Hawaii, Here We Come

To explore Hawaii beyond the resorts, take to the sea. When Peter Heller joins a small-ship cruise with stops at four different islands, he comes face-to-face with the archipelago’s wilder side.

Humu humu nuku nuku apu a’a is the name of Hawaii’s state fish.

It’s an elegant little reef triggerfish, with yellow chevron pinstripes and a blue lip, but I think the Hawaiians selected it because its name is fun to say. I pointed and tried to shout it into my snorkel. If the word is tough to pronounce under normal conditions, it’s harder underwater.

My wife, Kim, and I followed the fish in and out of cauliflower coral heads, through a cloud of striped surgeonfish and swaying schools of bright-yellow tangs. We passed a parrotfish, which crunched its coral breakfast so loudly we could hear it. The humu kept a dignified pace. We kicked along a coral cliff, which dropped into deeper blue, and out to a cluster of rocks where the surge broke into a blizzard of bubbles. When we lifted our heads into the air, we saw the black lava cliffs of western Lanai, the green slopes rising behind them, and the dark basalt columns known as the Five Sisters strung across the sea.

It was mid-November, and we were on a week-long voyage that took us to four of the Hawaiian Islands: Molokai, Lanai, Maui, and Hawaii, aka the Big Island. The tour was operated by UnCruise Adventures, which is an odd name for a 22-yearold company that runs cruises from Alaska to the Galápagos Islands, but the ‘un’ comes from an effort to be different from other lines. UnCruise prides itself on flexibility. It doesn’t tie itself to scheduled port calls, so the itinerary can be guided by weather, wildlife, and whim. If the captain spots a pod of humpbacks, he can follow it; if he wants to explore an intriguing section of coast he’s never seen, he can do it.