The Travelling DesRosiers: A Drive Around Oahu

Up at dawn to catch a coach ride around the island. We were in time (almost) for sunrise on Sunrise Beach where we paused to admire the surfers in small waves. Then on along the coast counter-clockwise to Haunoma Bay, a lovely beach in the remnants of a collapsed caldera. Next we went to the Tropical Farms outlet store where we were treated to a display of Hawaiian lore by The Chief. Site of the old TV show Fantasy Island, the store is on a bay where the show's seaplane landed. The Chief showed us how to start a fire with two sticks, how to open a coconut the easy way and use the fibres for kindling and finally performed a torch dance for us. He then presented the ladies with a coronet woven from palm fronds, with a flower over the left ear for the married ones and over the right ear for those still single.

Then on to a delicious Scampi lunch at an extremely dubious looking Tita's grill, the Dole pineapple plantation (the canned ones you buy in the store don't come from here, they come from Brazil now), Sunset Beach and home.

Hawaiian is an economical language, having only 12 letters in its alphabet. Created by missionaries to make their spoken language writable, the alphabet uses 5 vowels and 7 consonants with a symbol for a glottal stop sometimes being considered an eighth consonant. Words as long as 4 letters may be all vowel.

The population of Oahu is about 1.5 million. Each year they get 8 million visitors. Three million at Pearl Harbour.