, Hawaii, the 50th state, became something of an obsession.

While Hawaii remains the world's most remote island destination, distance is no longer a valid excuse for passing up a place called paradise. Transcontinental jets have shrunk the planet.

A poll at the most recent CI Travel Show indicated that Hawaii was Hampton Roads' most popular island destination.

So guess what the travel guy began to plan for his summer vacation.

Hawaii, of course. It was time. That was the easy part. But how, I wondered, should I go about it? That was the hard part.

Here's the thing: All together the six major islands and the 120-some other islands and islets in the archipelago that stretches across 2,000 miles of Pacific Ocean total only about 6,500 square miles - a little larger than Delaware, a little smaller than Connecticut. But this is hardly like visiting Delaware or Connecticut.

I have read volumes on Hawaii and learned that each of the six major islands is significantly different, has its own personality.

Which one, or ones, should I pick? Also . . . which hotel? Beachfront or oceanfront? (There is a difference.)

Then I remembered that the S.S. Independence, the single ship of American Hawaii Cruises, makes weekly seven-day cruises that visit five ports on four of the major islands. That seemed to be the way to get the most out of a first-time visit.

We would island-hop aboard a floating ``island'' of our own. Effective, efficient. No packing and unpacking, no wasted vacation time waiting in airports for interisland flights, no arranging for rental cars at each stop.

But would this brief, seven-day sampling be enough?

No. We decided to extend an extra five days on . . . well, where? Hawaii, the Big Island that gives its name to the entire state, bigger than all the others combined, seemed the best bet. Bigger should mean more to do. Even if we wanted to just do nothing. There'd be more places to do that. Besides, it has the active, drive-by, walk-right-in volcano.

So that was the plan. It worked beautifully. Here's my cruise ``log'' along with a report on our independent tour of the Big Island:

FRIDAY

The day-long flight from the East Coast of the U.S. mainland (with a three-hour ``mechanical problems'' delay at Dallas-Fort Worth thrown in) has its rewards at the end. The island of Oahu looms below. And there is what I have long wanted to see.

Remember Pearl Harbor. I was a very young child when those words were first spoken; I have heard them all my life.

As we approach Honolulu International Airport, there it is off the left wing. A large, vaguely circular lagoon, connected to the sea by a broad channel. Pearl Harbor. This must have been how the Japanese pilots saw it on that day of infamy. Ford Island, floating in the center, bisected by an airstrip.

On Ford Island's southeastern shore was ``Battleship Row.'' There were seven of them at anchor that seventh day of December in 1941, another on the northwest side and and still another at a harborside dockyard. Now there is but one.

The Arizona lies at the bottom, a broken and irretrievable hulk, an eternal memorial to its sailors and all the 2,403 Americans who lost their lives that dastardly day. A ghostly image in the distance.

Now, more than a half-century later, the picture is clear in my mind. It will be easier to remember Pearl Harbor.

We are met at the airport by American Hawaii Cruises representatives, properly leid - is this the right word to describe having a sweet-smelling flower lei of welcome placed around one's neck? - and whisked off to the plush Hilton Hawaiian Village on Waikiki Beach. We wanted an overnight here before boarding the ship.

What a grand setting for this 14th largest hotel in the world. I'm fairly awed. It's just like the movies . . . grand sand beach flanked by palms, row upon row of breakers ridden by surfers . . . Diamond Head in the distance.

After an elaborate Hawaiiana heritage show at the hotel, a magnificent buffet dinner and the weekly fireworks show, we take a leisurely stroll down Waikiki under a nearly full moon, our eyes constantly on Diamond Head, one of the most recognizable landmarks on earth. Wouldn't it be something to climb up there?

SATURDAY: OAHU

We awaken more or less on Eastern Daylight Time, which is to say well before dawn in Hawaii. There's a six-hour time difference. There is some good in that: a spectacular sunrise.

We aren't scheduled to board the ship until mid-afternoon. There is time for Diamond Head. And it's only a $10 cab ride from the hotel.

Diamond Head is the extinct remains of a huge volcanic tuff cone created by a violent explosion perhaps 100,000 years ago, long after the island of Oahu was formed.

To the ancient Hawaiians it was a place of worship and human sacrifice. To early 19th century British sailors it was a headland rich in diamonds (which were really only calcite crystals), and that's where the name comes from. The U.S. Army of World Wars I and II saw it as a mid-Pacific Gibraltar. Today those abandoned gun emplacements, reached by tunnels and stairs, draw tourists by the thousands for a breathtaking 360-degree panorama from 706 feet up of ocean, mountains and Honolulu cityscape.

