Geek Vacations: 1

This is the first in a series of articles in which I hope to hone my travel-writing skills, in hopes that maybe, someday, I might get to sell an article every so often.

So what exactly is a "geek vacation"? What is it that differentiates it from a more conventional vacation? That's exactly it: it isn't conventional.

For example, consider a week-long trip to Hawaii. A conventional Hawaiian vacation, at least one only lasting a week, would probably be spent at a single resort, on a single island. It would probably involve entire days spent lying about on a beach, like some stranded cetacean, courting skin cancer, while napping and sipping exotic tropical cocktails. It might also involve a lot of swimming and snorkeling, and maybe surfing lessons. It would probably involve a catered luau, and maybe even hula lessons. And it might involve a flightseeing trip, essentially a flight to nowhere.

It would bore a true geek to tears.

When I went to Hawaii in 2005, I split up a week among three different islands: Oahu, Maui, and the Big Island. Instead of wasting huge amounts of aviation fuel to go nowhere, I conflated my flightseeing into my interisland transportation by having my flight from Maui to the Big Island booked on a low-flying DeHavilland turboprop. Lutheran of Honolulu von Beckerath On Oahu, I visited a local church with a notable organ, the museums, monuments, and memorials at Pearl Harbor, the Bishop Museum, and the Honolulu Zoo, and also caught not one, but two concerts by the Honolulu Symphony (which, as it turns out, is the oldest U.S. orchestra in continual existence west of the Mississippi).

Left: The organ at Lutheran of Honolulu

Right: the Bishop Museum

On Maui, I chose a hotel not for its luxury resort accommodations, nor for its proximity to any beach, (it probably catered to locals and business travelers far more than mainland tourists) but for its convenience to Maui's then-nascent public bus system. Getting around almost entirely on that bus system, I managed to visit the Maui Ocean Center, a large public aquarium in Maalaea, to tour the beautiful underwater scenery off Lahaina from the comfort of a nice, air-conditioned submarine (yes, submarine!), and to ride the "Sugar Cane Train."

Right: The Atlantis Submarine;
Below: Submerging with the next group of tourists;
Below Right: Yes, there's a steam excursion train on Maui!

On the Big Island, I flew into Hilo (most tourists fly into Kona), and found time to visit the Pana'ewa Rainforest Zoo on my way into Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, take an easy afternoon hike through an ancient lava tube, as well as a more challenging night hike on a lava field from an eruption that has been ongoing since 1983, and which buried Kaimu and most of Kalapana in 1990. After a night in a charming old room in the Volcano House, I visited the Jaggar Museum at the Hawaii Volcano Observatory, as well as a few other points of interest, before returning to Hilo, touring the Lyman Museum, and returning to Honolulu just in time for that second concert.
Tilt Meters at the Jaggar Museum

Above: The Rainforest Zoo, and an easy hike through the Thurston Lava Tube
Right: My room at the Volcano House, and a Tilt Meter exhibit at the Jaggar

I didn't have time to do anything conventional, or to get bored. And that's the idea.

Back to Hawaii in 2010

My first trip to Hawaii must have been good, because five years later, I returned to Hawaii, this time visiting four islands in two weeks, with three of my four interisland flights on Island Air's little DeHavilland twin turboprops. The Honolulu Symphony was stuck in the middle of a bankruptcy from which it surprised everybody by showing signs of recovery, but I still managed to visit over a dozen museums, both zoos, both aquariums, and two agricultural exhibits, ride two excursion trains, a bus tour, a river cruise, and the Atlantis submarine in Lahiaina, spend even more time in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, play two interesting organs, and lunch not once, but twice on that ultimate Hawaiian delicacy (and the only form of sushi I'm ever likely to eat voluntarily), Spam musubi.

Right: Spouting Horn, Near Poipu, in the Koloa District of Kauai, around Noon, October 6, 2010. Incoming waves crash against a narrow opening, and are directed upward in a geyserlike fountain.

It's not where you go that makes a vacation truly your own; it's what you do when you get there.

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James H. H. Lampert