Читать книгу Hawaii Trails. Walks Strolls and Treks on the Big Island онлайн

5 страница из 81

If possible, stay a week or more on the island of Hawaii. The road that encircles most of the island is over 220 miles long—and it doesn’t get you to the best of the scenery and hiking trails. Give yourself time to move around to different lodgings in order to more fully explore different hiking areas. You could easily spend a month on the island of Hawaii. That’s how big and how spectacular the Big Island is!

Be a good visitor

Along the waterfront in Kailua on the Kona Coast (often called “Kailua-Kona”), the rental cars creep along bumper to bumper. Horns honk. Tourist drivers scream at tourist pedestrians. What the hell kind of tropical paradise is this?! you may think if you’re caught in Kailua-Kona traffic. Where’s that aloha spirit? Fortunately, there are plenty of less crowded, less frantic places on the Big Island.

Still, Hawaii is not Paradise. Paradise is infinite and self-renewing. Hawaii is a real place of finite space and resources, where real people live real lives with jobs, families, budgets, and bills. Hawaii needs loving care from its visitors as well as from its natives. As the number of tourists increases, I think it becomes important that we visitors actively contribute to the aloha spirit instead of just passively expecting to receive it. Bring your best manners and your patience with you to the Big Island. Be the first to smile and wave. Be the first to pull your car over so that someone else can pass. Be scrupulous in observing the rules of the trail in order to help preserve what’s left of Hawaii’s vanishing wild places. NO TRESPASSING, KEEP OUT, or KAPU (“forbidden”) signs mean, “You stay out.” Please respect those signs.