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Two tales of modern Hawaii

LANA’I, Hawaii–There are only three paved roads on Lana’i and it takes less than an hour to drive all of them.

LANA’I, Hawaii–There are only three paved roads on Lana’i and it takes less than an hour to drive all of them. The west road leads to Kaumalapau Harbour, the tiny port where supplies for the island’s 3,000 residents are landed each Thursday. The south road stops at Manele Bay and the Manele Bay Hotel, one of just two resorts on the island. (But the one with a measure of international fame, since it’s where Bill Gates got married in 1994.) The north road... well, the north road just ends. There’s a small gravel parking lot, then sand dunes, an empty shingle beach and the Pacific.

Lana’i has so few roads or resorts here because until the 1990s it was the world’s largest pineapple plantation, 8,000 hectares of fruit. When Third World competition made its pineapples uneconomical, the fields were allowed to go fallow. A decade later, most still are. Tourists are the next crop the island is hoping to raise, but with few fine beaches, no smouldering volcanos and only one small town, Lana’i City, it’s been slow to draw crowds.

So you may have the beach at the end of the north road to yourself. Or there may be a few beachcombers, because the stretch to the west is Shipwreck Beach.

The name comes from the effect the fast-rising wind and choppy water of Kaholi Channel can have on vessels, driving them onto a sharp coral reef. Many boats have met their end here, including the London in 1826, carrying gold bullion.

Most of what washes up on Shipwreck is flotsam, but every so often there’s something more substantial, like the rotting ribs of a schooner, or more evocative, like an old-fashioned silver fork. If anyone’s found the bullion, they aren’t telling.

About two kilometres down the beach are the semi-ruins of a holiday camp still occasionally used by the locals. If no one’s about it has a real Stephen King-novel feel to it: the cottage doors stand half-ajar, old mattresses are piled up inside.

The eerie camp sets the mood perfectly for the highlight of Shipwreck Beach, another kilometre on: the hulk of a huge ship, in profile to the shore, perhaps a half-kilometre out in the channel. Although almost fully above the water, it stands straight up, held in place by the coral that trapped it. The years have turned it ghastly, black and cadaverous.

The closer you get, the creepier it becomes. It may be the flat blackness of it, which can make it seem to be much closer than it is, or the all-too-fleshlike way bits of its skin have fallen off, or that it seems to almost hover above the water, defying natural laws. It seems aware of you.

It would be better if the ship were an ancient schooner whose teak timbers had somehow defied a century of weather, but in fact it’s a Second World War tanker, abandoned in the 1950s and made of ferro-concrete. It’ll still give you tingles, though.

 

 

PHOTO CAPTION

Barbara Ann & Gary Andersen in the front hall of the Shipman House B & B.

PHOTO CREDIT

John Masters/Meridian Writers’ Group

Hilo’s impressive Shipman House B&B

Meridian Writers’ Group

HILO, Hawaii–The enterprise didn’t start auspiciously. When Barbara Ann Andersen told her husband Gary she wanted to buy a rundown, century-old, 836-square-metre house 3,850 kilometres away, move in and run it as a B&B, the first words out of his mouth were, "You’re brain dead."

On the plus side, it was the house Barbara Ann had grown up in, as had two generations of her family before her. Perhaps the finest house in the Big Island town of Hilo, it still had many of its original furnishings. Its location, on a panoramic hill above a jungle stream, would certainly make it a draw for visitors.

On the minus side, Gary knew how much work it would take to fix up the place. Two maiden aunts had spent their lives there and when the last of them died in the 1980s the place began to decay.

"It looked like a haunted house," Barbara Ann admits. "The windows weren’t broken, but the shutters were ajar and some had fallen off." The driveway was overgrown and the roof needed mending. One company gave a quote on what painting it would cost: $126,000.

It seemed, as Gary had less-than-tactfully suggested, like a bad idea. He and Barbara Ann had lived in California for 25 years, raising two children there. He had a good job with a computer-industry company in San Francisco. But the ancestral home was about to be sold and besides, Barbara Ann had never cared for California that much. And so the 1899 Shipman House welcomed home a long-lost daughter.

It took more than a year to restore it. The Andersens did most of the work themselves – including a lot of the painting. Their marriage somehow survived. They opened for business in April 1997.

Today Gary devotes himself to making the splendid fruit tray that greets guests each morning in the breakfast room. Most of it is from their garden: rambutan, passion fruit, white and pink guava, orange and papaya. He points them out with evident pleasure.

The house itself looks splendid. The common rooms are big, sunlit and high-ceilinged. In the living room alcove is a 1912 Steinway grand piano once played by Queen Lili‘uokalani, a friend of the family and the last queen of Hawaii. (Guests with musical ability are welcome to use it.)

The guest rooms all have private baths. Auntie Clara’s (the nicest) and Auntie Carrie’s are upstairs. Flossie’s, on the main floor, is more modest, but it has the most colourful history: Jack London stayed in it in 1907. (Two more rooms are in the nearby 1910 guest house.)

If you were suitably unambitious, you could forgo the 45-minute drive to Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park to see the fresh lava flows and spend your day instead on the generous porch, looking out towards Hilo Bay. If it’s Wednesday, though, don’t get too comfortable. That evening the porch is taken over by the hula class Barbara Ann is a member of. They’re serious dancers, but if you’re interested you can join in.

ACCESS

For more information on the Shipman House B & B visit its website at www.hilo-hawaii.com .

For information on travel in Hawaii visit the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau website at www.gohawaii.com .