There are many ways to see Oahu, but the most unforgettable is to walk around its coast alone.
When I told my friend Alia I was going to walk around Oahu by myself, she said, "You are not afraid of anything, are you?" The truth is I am afraid of everything but try not to show it.
Oahu is where I grew up, the Hawaiian island I love the most. My goal was to view my island more slowly than I usually see it from the window of my car. I also hoped the challenge of the 130-mile trek would make me physically stronger and less timid.
My plan was to walk an average of 26 miles a day for six days — roughly the equivalent of a marathon a day. I designed each section of my hike to end at the home of a friend where I could anticipate a hot dinner, a glass of wine, companionship and a soft bed.
Each day, I wore a bright yellow shirt to make myself highly visible to potentially distracted drivers on roads with narrow shoulders. Everything I needed was crammed into the large red fanny pack I normally use for short hikes, not six-day expeditions.
I tucked in a change of walking clothes, three pairs of socks, and a skirt and T-shirt to wear each evening after an anticipated hot shower. I carried a water bottle I planned to refill whenever I arrived at a beach park. I had a credit card and cash to buy food along the way.
My walk began on the day after Christmas at downtown Honolulu’s Aloha Tower. Euphoria lingered from multiple glasses of holiday Champagne. Everything seemed possible as I took off in the early morning darkness.
The first day was 28 miles from downtown Honolulu to Kailua around Oahu’s east coast. Since these roads are close to my house near Diamond Head Crater, I thought the walking would be easy because I pass over the same route daily in my car. But the first day turned out to be the most difficult of the journey.
It started easy enough, with the sun coming up as I sped through Waikiki and past Diamond Head and my childhood home on the beach at Kahala. But as I kept moving, the sun got hotter and hotter. I was mentally unprepared for how daunting it can be to walk long, straight stretches of highway such as Kalanianaole, miles of asphalt a car can zoom over in minutes. Discouraged, I learned my first lesson: economize, don’t take any step you don’t have to take. When I got to Hawaii Kai, I refused even to cross the street to buy the icy Starbucks Frappuccino I had been craving for hours.
The first day was not only the longest, but also the scariest. Hugging the narrow shoulder of the two-lane road going around the sea cliffs after the suburbs of Hawaii Kai was terrifying. Waves crashed onto the shore straight below where I inched along the road. I could feel the speeding cars almost brush me. One car filled with young men made me crouch in fear when they yelled at me, one of the riders reaching out his arm trying to grab me.
When I arrived in the seaside village of Waimanalo late in the afternoon, Serg’s Mexican Kitchen served me a vegetarian quesadilla, a cheesy, salty, toasted tortilla that revived my spirits.
That night, Sheree and Levani Lipton provided a pasta dinner and a large guest room in their beachfront Kailua house not far from where President Barack Obama and his family were vacationing. Sheree is a writer. Her daughter, Levani, a Harvard graduate, is reviewing her options after losing a bid for a state Senate seat in last year’s election. Levani talked about what she planned to do with the rest of her life while I worried about surviving the next day without getting sideswiped by a car.
The Liptons reminded me of the importance of friends. I like to think of myself as a loner, needing no one, but traveling this old-fashioned way by foot is almost impossible without depending on the kindness of others. There were no hotels near most of my evening stops. My friends gave me food, water, shelter and small surprises like the energy bars Levani left by my bed.
They also offered something more significant: their unquestioning support. I learned to take each of their gifts without hesitation. If someone gave me chocolate, I accepted, though normally I would have rejected it as too fattening. On this journey the candy became a source of comfort as I walked, a sweet souvenir of my friends’ collective effort to help me succeed.
The next day, my route hugged the coast from Kailua to Kaaawa. Again, the distances were discouraging. Heeia had always been a breeze to get through on my mountain bike, but by foot it seemed as if I would never reach the Hygienic Store in Kahaluu.
