Oahu: The Heart and Soul of Hawaii's Paradise

A paradise at the other end of the world. Hawaii. Oahu is the main island of the Hawaiian archipelago. Comprising 137 islands and atolls, it lies in the middle of the Pacific. No other land mass in the world lies this far away from the mainland. Oahu is home to the best surfers in the world, both on land and underwater. This small space is home to a potpourri of people and natural forms. Evergreen volcanic mountains and the blue of probably the most famous waves in the world. A fantastic place, not just for surfers. Almost 3,700 kilometres from the North American mainland lies the 50th state of the USA, Hawaii. Oahu is the third largest island of the archipelago and is home to one third of all inhabitants. It is the economic and cultural hub of the archipelago. To really get a feel of how people live on this island, it's best to first make a trip to the North Shore, the northern shore of Oahu. It is the home of the most famous surfers and the epicentre of the Aloha State. This is what the Americans like to call Hawaii. Aloha is much more than just a greeting here. It reflects an attitude to life and symbolises the serenity and hospitality of the locals. The diverse and lush nature, the endless sea and the ever-shining sun of Hawaii. Noelani Love comes to the Banzai Pipeline every morning. It's probably the most famous beach. She lives the Aloha lifestyle with her 10-year-old son, Aokai, just a few metres from the ocean. That's where you don't want to fall. That's a heavy wave. You don't want to get caught inside on one of these waves. Well, Pipeline is my favourite wave. Pipeline, or sometimes there's a sandbar here at Ihukai. So I like to just check the waves, the conditions, if it's glassy. I'm kind of spoiled because I live here on the North Shore, so I prefer really clean and glassy conditions. So it looks a little bit big today for me. There's a crowd and it's not very glassy, so I'm going to go check somewhere else, probably Waimea Bay, because that's another favourite spot when the waves are a little bit bigger. Waimea Bay is a little bit more protected and safe, and so the waves aren't as big there. And I love body surfing Waimea. Waimea Bay is named after the river Waimea. In Hawaiian, that means reddish water. The Waimea Bay is an important place for the local surfing history. In the 50s, the first monster waves, so-called big waves, were ridden here. Every morning, Noelani goes body surfing. All she needs are flippers. She surfs using only her body. A very special meditative moment. For ten years, she's begun her day thus. Thirteen years ago, Noelani came back to the island from the mainland. Noelani knows Oahu from an early age. Her mother is Hawaiian. Further north, steep mountains rise to the skies. Oahu is the result of two volcanoes, the Waianae and the Koalu, which extend through the island from north to south. In the very south of Oahu lies the capital of Hawaii, Honolulu, with the famous diamond head in the background. With almost 360,000 inhabitants, Honolulu is a small metropolis. At its center is the Noelani Palace, the former residence of King Kamehameha III. In 1845, he appointed Honolulu the permanent capital of Hawaii. Not far away is Waikiki Beach, originally a retreat for the royal family. The coastline is now one of the most famous beaches in the world. Wiki is written on the sidewall. In Hawaiian, it means to hurry or rush, and indeed, there is a lot going on at Waikiki Beach. Everything here revolves around surfing. The Duke Kahanamoku is honored with colorful leis. Leis are flower chains. They've always had an important meaning in the Hawaiian culture. Hawaiians prefer to buy them in Chinatown at Cindy's Lei Shop, probably the most famous lei flower shop far and wide. Cindy, who is Chinese, opened the shop 30 years ago. Since then, flower decorations for neck and head have been made here, by hand of course. Today Cindy is 92 years old and has left all her knowledge to her daughter Carol. She's been running the family business for more than 10 years. This is what we refer to as our local style haku. All local material except for the status which is imported. But everything else in this haku is from here, from the island. And so one would look like this. I think Hawaii people are really special. We're very generous. We give. And one of the biggest gestures that you can do for remembering somebody or being homesick or sad or happy is the gifting of a lei. And I think through all the years, that strength of lei gifting has been unwavering to what it is today. They want to know why you're purchasing a haku. Oh, we're having a dinner tonight, our tai chi class. And you're not showing this this afternoon are you? It's for our teacher, our tai chi teacher. So we want it to be kind of special. Again, gift of love, gift of honoring, generosity, local style. I'll take a look at the colors. Even overseas on the U.S. mainland, flower arrangements have long since become a symbol of the aloha feeling. Carol and her team send out lots of leis every day. This is an unusually large order. Just from the selection, I can tell that this person is familiar with leis and into the local kind of flowers. When we do get an order that's difficult to fulfill, sometimes we'll ask