Discovering Hawaii, The Big Island: When Aloha Means F*** You, Big Island Style

My parents made their way to Hawaii in 1959, when my dad was stationed at the naval base near Hilo. They were on the Big Island for three years, and my mother hated it. She really did, which surprised me. I would have thought that someone who loved plants, chickens and the countryside would adore Hawaii, which seems to be made up of equal parts of sweet botanicals, brightly hued birds and soft breezes. She didn't like the people-or, more specifically, the way she was treated by the people of Hawaii. She said they were rude, that they resented people like her, who came from other places and stayed much too long. Being a Navy wife, she probably did encounter certain particular hostilities, reserved by knowing peoples everywhere for members of the military, which invades, destroys and moves on. But this was personal: my mother took away a sincere and lasting dislike for Hawaii because of the interpersonal juju of the place.

Now, in 2006, I come to the Big Island with my husband, for as long a vacation as we can manage with a house and a cat and the potential of freezing pipes back home and work that doesn't stop, even for a tropical vacation. We are delighted-with the scent of flowers in the air and the rainbow of bougainvilleas lining the roads. But our first encounter with the Big Island spirit takes place, as it does for so many, at the car rental agency immediately outside Kona's airport. After an 18 hour trip on three different planes, arriving at 9:30 pm, it takes an hour to get the car, and when we do, it isn't a car. It's a behemoth: some sort of Saturn minivan perfectly suited to a family of four. We are a family of two who packed light, hoping for something smaller with better gas mileage and a smaller turning radius for the bikini-thin roads between Kona and Captain Cook, which will be our main stomping grounds for the next nine days. And equally narrow roads near Hilo, Volcano and Waimea for the next nine days. But the car rental people don't have anything smaller, and there we are, maneuvering the bright white, tourist-haole vehicle out of the small parking lot. "Aloha!" called the rental people. "Yeah, right", we mutter, already on the alert for irony.

The spirit of aloha follows us like a miasma, more redolent than the vog that rolls across the mountain to the sea, but invisible. ("Vog" stands for "volcano fog", a combination of fog and grey volcano dust). We visit the Bay View Coffee Farm, known for not only its samples of Kona but its free tours. We ask the gray-haired guy at the desk about the tours, and he ruefully explains: "Gee, I'm the guy who does the tour, but I'm working here now, and I'd have to call down to get someone to come up and take my place." He makes no move toward the phone, and we're proud-we're not gonna beg. Besides, I don't give a damn about his coffee farm-there are dozens just like it. Just thought it would be nice to stroll among the trees and talk botany with a knowledgeable tour guide. Buying coffee was out-Bay View Farm's gift shop is laden not only with beans but with a dozen kinds of highly perfumed Hawaiian soaps, and it smells like soap, not coffee. Mike, who's the coffee drinker, finds even the darkest roast insipid. The thing is a bust, and as we wander aimlessly out the door, the man at the desk remembers his customer service training and calls out to us-"Aloha!" he says, and we realize that this word, which is purported to carry a message of love and well-intentioned spirit has become something else: namely, a way to get rid of people you've let down.

More aloha-from the owner of the guest house who brought us our first breakfast-two frozen, stale bagels and three tablespoons of coffee in a ziplock bag. When we had asked by email from Canada about Internet access, we were told that we could get it at the library. The librarian begged to differ, stating shortened summer hours (which she hadn't updated on the phone line), a five day closure due to President's Day, which will puzzle me to the end of my life, and the peculiar fact that she doesn't like to give Visitor cards to people who won't be using them much, although to use the library at all, as visitors, we were required to have a card. The nearest Internet is miles away, in Kona, where the clogged artery of Ali'I Drive, perambulated by the gold-tennis-bracelet and Brazilian-bikini-wax crowd is home to tourist shops on a grand scale, since that's also where the King Kamehahameha Hotel serves its moneyed multitudes and where cruise ships the size of nothing else on Earth disgorge thousands of Boomer passengers at a time. There are three Internet café's in Kona, but there is no parking. The librarian was conscientious in telling us about a mall where an internet café resides-some 40 minutes up the road from where we stood.

If she had been more honest, she would have told us, "We don't like strangers to use our library, so get lost." What she said, as we made our way back to the White Invader, was, so predictably, "Aloha!", spoken in a calling, dying fall of utterly false regret. "That means 'f*** you', doesn't it?" I asked Mike. "You got it," was his grim reply.