Still, slow travel has its benefits. I could smell the crown flower bushes along the road, listen to haole koa pods rustle in the wind and experience weird sounds I certainly would have missed in a car. Rounding one of the curves in Heeia, I was astounded to hear the rumbling drone of a bagpipe blasting out of a grove of palm trees. As I got closer, I slowed down to listen to a red-haired woman practicing the Scottish pipes on a Heeia hill.
Friends have asked me if I was rewarded with personal insights on the journey, but sadly, epiphanies eluded me. I ruminated mostly about the difficulties ahead or wondered where I would buy my next cold drink or a salty, greasy snack.
I was often too hot and tired to talk. When I finally stopped in Kaneohe to have my anticipated Frappuccino, I ran into my friend Laura Kay Rand. We exchanged a few words before I purchased my drink. Then I went to another table rather than sit with her. We continued our conversation by texting — much less tiring than speaking. She understood.
My hosts for the evening were Ian and Meda Lind at their Kaaawa house overlooking Chinaman’s Hat. Meda is a criminologist and a professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Ian is a journalist. We drank wine and laughed as one of their eight cats kept jumping on the table to join us as we ate barbecued bananas and salmon.
I tried to take off on my journey each morning soon after sunrise, when it was light enough for me to be seen by motorists. The next day involved almost 28 miles along the coast from Kaaawa to Haleiwa. This section, on Oahu’s fabled North Shore with its famous surfing beaches such as the Banzai Pipeline, should have been the most exciting, but the sun was burning hot and the long stretches of road left me discouraged. It was lonely.
My feet were starting to develop blisters that would pain me the rest of the trip. It was pride that kept me going: I was determined to circle the island. Whenever I wanted to give up, I would take out the large chocolate bar the Linds had given me and promise myself a single square of chocolate if I could make it to the next town.
The two golf courses fronting Turtle Bay Resort seemed to go on forever. As I walked alongside them, I developed a new fear that distracted me from my much-anticipated inner meditation: I worried about getting hit in the head with a golf ball. An embarrassing way to die … not what I wanted on a journey I had hoped would be heroic.
I arrived in Haleiwa after dark to feel my way with a flashlight down a narrow dirt lane, past barking dogs, to Jenni Hernando’s antique-filled house on Anahulu Stream behind Haleiwa town. Jenni and her partner, Edison de Paula, run a surf camp, and I joined their students for a feast of vegetarian curry, green salad and mushroom burgers washed down with New Zealand sauvignon blanc. David Petty, from Rochester, N.Y., told me not to worry about my lack of deep thoughts on the road. He said it was a good sign my mind was becoming uncluttered.
I expected the next day to be the worst because of the potentially dangerous passage around Kaena Point, but despite one big fright, the walk turned out to be the best of the trip.
My route was from Haleiwa town around Kaena Point to Makaha. Kaena, which in Hawaiian means "the heat," is the westernmost tip of Oahu. The rutted dirt road that goes partially around the point is closed off to cars. At about the midway point, the dirt road turns into a rocky trail.
Ancient Hawaiians believed Kaena to be the jumping-off point for dead peoples’ souls on their way to the next world. It is a sweltering, shadeless, 6-mile trek, but ever-changing views of lava rock formations and huge waves bashing the shore kept the trudge interesting.
Hikers I met assured me I was on the correct trail to get around to the Makaha side. I seemed to be headed in the right direction, but the path I was following ended abruptly in a dangerous drop. I foolishly decided to climb down over crumbling volcanic rock rather than expend extra steps to find a safer route. I slipped and slid halfway down the cliff.
By the time I realized I was in danger of falling off, it was too late to turn back. My legs were trembling. I threw off my pack to become more balanced. The pack rolled down the cliff, mercifully stopping before it slipped over the side into the ocean. Moving slowly on my butt, I finally made it safely to the trail far below. At the bottom I explained to an astounded young hiker who had watched me descend the cliff that I was passing through Kaena on my way around the island. She asked, "Is that what you do for a living?"