our neighbors across the ways to see if they can help us with one or two items. Our second option would be to call the customer and let them know that, say we're short, this is too last minute, can we get a second choice? And usually the customer's pretty understanding. Sometimes not, but more times yes. And so we deal with that second choice. Because these are made, they're farmed, they're natural. You know, you just can't, if the production's not there, then it can't be helped. We try to pack it with loving care. And people have commented that they like, they even read the newspaper, because it's news about Hawaii. Cool, huh? Asian culture is an integral part of Hawaii. Of the 1.3 million inhabitants, more than 500,000 come from Asia. In Chinatown, even the street signs are in Chinese. Here, locals and tourists alike cavort. Only a few visitors make it to the western part of the island. It lies in the slipstream of the Waianae mountain range, where the rain clouds rarely visit. That's why the vegetation is this dry. Many of the indigenous people of Hawaii and their descendants live here. They are of Polynesian descent and have hung on to their traditions, but only few still speak Hawaiian. For Keone Nunez, it is his mother tongue. He is known worldwide for his traditional tattoo work. However, he sees himself more as a cultural ambassador who carries the Hawaiian traditions to the world at large. Actually, afford the individual an opportunity to connect with their family, regardless of who their family is or where they're from, in a significant fashion. Because especially if you're from Polynesia, if you're Hawaiian, if you're Samoan, if you're Tahitian, when you lie down on this mat, there should be no doubt in your mind that you're feeling the exact same things that your ancestors felt 100, 200, 1,000 years ago. And they're going through the same process. And so, it's a continuation of that understanding, a continuation of that connection to their ancestors that's been around within Polynesia from the beginning. And so, that's something that no machine can give you. That's something that no other experience really can give you at the same level. Other people call it tattoo, but it's just something so much more than that, yeah. Three hours later, the tattoo is done. He didn't tell me what the design was going to be. I didn't tell him what I wanted, you know. I think he asked where I wanted to start, and I asked him, you know, where do people normally start, start on the leg. So, you know, we did that. And then, I didn't even know what it was going to be, or what it was going to look like until it was done. And it was beautiful. Tattoos are celebrated with the whole family. The next customer is a 16-year-old Hawaiian girl. She's brought her parents and her grandmother with her. With tattoos, it's not unusual to start young. Keone promised that the kakao technique hurts less than mechanical stabbing. A hippopotamus bone and ink, that's all he needs. That's why I require meetings with the individuals before, because then I can tell them, oh, you know what, if you really want me to do a palm tree, then maybe you should go to somebody else, you know. And I have done that. There are hundreds of tattooists out there. I don't need to do the work, and I don't want to tattoo everyone. That's not my goal. I want to tattoo people who truly appreciate the work and also that the work has some reflection on who they are, whether they be Hawaiian or even not Hawaiian, has a reflection of who they are. And it's important for them to have, yeah. So, it's different. It's different. Over the Waianae Mountains, back to the northern coast, the North Shore. At sunset, the locals and tourists meet at Sunset Beach, a hukai, or the pipeline, and watch the surfers in the setting sun. It's five in the morning at the port of Haleiwa, the centre of the North Shore. Nature conservationists Natalie Parra and her dog Rooney have to hurry. The boat, One Ocean, is about to leave. One Ocean teaches tourists and locals to protect sharks, whales and other marine animals. Due to an inflamed mosquito bite, Natalie has been paralysed on one side for the past three years. The 25-year-old actually hoped to be a professional free diver. That means diving without an oxygen tank. She had to give up this dream after her paralysis. But her diving capability is sufficient for this work, a small comfort. Today she's helping Joan Oliphant and his wife. They're counting the shark population off the coast. The sharks have been a really large part of my life because after I got sick and I started to get back in the water and I started coming out here with Ocean and Juan, it really helped me get my confidence back in the water. I remember being really afraid the first time I jumped in because sharks are hardwired to know to pick out the injured or sick animals to clean them from the ecosystem. I remember Juan, the first time I came back had to help me put my fins on. Yeah, it was a tough transition for you but you've gotten so much better. They've taken me repeatedly. It's been a huge game changer in my life being able to come out here and get to participate in the work that they do because it's pretty amazing. A total almost 40 shark species swim through the Hawaiian waters. Most