A picture postcard perfect setting… Brilliant blue water, waves crashing on black rock, palm trees overhead, the old pier jutting out from shore. Whittington Park is a beautiful stop along the Mamalahoa Highway as you round the south end of the island.
The old pier at Honu‘apo slowly succumbs to the battering surfLike Mahukona at the north end of the island, this is an old sugar port. Here the small inter-island steamships loaded cargoes of Ka‘u cattle and sugar bound for Honolulu and shipment to markets across the Pacific. Bulky cargoes are best transported by water, thus these busy little ports were once found across the islands, today only a few ruins remain.
Honu‘apo Pier in 1908Known as Honu‘apo, or turtle cove, the port served area ranchers and plantations until the middle of the twentieth century, when better roads and trucks allowed shipments to the port in Hilo. Numerous ruins remain, seen in the wave battered pier, scattered foundations, and the ruins of a sugar mill across the highway. The pier has been destroyed and rebuilt several times, pounded by winter storms, once blown up by the army to prevent use during a feared Japanese invasion.
A large pond and wetlands sit alongside the mown lawn at the center of the park. Once maintained as a fishpond by ancient Hawaiians it is now a rich marsh. The park encompasses over half a mile of shoreline and over two hundred acres of land. There is plenty to explore along the shore north of the main park. Numerous archeological sites scattered across the low coastal plain testify to the centuries of use, from a large pre-contact village, to the plantation operations of the 19th and 20th centuries.
It is a pretty park with decent facilities. Camping is available here with a permit that can be purchased online. Stop by and enjoy the scenery and have lunch. Much of the time this beautiful park sits empty, the isolation of this coastline exemplified.
It hits you as soon as you step through the front door. There is only one thought that describes it… tourist trap.
The Dole Plantation in Wahiawa, OahuThe signs are classic, you enter and exit through the gift shop. It isn’t a little gift shop either, but a large operation with every type of tacky tourist wares. This is a place where the tour buses stop. A place designed to extract as much money as possible in the short time available before the bus moves on to the next stop around the island.
I have been to tourist traps so kitschy they actually become fun. Between Benson and Wilcox, Arizona, along I-10 is The Thing. The place make no pretense about being a pure tourist trap. Admission to the museum that includes the namesake mummy/artifact/side-show-exhibit is actually quite cheap, $1 per person last time I was there. They obviously make the money in the gift shop. Beside The Thing itself, the little museum is surprisingly decent, with western memorabilia, wagons and old cars. If you take the place for what it is you can simply enjoy the experience, with some ice cream on the way out.
Pineapples in the demonstration garden at the Dole PlantationThe Dole Plantation is simply a tourist trap, without many redeeming features. They charge for most everything, the maze is $6/person, the train is $8, the garden tour is $5. Visit a couple spots and it quickly adds up. The prices in the gift shop are not much better. I had to laugh when I saw the prices for the small packages of macadamia nuts. You could buy twice as much of the same brand in any local supermarket.
There were a few simple signs in the garden that explained the history of the Dole pineapple empire and it’s founder, James Dole. The story is a fascinating example of a determined businessman who took a quiet local market and turned it into a global industry. It is a classic example of the plantation history of Hawai’i, with all of the good and ugly bits mixed in. Likely you will not learn much visiting the place. There was supposed to be something more of a museum here, if it still existed I could not find it behind all the tasteless merchandise. A bit of history, something real, anything would have created a more worthwhile stop. I guess it would just take up space that could be used for another rack of hula skirts.
I must admit it was not all bad… Walking through the garden Deb and I discovered the best part. There were cute little Carolina anoles all through the bromeliads. We must have spent half an hour chasing anoles trying to get good photos, with some success. The pineapple ice-cream float wasn’t so bad either.