Retired Waianae High School history teacher Sarah Jane Watson met me when I came off the Kaena trail to accompany me on the lonely stretch from Yokohama Beach to Makaha. Sarah Jane, a former Peace Corps volunteer in Iran, had agreed to accompany me when I met her only a few nights before at a party. We both agreed this remote stretch of the road by Makua Cave, often peopled by homeless campers, might be dangerous for a woman walking alone. As it turned out, the campers we passed in beach parks waved to us and wished us well. Most of their attention was focused on their own beer gatherings, not us.
When we got to Makaha, Sarah Jane and I parted company. I spent the night by myself in Makaha Valley Towers. My host, Jim Richardson, a former newspaper editor, was away in Arizona, but he let me use his two-bedroom apartment on the 19th floor of one of the condo’s towers. His refrigerator was filled with beer, Italian cheese and mango ice cream; I dined on crackers and cheese and Mexican beer while watching a red sun slowly descend into the ocean.
Jim has three coffee machines, each one more modern than the next, and I couldn’t figure out how they worked. I was frustrated when I woke up the next day because I had come to depend on a jolt of caffeine to face my daily march.
I walked to the Waianae McDonald’s for coffee and eggs. When I finished breakfast, a surprise awaited me outside. My friend Jackie Kido was standing by the highway waiting to accompany me for the next six miles from Waianae to Nanakuli. Jackie, who was Gov. Ben Cayetano’s communications director, had figured out my location by reading about my trip on Facebook. As we talked and laughed, the time sped by. I forgot about my blisters.
From Nanakuli I walked by myself to Kapolei where my friend Pat Monroe picked me up and drove me to Ewa Beach to spend the night at her house. By now my feet were covered with blisters, which I washed and protected with moleskin padding.
The next day, Pat drove me back to Farrington Highway where I took off on my last 20-mile stretch to Aloha Tower. The pain was especially sharp now on the bruised bottom of my right foot. I popped Tylenol, determined to finish the odyssey.
In Waipahu, Jackie connected with me again for the final push. It went well until we accidentally took two wrong turns on the road near Pearl City and ended up walking on the eastbound H-1 freeway, with hundreds of cars speeding by us at 70 miles per hour. Jackie seemed less scared than I was. We walked single file, hoping not to be sideswiped, praying for a way to get off, but there were no exits for as far as we could see.
Then, incredibly, a taxicab pulled up. The driver urged us to get in. He kept repeating how dangerous it was for us to be on the freeway. I momentarily, in a flash of dumbness, wanted to reject the ride, thinking it would be cheating on my walking mileage.
The driver agreed to drop us off at the nearest exit. As we sped along in the safety of the cab, the driver introduced himself as Mark Salameh and told us he was a Palestinian who had lived in the United States for 20 years. He refused our repeated offers to pay him. He said, "You know the word honey? My philosophy is you eat honey, you s— honey." He said that meant if you do good things, good things will come back to you. He dropped us off at Neal S. Blaisdell Park in Pearl City.
From Pearl City it was a long but easy walk all the way to Aloha Tower, which we reached at exactly 5 p.m. New Year’s Eve.
As I write this, I am home now reflecting on everything that happened. My biggest wish would be to say the Oahu perimeter walk made my body tougher, but ironically the expedition I undertook to become stronger made me weaker. My right foot swelled to twice its normal size, causing searing pain whenever I walked. My doctor told me my bruised foot would require a month of rest to recover. And he was right.
I am not sure if my mind is stronger, either. I guess all I can say is I have done something few others have accomplished. Even the ancient Hawaiians covered much of their long-distance travel around Oahu by canoe, not on foot. Maybe that is enough to know. I have done something rare. And maybe, before I left home, I already was the brave person I hoped to become.
Denby Fawcett is a Hawaii writer and former print and television reporter.