of them are Galapagos and Sandbank sharks. Both species are considered endangered. Overfishing and low shark reproduction rates are the problem. Especially Galapagos sharks are very curious animals. Diving with them it's important to not move your arms wildly and best to always have eye contact with the animals to show the sharks that they're being closely watched. Being in the water is definitely the greatest part of my recovery. I think a lot of the time since my left side is a lot weaker than my right still and I still can't do a lot of things on land that I used to be able to do. Being in the water I can lift my arm above my head and I don't have the constant pressure of gravity on my body which makes a huge difference when you have a spinal injury. It sort of lets me be me again. I can't do a lot on land like jump or run or ride a bike but underwater I can do it's limitless. It's just been a bad day, a bad week or my body's sore. Once I get in the water and then I get out it's just like I feel like a new person. So it's given me back my life entirely, 100%. A few hundred metres away is Shark's Cove, the so-called Shark Bay. In summer it's a real diver's paradise. Tourists and locals bustle about and marvel at the colourful underwater world of Hawaii. Right next to this is the Banzai Pipeline, named after the tunnel-like waves breaking here. The pipe is the site of the world's most famous surfing competitions. Wildfowl at the beach promenade. You see and hear them all over the island. At 7am the day starts for Noelani and her son Aokai. The 10-year-old has to go to school. Aokai, like so many others on Oahu, is a little bit of everything. He has Chinese, Hawaiian and white roots. School on Sunset Beach. Noelani has her studio on the same famous beach. The 35-year-old is a successful jewellery designer. Her necklaces, rings and earrings are sold as far away as Germany. Not many Hawaiians can work as independently as Noelani and living on the North Shore is expensive. I think that it is a challenge for a lot of people to live on the North Shore. The prices are very expensive to rent houses, even to buy a home. And I think that because of that people get very creative on the North Shore. And I think that's the vibe here in Hawai'i. Things can be very simple because we're very connected to nature and the earth here, the ocean, the waves. The weather kind of affects everything that we do here so I feel like my jewellery is a reflection of that simplicity that you can find in nature. It's not very not too heavy, not too big. It's very dainty and feminine as well. So I feel like that's reflected in all the pieces and because I use different elements of nature in the jewellery such as crystals from the earth, as well as some of the pieces being designed into shapes that are elements of nature such as flowers or leaves, that that also reflects Hawaiian culture and the vibe here in Hawai'i. Noelani has run a successful jewellery business for ten years. She has four employees and one trainee. Here we have the chain on the necklace. Pretty, yeah? So pretty. Yeah. And then I'm just going to add a clasp on the end and then what we call a pin through. O'ahu is the third largest island in the Hawaiian archipelago. The north, south, west and east have considerable variations in terms of vegetation and weather. So the west can be dry and sunny while the east gets heavy rain. The eastern side is the greenest part of the island. Lush vegetation and rainforests jut out of the sea. The large green volcanic mountains, Wai'anae and Kuala'u, rise to the skies. Many people of Polynesian origin have retreated here. It's a quiet place. Weekends are spent under palm trees looking at the ocean. Geographically Hawai'i is not part of the American continent but is a part of Polynesia associated with the island world of Oceania. Along the single main road is Kaya's store, a small supermarket and a real institution. Kaya's has been around since 1946. Beverly Hashimoto took over the store from her father fifteen years ago with the recipe for a Hawaiian delicacy, Spam Musubi. A combination of Japanese sushi rice and Spam, American canned meat, the fast food of O'ahu. Well, Musubi in Japanese is just rice wrapped in seaweed. I think it came from the time of World War II. My father was in World War II and they ate a lot of that because they needed to have something fast, something cooked and it's processed, you know. And so someone on this island started doing this but I'm not sure exactly when and it just took off really quickly. A lot of mothers buy this, especially on the weekends when children have sports events, so they buy it like in the dozens at a time. Despite the remoteness of the small shop, Beverly has fierce competition to contend with today. Big supermarket chains have set up shop on the east coast. The small shop has to change year after year to keep up with the times. Beverly and her husband don't earn much money. That's why they still live in the house where she was born, beside the evergreen Ko'alu Mountains. It stretches sixty kilometres along the eastern coast from Makapu at the southern tip of the island to Kahuku in the north. In the east of O'ahu are enchanting green rock crevices and breathtaking volcanic mountains. No wonder films like