After spending a week on Hawaii’s newest island, I hopped a flight from Hilo to Lihue on Hawaii’s oldest and western-most (inhabited) island: Kauai. Kauai is known as “The Garden Island” for its greenness, but all I saw my first few days there was traffic. Kauai is just a fraction of the size of The Big Island with a population of only 58,000, so there aren’t as many places for tourists to spread out. Basically there is just one major road that doesn’t even make it the whole way around the island, and everybody seems to be driving on it. It’s also the wettest place on earth, so there is lots of rain to contend with.
I decided to head up to the town of Kapaa on the east coast as soon as I hit the ground. Although half way up the island on a map, it was actually only 8 miles from Lihue (where I landed), the biggest town on the island. I found a groovy beach house hostel overlooking the ocean in Kapaa. I later realized it was the only hostel worth staying at on the whole island.
On the one hand, the laidback hostel owner, a purported chiropractor (who never seemed to tend to any clients) had done nice job setting the hostel up with mosquito nets and drapes around each of the beds for privacy. There was a nice constant sea breeze flowing through the premises to cool things down in the evening. On the downside, it quickly became apparent that most of the tenants were long term.
Most of the hostels I visited in Hawaii seemed to be deserted, perhaps because of having a restriction on the length of time a visitor could stay. I witnessed two people being kicked out of a HI hostel in Honolulu for overstaying their welcome. This one hostel in Kapaa was about half full, but most of the tenants seemed to have had menial jobs in the area and old clunker cars parked out back. They had no real ambition other than to live in Hawaii. The showers were full of old half-used shampoo bottles, just like you would expect to find in someone’s private bathroom. These are the kinds of things you wouldn’t find in most hostels. And the long-term tenants also seemed a bit flaky. You would ask someone why he or she chose to live on a particular island and they would respond with phrases like, “I didn’t choose this island. It chose me!”
The problem I find with allowing long-term tenants is they’re not interested in what they perceive as transient tenants, like myself. They’re only interested in networking with other mainlanders with the same lame ambitions as themselves. The whole fun of staying in hostels is meeting other travelers from around the world with similar interests and comparing notes on what’s worth seeing and what’s worth skipping. This policy of allowing long-term tenants made my stay at this hostel somewhat awkward after a few days.
One thing I found different about backpacking around Hawaii was the tourists. Where in most countries you would find about half local tourists, lots of other people from all over the world, and a smattering of American visitors, Hawaii seemed to be 99% Americans and hardly anyone else. And while most Americans seemed to end up in resorts as part of package deals, the low budget places were full of not tourists, but mainlanders trying to make a go of it in Hawaii.