We should have rented a flashlight at the crater parking lot. After a moderately difficult climb up a rocky trail, we reach stairs, then more stairs - this flight has, count 'em, 99 steps - then a long, dark tunnel, then an equally dark vertical tunnel with a spiral staircase before reaching the first of several gun emplacements near the crest. What a view.

Definitely worth the climb. But we should have rented a flashlight.

The Independence, sparkling white with painted leis around her sky-blue stacks, sits at the dock beside Honolulu's Aloha Tower. Today the tower is dwarfed by gleaming high-rises; when the luxury liners of the 1920s and '30s docked here, it was the tallest building in town.

The Independence, which made her maiden voyage in 1951, is a classic ship in the sense that Packards and Hudsons are classic automobiles. They don't make them like this any more. But if they're kept up, they are quite attractive and appealing. This ship, at a little over 20,000 tons, is small by today's megaliner standards, but bigger is not necessarily better.

We see almost immediately that she is comfortable, her American crew friendly and accommodating, and the atmosphere is relaxed and casual. Just like Hawaii.

There's a fairly spectacular ``Pacifica'' on the expansive fan deck after sunset with performers from Fiji to the home islands of Hawaii singing and dancing - did you know Hawaiian men do the hula, too? - and lighting up the night with revue-ending spinning torch display.

And then, at 9, with the ship's horn blasting, streamers streaming and shouts of ``Aloha,'' we get under way.

SUNDAY

This is the traditional ``at sea'' day that most cruises seem to incorporate into their schedule, a day when you don't really do anything - that is, stop at a port - but instead just cruise.

Often these days are boring, but not this time. For one thing, we are not out where there is nothing but water to be seen. We are cruising, apparently back and forth, along some island that I presume to be Kauai, our first destination. We are apparently just killing time. But the scenery is marvelous. In early afternoon we see a pod of pilot whales in the royal blue water.

Today the shore excursions director is giving a rundown on the various trips available at our next four ports. There are 53 choices in all, an amazing number. We've pretty much decided already what we want to do, but in one case we made a change of plans because what we had selected didn't sound quite like what we had imagined from reading the excursion brochure.

This also is a day for exploring the ship.

My favorite spot is the beautifully designed Kama'aina Lounge created by the renowned Bishop Museum of Honolulu. It's filled with island artifacts and includes an interactive cultural exhibit. The room looks like an old-fashioned Hawaiian home with polished wood floors, cushioned wicker and rattan furniture, island art on the walls, vases of orchids and bird-of-paradise flowers, and koa wood doors that lead to open-air lanais on both sides.

Here in the museum I get my introduction to these Hawaiian islands, an archipelago of 132 islands, reefs and shoals stretching from the southeast at Hawaii (the Big Island) northwest over 1,523 miles. And what they are all about. Volcanoes.

The islands were all formerly (and in one case currently) active volcanoes, formed in a process that began about 70 million years ago and continues today.

The Pacific Plate of the earth's crust creeps along at about two to four inches a year - that's about how fast your fingernails grow, by the way - across a fixed ``hot spot'' 60 miles or so below sea level.

The eight inhabited Hawaiian islands were formed between 6 million and 500,000 years ago. Kauai, in the northwest, is the oldest, the Big Island the youngest, and still growing from an active lava flow.

Loihi, currently over the hot spot southeast of the Big Island, is looming beneath the sea surface waiting to be born - in about 10,000 years.

MONDAY: KAUAI

Remember the opening scene from ``The Raiders of the Lost Ark'' when Indiana Jones is chased across some jungle clearing by wild savages, climbs a tree at a river's edge and is scooped up by a plane? Remember that? Well, I am making these notes as I sit in a sea kayak under that ACTUAL TREE. Isn't life amazing?

It's right here on Kauai, the Garden Island, only a couple of miles inland from the little port of Nawiliwili.

About two dozen of us paddled up the placid Huleia River. This first shore excursion is a leisurely paddle - a little more than four miles in about three hours. It's a tidal river, and with the tide coming in we probably didn't have to paddle much at all.

The river is lined with tangled mangrove trees to the point that you can't see much along either side. So we missed the famous Menehune Fish Ponds that were probably only a stone's throw's away.

The Hawaiians are extremely fond of legends. The Menehune were legendary people - or maybe real; I could never get that straight - about three or four feet tall, who only worked at night and avoided any sort of confrontation. They supposedly built this riverside pond, apparently several acres in size and walled by stone, in a single night for some king to keep his extra fish in. Or something.

