Oh my! These guys love using vowels out here! I am actually having trouble pronouncing street names, the names they give to food, drinks, blah blah blaaaoooaahhha!!! Basically I'm in the State of Hawaii, on an island called Oahu, on a beach called Wakiki, in a hotel called Moana, on an avenue called Kalakaua.... I'm outa breath!! Consonant please!!
Well what can I say, Hawaii is beautiful and I've only seen a tiny tiny bit of the Island so far (haven't left the Waikiki peninsula).. I plan on heading North of the Island, as although this place is stunning, it just isn't what I'm looking for.
Waikiki is BUSY!! Oxford street at 1pm on a Saturday busy and everyone walks with what I now call "The Tourist Shuffle".... Which basically consist off scraping their flip flops across the pavement at a frightening rate of of 1-mph, while window shopping for absolute shite! "The Tourist Shuffle"!
It's tortuous trying to get anywhere.....
There are Japanese tourists everywhere, EVERYWHERE I say.. They seem to have some fascination with this place (no Pearl Harbour jokes please) and whenever there are heaps of Japanese tourists, everything is high-end. Prada/Fendi/Trump Hotels/Nobu - everywhere covered in twinkly lights etc.. It's pristine, well groomed, gorgeous and basically costs a fortune. As we know, I don't mind partaking in a bit of self indulgence but currently I'm here to travel and experience culture, not for a holiday, not to shop, not to indulge (ahem..)..
So I plan on heading to the North of the Island where it is DEAD!! I'm going to snorkel, sit watching the surfers (North beach is a legendary surfing Mecca). I'm going to finish off the books I've been reading, take some local tours and work on the tan, which is currently pretty pathetic. i must say - i measured myself against a Deluxe paint chart and my closest comparison was Pharaohs Gold 5..
I long to be a Fiesty Nutmeg 9...
I've found a nice little hostel for the week called "Ho O' Nanea Hale" (more fucking vowels) and after that I will be moving to The Big Island to seek out that hippy retreat place I mentioned, which will hopefully help me channel my sacred energy :-)
In all fairness, I will probably last 2 nights as the only thing I like to channel on a regular basis is Gin and Curry! My sacramental offerings to myself. Namaste my friends...
A Couple of days later.....
Ok, I'm now in the North Shore and everything didn't do as planned. I had hired out a car for the week as Hawaii is expensive for taxis and it worked out not too much more to get a car for the week. Buses are out of the equation as they take too long and I didn't want to be carting about my luggage. Anyway, long story short, paid for weeks rental, went to pick up the car and realised I've lost my photographic part of my licence. No car for me then.. And to add insult to injury, they decided they are keeping my full weeks rental, which works out £135. So pissed off and had to look for another form of transport. A one way taxi would have cost me over $100, so I looked on Craiglist, which is a website similar to gumtree and found someone to take me there for $40 a resultamundo!!
Arrived next day in North Shore, thanks to my new friend Dre, who teaches Surfing at turtle bay. The drive was about an hour and in this time he tells me some local knowledge, some of it quite shocking. Everyone thinks of Hawaii as a place of hula dancers, bras made of coconuts and cheeky wee ukelele players. Wrong!! There is a massive gang culture in Hawaii, by 2 major gangs. He told me that these guys are real bad asses and don't approve of outsiders coming to the Islands, building their homes and business here and also stealing their surf waves. The 2 main gangs are Wolfpak (great gang name eh?) and Da Hui and they both have their own clothing ranges - crazy!! These guys have been so hostile to "non-islanders" that people have been trying to veto holding the surf championships here, due to the amount of violent altercations. It was fascinating!! I had a scour of the Internet when I arrived at the new digs and found this article about them:
SUNSET BEACH, Hawaii — They are known as the Wolfpak or simply “the boys.” They use fear and their fists to command respect in the surf along the North Shore of Oahu, a seven-mile stretch of some of the world’s most renowned waves. At the celebrated Banzai Pipeline, they determine which waves go to whom, and punish those who breach their code of respect for local residents and the waves.
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The Wolfpak’s members have tried to soften their image with charitable works, but they have learned that a hard-earned reputation can be hard to shake.
The Pipeline is “like any surf spot,” said Randy Rarick, executive director of the Vans Triple Crown of Surfing, which includes the Pipeline Masters.
“You have locals, and you have locals who enforce the unwritten rules,” Rarick said. “And sometimes that leads to violence, sort of shady characters dictating. It’s kind of like Mafia control in the surf.”
This persists even as wealth has poured into the North Shore through the vacation-home market.
“The intimidation was and still is a big part of the North Shore experience,” said Shaun Tomson, the world surfing champion in 1977 and the producer of a documentary about the seminal professional surfing scene on the North Shore, “Bustin’ Down the Door,” released on DVD this month. “That’s just the way it is. You go there as a surfer knowing that that’s part of the experience.”
The Wolfpak’s loosely affiliated membership comes mostly from the neighboring island of Kauai. It includes professional surfers like the three-time world champion Andy Irons, 30, and his brother, Bruce, 29, a talented free surfer.
The most notorious member is the group’s enforcer, Kala Alexander, a professional surfer with muscular tattooed arms and “Wolfpak” inked across his knuckles.
