MORE TO PLACES THAN HISTORY AND CULTURE.
It was easy to picture the Heeia fishpond as part of daily life for the ancient Hawaiians after the shirtless chef Mark Noguchi kicked off his “slippahs” and flung himself into the ocean. Immediately, he rode the current and was willingly sucked through the break in the wall into the pond, where he paddled around and gave a running commentary on the fish.
Except for a few houses (and Noguchi’s wraparound sunglasses), the scene — the velvety, crenelated mountains of Oahu’s North Shore rising to tickle the clouds under a tropical blue sky — was probably not that different from when the walled 88-acre pond was in full use 600 years ago.
But preserving the scene isn’t the point. It’s about the culture and the knowhow, and about passing that on, he said. As travelers, we tend to be big fans of culture and what makes a people who they are. Culture and history: Often, it’s how we measure places.
It was a full day of learning: I went with Noguchi also to Hui Ku Maoli Ola (www.ha waiiannativeplants.com), a farm that, honestly, was barely recognizable as a farm, but turned out to be a nursery of native plants, from taro to kalo. We picked up some greens and a few oddly shaped vegetables and then drove up the hill to Papahana Kuaola (www.papahanakuaola.com), a cultural center on protected land at the base of the mountains, with ancient places of worship, a few huts and a gurgling stream.
Up to this point, I thought we were visiting three places, but really it was one ahupuaa, a district that stretches from mountain to farm to sea — everything that a community needs to survive. It was a 600-year-old lesson in sustainable living — one that you learn in the middle of the Pacific.
Another day, on the opposite side of Oahu, one of Hawaii’s most historic sites had my attention. In the same way I had been fascinated by the ancient ceremonial platforms in Heeia Ahupuaa, I was mesmerized by the foredeck of the battleship Missouri, and by standing under one of the nine “big guns” (the barrel of each gun, the guide said, weighs about as much as the space shuttle).
A few decks and a couple of dozen portholes away was the “surrender deck,” where Japanese officials signed the articles ending World War II. The ship sits end to end with where the battleship Arizona rests at the bottom of Pearl Harbor — the beginning and the end of the war for the U.S., illustrated in acres of iron.
As travelers, we tend to be big fans of history and how people move forward and, hopefully, make progress.
On the shuttle back from Pearl Harbor, the driver talked in passing about the loss of the International Marketplace on Kalakaua Boulevard in Waikiki. For more than a half a century, the marketplace had been a winding complex of open-air stalls selling all manner of Polynesian souvenirs, luggage, bikinis, jewelry and tiki kitsch.
Twenty years earlier, on my first trip to Oahu, I had wandered past the seemingly endless rows of vendors and the massive “enchanted banyan tree,” searching for a souvenir. A few stalls dripped with puka-shell necklaces and artificial leis; others were a collage of koa bowls, surf- board bottle openers and blazing aloha shirts. It was a tourist trap left over from the original “Hawaii Five-0” era — a guilty pleasure. I walked away with a stainless steel Zippo lighter with the Hawaii state seal — and another memory from Oahu.
In its place, last month crews were building a glitzy shopping and dining mall anchored by Saks Fifth Avenue. Some of the old vendors have a temporary spot down the block, but while the ban- yan tree will survive, the marketplace likely will not. It was not deeply historical or deeply cultural.
Travelers seek out the historically and culturally important places, but we tend to overlook the one-of-a-kind landmarks, restaurants, shows and shops that are in the middle — not historical, not cultural, but they make up the personality of a place. That cave-like British pub in Gibraltar; that tiny plaza in Seville with clusters of old men and even older pigeons; the painfully hip, evolving Monti district of Rome.
If Hawaii taught me nothing else, it’s to seek out “the middle” — to experience the full personality of a place, not just the guidebook’s Top 10. If only because that’s what’s mostly likely to be gone the next time you go.