I Want to Be a Travel Writer

I’ve always wanted to be a travel writer: who wouldn’t want to go off and have adventures, meet people, research interesting stories, and then get paid for it. That is until I realized everybody else wanted to do that, and the few who were good enough to get paid weren’t making a living. But I still like to read travel articles, learn about new places, and secretly entertain the thought that maybe I could’ve gone to the same place and written a better article.

Well, that finally happened. The article in question is “Hawaii: Searching For Koolau The Leper”, on a sleek travel website whose name I can’t even pronounce. So now I will become a travel writer critic.

Overall, the article follows a classic recipe: travel to an interesting place, search for some historical figure, and find echos of the past by interviewing the locals. The problem is that you need to do some historical research, and that takes time away from your working vacation. I know one should never let the facts get in the way of a good story, but in this case, they got in the way of my reading.

The story of Koolau the Leper was made famous by Jack London who heard a second- or third-hand account while traveling in Hawaii. So it was with great interest that I read the story told by his widow in The Kauai Papers, published by the Kauai Historical Society. Too bad our travel writer never found this credible account while he was at the local library, because it clearly states that Koolau and his wife came from Waimea, and hiked into Kalalau down the steep cliffs at the back of the valley on a trail that no longer exists.

So the entire following-in-his-footsteps premise of the article is undermined, and the author appears for what he really is: just another tourist. Yes, the Kalalau trail is hard, but it is nowhere near as hard as what Koolau and his wife actually had to do. If the writer had climbed that cliff, which might be feasible or might be suicide depending on whom you ask, then I would’ve been impressed. As it is, I think he needs to search for another way to pay for his vacations.

Up the Wailua River

Over the weekend, we went exploring with our Kayak on the Wailua river. We launced from the beach, right between the bridges. First, we paddled upstream on the really wide part of the river. At the branch, we took the left side, which is the South Fork. A little ways futher we landed at the Fern Grotto, about 2.2 miles (3.5 km) upstream from the beach. Although the entire river is a State Park, the only way to see the Fern Grotto is with a paid tour on Smith’s Boats or by private kayak. Rental kayaks are not supposed to land there so that Smith’s has the monopoly, and they don’t make it easy for private kayaks to land either.

I don’t think I’d ever pay money to ride a boat with a bunch of tourists to see the Fern Grotto, but it makes an interesting side trip to kayaking. And since it was late Sunday afternoon, we had the place to ourselves. There used to be more ferns and a tropical garden along the paved path to the Grotto, but I hear they were all damanged in hurricane Iniki and poorly maintained since. Right now, they are doing some major work on the structures, and it looks even worse in the meantime. However, the ferns are growing back and the grotto itself looks nice with water dripping down in front, as long as you can ignore the metal railaing and cement path.

We then paddled another half-mile (1km) up the South Fork, nearly halfway to Wailua Falls from the Grotto. We went through another narrow spot in the river, and then the scenery opened up with some pastures and house at the bottom of a wide river valley. The river got shallower and faster, so we had to work to paddle upstream. At the point where we had to turn around, some cows were watching us curiously.

These pastures are inholdings in the state park, incidentally where the powerhouse is being proposed for the Wailua Falls Hydroelectic Project that I argued against previously. You can see the distance we paddled on the map at that link.

Papaya Sunrise

This must be the sunrise color that sunrise papayas are named for. Click on the photo to see the larger panorama.

Helicopter Crash

Last Friday, a tourist helicopter with 5 passengers and the pilot crashed into the ocean in bad weather, about a half-mile offshore of Haena, on the north shore. Three of the passengers died, while two others were rescued and the pilot swam ashore.

According to the newspaper, the wreckage was recovered from the ocean yesterday, and today some of the rescuers and the investigators released some more details of the accident. The front page photos don’t seem to be archived with the stories above, so I scanned them for the record:

Image source: The Garden Island print edition, September 26, 2005

Image source: The Garden Island print edition, September 27, 2005

I’m wondering: has anybody heard of this outside of Hawaii? Please let me know in a comment if you have.

3rd Wailua Bridge

If you’ve driven through Wailua, you’re probably familiar with the two bridges across the river. The north-bound lanes split and each goes over a different bridge. Until I went exploring one day, I didn’t know there used to be a third bridge, or rather there are parts of the first bridge still visible. It is even dated 1919, as seen in the first photo.

The bridge to the right is the single lane north-bound bridge that used to be a cane haul road. It is old too, but I don’t know when it was built. The newer bridge to the left has 2 lanes and is dated 1949, which is older than I would’ve guessed. The second photo is taken from this newer bridge and clearly shows the old roadway. I assume that the other end of the old bridge is now under the new bridge. There are other remnants of the old road around the island that I hope to find and document here.

I really enjoy discovering old structures that have been abandoned and are being taken back by nature. They remind us that the world as we know it is not the same one that our ancestors knew, and that human influence is not permanent.