In 2007, Alexander starred in “The 808,” a reality television series about the Wolfpak and the North Shore, and appeared in the films “Blue Crush” and “Forgetting Sarah Marshall.” But he has also gained fame for YouTube videos that show him pummeling surfers on the sand several years ago.
“The code is to respect other people,” Alexander, 39, said. “People come over here and don’t respect other people. You’re going to run into problems if you do that.”
That is what happened to Chris Ward, a 30-year-old professional from San Clemente, Calif., and runner-up to Kelly Slater last month at the Pipeline Masters. In November, Australian publications reported that Ward cut off a local surfer while riding a wave at Pipeline. He was banished to the beach, where a Wolfpak member smacked him in the head. Without providing details, Ward confirmed that the incident happened.
“It’s been like that for four decades,” said Peter Townend, who in 1976 won the first world championship of surfing on the North Shore. In 1978, he said, he was punched out at a surf break called Off the Wall. In that year he required a police escort to compete in the Pipeline Masters because of threats against him.
During the 2007 Pipeline Masters, a fracas in the water spilled onto the beach as Sunny Garcia of Hawaii chased his opening-round opponent, Neco Padaratz of Brazil. Padaratz fled, followed by Garcia and some locals. The police eventually escorted Padaratz from the contest site.
Such incidents create debate about localism, a brand of territorialism that has been practiced at surf breaks around the world for decades. Yet the North Shore remains a focal point because its breaks are a proving ground for professional aspirants who arrive each winter along with the massive swells out of the North Pacific.
“It’s really the center of the surfing universe,” Tomson said. “It’s like Mount Everest for surfers everywhere. And Pipeline is really the wave one needs to come to terms with as a surfer in order to be considered a great surfer.”
As surfing has become increasingly popular, some say fear of violent reprisal ensures order and safety at congested and perilous surf spots like Pipeline.
“It’s a dangerous environment, and without a self-governing control pattern it would just be chaos out there,” Rarick said.
At Pipeline, large, punishing waves break over a shallow-water reef. With a small takeoff zone comes a small window of time to make critical decisions and dozens of surfers vying for the same waves. Pipeline is considered one of the world’s most dangerous surf spots.
No official figures exist on fatalities. But a 2008 book, “The Pipeline: Deep Inside the World’s Most Respected Wave,” asserted that more than 30 people had died there since it was first surfed in 1961.
“It’s a very intense crowd,” said Slater, 36, of Cocoa Beach, Fla. “It’s as intense as anywhere in the world because there are serious consequences if you drop in on somebody and they got hurt, or if you wipe out and hurt yourself.”
The Wolfpak formed a decade ago when Alexander moved to the North Shore and joined his childhood friend Kai Garcia, a former professional surfer and jujitsu champion known as Kaiborg for his fearsome superhuman reputation. Alexander had recently been released from prison after serving time for assault.“It was crowded when I came here,” Alexander said about Pipeline. “A lot of people in the water, not much respect. Where I grew up on Kauai, you respect everybody in the water, especially your elders. Don’t step out of line. We just brought that mentality over here.”
At the time there was a void in the Pipeline lineup as those who regulated the waves during the 1990s, like Derek Ho, Johnny Boy Gomes and Marvin Foster, had grown older and moved on. And there was a template for a group like the Wolfpak.
With outsiders and the burgeoning professional contest circuit shunting them from their favorite surf spots, some Hawaiian surfers banded together in 1976 to form the Hui O He’e Nalu, or Club of Wave Sliders. “That was one of the reasons the Hui O He’e Nalu was formed, to regulate the surf breaks,” said Bryan Amona, a founding member. “Not to be walked all over.”
In 1975, a brash group of surfers from South Africa and Australia swept the North Shore contests and monopolized news media coverage. The Australians even boasted of their superiority to their Hawaiian counterparts.
Some Hawaiians, feeling disrespected at home in a sport their ancestors invented, threatened and thrashed the outsiders when they returned the next winter.
“For the Hawaiians, respect is an important concept, particularly when it comes to being in the ocean,” said Isaiah Helekunihi Walker, a professor of history at Brigham Young University, Hawaii, who has written about a Hawaiian renaissance in surfing on the North Shore.
Members of Hui O He’e Nalu, known as Da Hui or the Black Shorts, for their uniform surf trunks, paddled into waves during competitions to protest that the water had been closed to them.
Eddie Rothman, another Da Hui founder, who with other members has parlayed the club’s name and logo into a surf apparel brand, said violence against the outsiders was not coordinated.
Fascinating stuff eh?
Anyway, enough about them. Here are some pics of the new hostel I am staying. I have to admit, it's beautiful and although its more expensive than other hostels, at $38 a night - it's spotlessly clean, has stunning gardens and the beach is right across the road. The downside side is there is nothing here... NOTHING! There is a petrol garage 5 mins up the road, so I might pop up there for a Deisel shandy later.. Either that or is a 10 min bus ride into the closest town of Haliewa.
I've been looking at excursions in the local area and there is a company that drives you 3 miles out into the ocean and throws you into a cage in shark infested waters - it looks scary but very cool and I doubt there are many places where you can partake in this activity. I'm going to do it!! Yikes..
Also, I now know why the Hawaiin language is so breathy and full of vowels. They only have 13 letters in their alphabet, so I suppose they just trying to make do with the letters there got. Useless trivia but always handy for a pub quiz when back in Blighty!
Adios me amigos xxx
Location:Pupukea,United States
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