Welcome to travels with Todd

It’s a mere coincidence that I completed my personal quest to visit all 50 U S States in the fiftieth state. It wasn’t planned that way. But, here I am. When I woke, I knew, more or less what the morning and early afternoon had in store. I knew that P & K would take me to breakfast then drop me at Kualoa Ranch where I’d have a pair of tours before rejoining them for essentially all of the rest of my time on Oahu. After Kualoa, the plans were all theirs.

We started the morning with breakfast at Bogart’s Café

and, had they not needed to drive me to Kualoa some 25 miles distant, I suspect we might have enjoyed a pair of long pre and post breakfast walks because they enjoy walking as much as I. Of course, the menu needed barely a glance once I saw a bagel with lox. (Regular readers know I’m something of a smoked salmon addict.) And after breakfast it was on to Kualoa Ranch.

The land of enchanted dreams

As someone who has a strong attachment to popular culture through music, movies, and television, Kualoa Ranch was a place I believed I needed to visit. While there’s much more to Kualoa Ranch than its almost exalted place as a setting for movies and television,

it was this aspect that first brought it to my attention.

More than 200 movies and television shows have had scenes shot on some part of the property. Here’s an abbreviated list.

Jurassic Park, Jurassic World, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Kong: Skull Island, Godzilla, Godzilla vs. Kong, Jumanji, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, 50 First Dates, Pearl Harbor, Mighty Joe Young, Windtalkers, George of the Jungle, The Karate Kid Part II, Paradise, Hawaiian Style, Lost, Hawaii Five-O, and Magnum P.I.

However, I didn’t start with the movie sites tour. After a few minutes wandering around through the gift shop near the Visitor’s Center

(notice the honu in the photo above), I learned a little about the history of the place before I joined the Ocean Voyage Tour.

For ancient Hawaiians, Kualoa was a sacred place. It represented a physical manifestation of the genealogical and cosmological principles articulated in the Kumulipo – the Hawaiian creation chant that establishes the interconnectedness of all life, and traces the genealogy of Hawaiian chiefs and people back to the origins of the universe.

Kualoa became a ranch in 1850 when Dr Gerrit P Judd, an American missionary doctor and advisor to King Kamehameha III, purchased 622 acres of land at Kualoa from the king for $1,300. His purchase also included fishing rights to Mokoliʻi – the small island sometimes called Chinaman’s Hat seen in the foreground of the photo below.

Dr Judd and his descendants expanded the estate over a period of several decades by purchasing additional acreage in the Hakipuʻu and Kaʻaʻawa valleys expanding the property to its current size of approximately 4,000 acres.

During World War II, the U S military not only occupied Kualoa Ranch but constructed an airstrip

and added gun emplacements and a bunker within one of the mountains. After the war, they returned the land to the Morgans – its current owners – who are descendants of the Judds.

While the trade winds caress the sea

Shortly after we set out on the Ocean Voyage Tour we walked a short path to the dock at the Moli’i Fishpond. On our return, our guide would tell us a little of its history. Between 800 and 1,000 years old, it’s one of the oldest remaining examples of traditional Hawaiian aquaculture. The brackish water pond is surrounded by a hand-built rock wall (kuapā) that stretches about 4,000 feet.

The kuapā creates a barrier between the pond and the ocean that allows the flow of water through sluice gates called makaha. The gates are designed to let juvenile fish enter from the ocean but prevent larger, mature fish from escaping, effectively trapping the juveniles for eventual harvesting.

Once we’d crossed the pond, we walked a short path to the ocean side of Secret Island where we boarded a much larger catamaran for what would become a rather wild ride. It seems calm and pleasant enough at first but when the wind is right and with a knowledgeable pilot, the ride becomes something of a splash fest.

Here’s a short video of the experience.

Between my Ocean Voyage Tour and the Hollywood Movie Sites Tour – my second of the day -my ticket entitled me to lunch. It was a buffet table with hot and cold food and was, I’ll just say, singularly unimpressive. I wandered around the Visitor’s Center area, took a look at the wall of Legendary Stars and Guests, (I’m not sure everyone on that wall is legendary but everyplace is allowed a bit of hype.) then got in line to board the bus that would take us through the property. The buses for this tour are most certainly not

legendary unless, of course, old open-windowed repainted school buses, with ripped seats and a bad sound system are your idea of legendary. Still, they serve the purpose of getting through the tour which is often on unpaved roads even if the road in the photo above, taken outside the World War II Bunker, is paved. Perhaps they’re intended to add to the mystique.

The tour begins at Battery Cooper and the interior is now something of a movie museum filled with sets, dioramas, and memorabilia from several productions. As you can see from the map below

it’s about as far along the ridge as one can go. The tour returned through Ka’a’awa valley where we rode past some sights (such as the Jurassic Park Log) and stopped at others (such as KONG: Skull Island Bone Yard). As the guide on the boat had in the morning, the one on the bus in the afternoon filled the time with patter – sometimes informative, sometimes humorous, sometimes headshaking, and sometimes duplicative (even the jokes!).

All in all, outside of a lousy lunch, it was a fun few hours that I’m glad to have done when I had the opportunity even if I suspect I wouldn’t do it again even if I had the opportunity.

The rest of the day belongs to K & P. That’s coming in the next post. For now, it’s time for pictures.