What we do see in the distance are steep mountains covered in thick vegetation and dark rain clouds. What we hear are frequent helicopters, a waterfall, the cooing of doves and several free-range roosters crowing of their prowess. Ah, nature.

I spoke too soon about amazing. I am now aboard a helicopter, headed out to explore from above what just might be the most spectacular of all the Hawaiian islands, its aged volcanic surfaces chiseled by centuries of wear by ocean and rainfall. Certainly it is the wettest and the most green.

What I am seeing below is pretty much beyond my limits as a wordsmith.

First we cruise slowly back and forth, hovering over razor ridges, soaring up and over and in between the jagged, pastel valleys that form the cathedral-like Waimea Canyon.

Samuel L. Clemens was not yet famous as Mark Twain when he first visited Hawaii in 1866. He called this the Grand Canyon of the Pacific. That works for me. He should have seen it from the air. It's smaller than Arizona's - 10 miles long, one and a half miles wide and 3,600 feet deep - but it's similarly spectacular.

We bank west toward the Na Pali Coast with its waterfalls tumbling down from serrated, moss-covered cliffs - weather-etched and mostly inaccessible from land - that rise nearly perpendicular from the ocean and the isolated sandy beaches.

Then on around to the north coast, to Ha'ena Beach where Mitzi Gaynor washed that man right out of her hair in the movie version of ``South Pacific'' . . . over the residences of Streisand and Sly and some others I can't remember . . . over Hanalei Bay, where Puff the Magic Dragon lived and where Elvis made ``Blue Hawaii.'' Can you stand it?

Well, how about this? Now we are right over Jurassic Park, or at least where the movie was filmed, and just over there is the waterfall that is the signature set piece on the old ``Fantasy Island'' TV series.

As we fly right into the heart of Mount Waialeale crater I find myself at a complete loss for words. This is the wettest spot on earth. The average rainfall is about 480 inches a year. Or 600. I keep getting different reports. The result is that an incredible number of slender waterfalls cascade down the sheer sides of the crater, some falling 3,000 feet, like ribbons of tears . . nearly impossible to photograph.

You just have to see it for yourself.

If - no, when - I return to Hawaii, it will be to Kauai.

TUESDAY and WEDNESDAY: MAUI

There is rain over there on Maui, and over there, too, but it is not raining right here as we approach the dock at Kahului and so we breakfast on the fan deck. There is a welcoming rainbow, then a double rainbow. It disappears and then reappears, even more intense.

The Hawaiians say this about rain: ``No rain, no rainbows.''

If you have some imagination, Maui is shaped like a man kneeling. It is made up of two volcanoes: the West Maui Mountains (the head) and Haleakala (the body). The neck is a large, gradually sloping valley, which is why Maui is called the Valley Island.

Its major attractions are its coastline - Maui has the largest number of swimmable beaches in Hawaii - and the great Haleakala. This large dormant volcano rises 10,023 feet above the sea. The road up from Kahului harbor is 37 miles; height for distance, it's the steepest climb in the world. It takes about 1:45 to drive up to the top. The footrace record is 4:45. Or maybe that's the bike record up. Whatever.

A favorite shore excursion is to bus to the top of Haleakala and bike down. Coast down, actually. I've done a bike trip before, and until they design a bicycle seat with the human anatomy in mind I'm not doing it again.

The road to Hana on the backside of this kneeling figure is equally famous for its spectacular scenery and its twisting, turning, sometimes nauseating curves. People wear T-shirts that say ``I Survived the Road to Hana.'' The 52-mile trip (one way) is an all-day event.

We didn't do any of that. We did take a bus tour part way up Haleakala and saw a lot of moderate to steep farmland that looked a lot like West Virginia with an ocean view.

We also visited the Ioa Valley, which features a 2,250-foot basaltic shaft called the Ioa Needle, surrounded by steep green mountain walls. Mark Twain called it ``the Yosemite of the Pacific.'' Twain was not normally a fluff sort of guy, and he is probably my favorite travel writer - well, favorite dead travel writer. But he is wrong about this. I wonder why I went.

The little town of Lahaina is sort of interesting. It is Hawaii's former whaling capital, and along this west coast of Maui, between here and the nearby smaller islands of Lanai and Kahoolawe is the best place to see humpback whales, particularly in February and March.

