Hawaii

Antoine's view

One day, while reading some data about tourism, I was surprised to see the disproportion between the number of tourists that visit French Polynesia, on one side, Tahiti, Bora Bora, and, on the other side, Hawai'i : when Tahiti hopes to attract 200 or 300 000 tourists a year, only the Museum of Pearl Harbor, dedicated to the memory of the deadly attack that pushed the Americans to enter the Second World War, receives each year more than five million visitors : as I did not know yet, then, the Hawaiian archipelago, I could not understand the difference in scale. I understood when I spent, for the first time, a few days in the Hawaiian islands. Hawaii is Polynesia... on an American scale.

Here, everything is immense, from the flanks of Big Island?s volcanoes (Mauna Loa is probably one of the largest volcanoes in the world) as well as those of Maui (Haleakala, too, is immense), to the cliffs and the valleys of Na Pali, or the Waimea Canyon, on Kauai Island.

Here, everything is oversized, mountains, trees, beaches, hotels, roads. Hawaii is really a full sized state of the United States. Yet, in these grandiose proportions, the archipelago is remarkably preserved, and its of its most remote corners are worth a visit... and there's really room for millions of visitors each year.

So, if you have an opportunity to visit that destination, not much frequented by European tourists, you will not regret it. I particularly appreciated the Big Island, Maui, Molokai, but most of all Kauai, which deserves a long stay in Hawaii, the American Polynesia!