Jurassic Park and King Kong were filmed here. It's a great backdrop. Going further south you reach Kailua. Here the sea is calmer, crystal clear with a Caribbean feel. Former US President Barack Obama grew up here and still owns a home in the area. The sea here is so calm you can dive in the winter. When the currents allow it, it's not unusual to swim with green turtles amidst huge schools of fish. Natalie Parra and her friends often meet up here in their free time and explore the underwater world. Peace and freedom. Nowhere are they better experienced than underwater. Human detritus is the only disturbance. Old fishing rods, golf balls, power cords. Natalie has found all of these and collected them. She always has her tools with her. Collecting garbage has become a habit for her, unfortunately. For me, I spend every moment that I can in the ocean. It's like my second home. And so I think I try and keep it cleaner than I clean my house or my car. It's like I'm constantly kind of like cleaning because it is not just my space but it's the actual home for all the animals that live here that I do really care a lot about. Hawaii is 3,682 kilometres southwest of the west coast of the US. No land mass is as far away from the mainland as this island chain. Nevertheless, the animals here, in the heart of the Pacific Ocean, get to feel the consequences of civilisation. Oahu's last colony of strictly protected Lysan albatross lives at Kena Point, the northernmost point of the island. Plastic in the sea mainly threatens the chicks of the waterfowls. Often they die when their parents feed them the colourful plastic. But the endangered Hawaiian monk seal as well as the Honu, the green sea turtle, have to fight with the pollution by humans. Mass tourism has an impact on the flora and fauna of the Hawaiian archipelago. No wonder. Honolulu is the largest air hub in the Pacific. Almost every passenger has to make a stop over here, no matter which island they're visiting. Of course, the economy also thrives on tourism. Ukulele manufacturing company Kaloha is in the heart of downtown Honolulu. It also has a factory in Thailand now. This is how high the demand for the guitar-like plucked instrument is. The young singer, Kennedy Taylor, is sponsored by Kaloha. They equip her with ukuleles. Us people from Hawaii, we are just very open. We're like a whole big family, and we don't mind whoever is watching us perform anywhere we are. So we can go out to the beach, near buildings. It doesn't really matter because, really, you're just here to share your passion of music with the other people around you. Ukuleles are usually made of spruce or similar wood. The most exclusive pieces cost thousands of dollars and are made with the wood of the rare koa tree. Well, this wood was probably dominantly used by the royal family here in Hawaii. And if you go to the Iolani Palace, its floors and its banisters and all the furniture are made of woods that are from Hawaii. And koa wood is considered a wood that is passed down to the generations. It really is an heirloom. So to receive one made out of koa, whether it's a furniture, a bowl, or even an ukulele, is something to be cherished, to be used, but also to be cherished, to be passed down for future generations. We harvest these trees. We don't harvest them and cut them. We wait for them to fall. It takes about 15 to 30 years to mature. So we wait for them to mature and fall, and we use fallen trees instead of harvested trees here at Koaloha. A common sight. You will find food trucks like Banan everywhere on the island. The company makes vegan banana ice cream and has become well known around the island in just four years. Matt Hong is one of the founders and grew up in Honolulu. The ice cream contains no dairy products and the bananas are grown on the island. A healthy and light dessert that is appreciated by the environmentally conscious and athletic people of Oahu. The snack is garnished with fresh fruits of the island. Not only locals appreciate the ice cream, tourists also flock to Banan. Oahu and Honolulu are the most popular destinations for Hawaii tourists. It's pretty healthy. And it tastes great too. Yeah, awesome. Well, thanks guys. I hope you enjoy. Thanks, guys. Take care, man. 90% of the food that we eat in Hawaii is shipped in, and it's really the time to start thinking about how, you know, especially something that's food that we interact with and eat every day, and it's a part of us and part of our culture, and how that affects our environment and doing what we can to better that and better it not just out of fear of, oh, man, you know, there's these big global problems happening, but also because it's fun and it tastes good and it feels right and that the future should be fun. It's not all about being fearsome of environmental catastrophe. I mean, that, there's a healthy dose of that, but it should be about fun. And that's exactly what Oahu is all about. Experience great nature and enjoy life outside. After work, Matt sets off to pursue his greatest passion. Surfing, of course. His day at work is completely devoted to the waves, and they are best early in the morning and in the afternoon. But the big waves only start behind the reef. That means 20 minutes of paddling. The reward is the real aloha feeling.