Lahaina has a modestly interesting historic district, but it is mostly a place for intense tourist shopping today. Picture Atlantic Avenue in Virginia Beach done up in an 1820s motif and you have it.

The most interesting thing to me is the banyan tree in the old courthouse square. When it was brought from India and planted in 1873 it was only eight feet tall. Today it has 12 major trunks of varying girth besides the huge core of central trunks. It reaches a height of 50 feet and stretches outward over a 200-foot area, shading two-thirds of an acre.

THURSDAY and FRIDAY: HAWAII

The specs on Hawaii, the Big Island, are a bit mind-boggling. It's hard to grasp how immense its twin volcanic peaks really are, partly because both are massive, flattened domes rather than cone-shaped and both are often cloud-shrouded. The extinct Mauna Kea measures 13,796 feet above sea level and the dormant Mauna Loa 13,677, but if measured from the ocean floor they are each about 32,000 feet high, higher than Everest. The entire Sierra Nevada Range could fit within their bulk.

Its third volcano, Kilauea, only about 4,000 feet, is one of the world's most active and has added nearly 300 acres in lava flow to the island's size since its most recent series of eruptions began in 1983. A part of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, its activity has made it Hawaii's No. 1 tourist attraction.

The island's 4,030 square miles - slightly larger than Puerto Rico or Jamaica - contain 10 of the world's 13 climate zones. Returning after the cruise, we saw verdant green hills and valleys reminiscent of the Yorkshire Dales of England, rolling, lush green grasslands like the ones in Montana that drew the ``Lonesome Dove'' boys, and the absolute desolate - tormented landscapes, black and brown, wrenched and jagged, as if from another planet.

An example of the stark contrasts: The east (Hilo) side gets upward of 140 inches of rainfall a year and is the home of the world's largest orchid industry; the west (Kona) side gets only about 20 inches but manages to produce some of the world's most popular, and expensive, coffee.

The ship makes two stops on the Big Island, first at Hilo, and then, after cruising past where the lava flows into the sea creating great billowing clouds of steam, it stops for another day at Kona.

There's no better way to see this volcanic mass than from the air. The 45-minute helicopter flight shore excursion from Hilo is worth every bit of its $129 price tag. The memories are priceless.

Kilauea's caldera is so vast that it defies description except in numbers: it is two miles across, 400 feet deep and 11 miles around. Within this caldera is a crater called Halemaumau, another 400 feet deep. Hawaiians say this is where Madame Pele, goddess of fire, lives. Some Hawaiians come here to worship.

It's not ``like'' anything else I can think of. It's sort of a combination of the Badlands, the steamy parts of Yellowstone, and maybe an immense open-pit copper mine in Utah.

But this is not where the real action is.

The volcanic activity is occurring on the sloping side of the volcano at a vent crater called Pu'u O'o. I love to say that word.

As we circle slowly, sometimes hovering, about 1,000 feet above the steaming, billowing crater, and the collapsed pits around the cone, the bubbling lava looks like some sort of orange gel. Its temperature is about 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit - hot enough to, well, melt rock.

The pilot says the surface flow started again only about an hour ago. We watch it as it fills a big collapsed pit - the pilot calls it the Jacuzzi - then drains again as we circle.

The plan to return to the Big Island was a good one. We spent another two days around and in the Kilauea caldera. At the Park Service visitors center, in less than 15 minutes, I heard people speaking French, Spanish, Japanese, German and Italian as well as English. That doesn't happen often, even in Europe.

We look our time circling Crater Rim Drive, hiking the Devastation Trail, tiptoeing along the fissured and fragile edge of the Halemaumau crater and walking through a tropical rain forest of giant ferns and bamboo as big as a man's leg to get to the Thurston Lava Tube. The tube is several hundred yards long and 10 to 12 feet high. Lava once flowed through here. Not just people.

There are plenty of other things to make an extended stay on the Big Island worthwhile. Some dramatic waterfalls - 400-foot Akaka and Rainbow Falls in the town of Hilo, especially - a string of wonderful resorts along the sunny Kona coast, and historic sites like St. Benedict's, the oldest (1875) Catholic church the island.

But there's nothing quite like a walk-in volcano. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos

STEPHEN HARRIMAN

The bubbling, boiling Kiauea volcano...

AMERICAN HAWAII CRUISES

The S.S. Independence...

Map

The Virginian-Pilot

Photos

STEPHEN HARRIMAN

Akaka Falls tumbles 400 feet to a secluded rain forest pool on the

Big Island.

Madame Pele, the goddess of fire, is said to live in this crater