The Rough Guide to the Big Island of Hawaii (Rough Guide (Pocket) Big Island of Hawaii)

The Hawaiian islands are the weatherbeaten summits of a chain of a submarine volcanoes, poking from the Pacific more than two thousand miles off the west coast of America. Only on the Big Island of Hawaii are those volcanoes still active, and continuing to shape one of the most remarkable places on earth. Nowhere else in the state, let alone in the rest of the US, can match the sheer rawness of its new-born landscapes. That might sound like an unlikely tourist destination, but the island also offers everything you might want from a tropical vacation - dependable sunshine, superb sandy beaches, warm turquoise fish-filled waters, swaying coconut palms, and pristine rainforest.

Though tourism has become crucial to the local economy, the Big Island lags well behind Oahu and Maui in terms of annual visitors. It holds nothing to match the skyscrapers of Waikiki, and neither is there the large-scale strip development of the west Maui shoreline. In the 1960s it was confidently expected that the Big Island would emerge as the first serious rival to Oahu. Large sums were spent on building a highway system to cope with the anticipated influx, and luxury resorts were grafted on to what was once bare lava, while a wide range of more reasonably priced hotels began to spring up in the Kailua area. As things turned out, however, it was Maui that mushroomed, to become plagued by traffic problems and overcrowding, while the Big Island remains remarkably stress-free.

The Big Island is not the cheap destination in Hawaii - though it does have a few budget inns and hostels - and it can't compete with Honolulu for frenzied shopping or wild nightlife. The entire island has the population of a medium-sized town, with 137,000 people spread across its four thousand square miles; it holds its fair share of restaurants, bars, and so on, but basically it's a rural community. This is the place to come if you're looking for the elusive "real Hawaii"; it's also unbeatable if you just want to relax. "Hanging loose", as the locals put it, is the island's watchword, and no one ever seems to be too busy to "talk story". There's plenty of opportunity to be active - hiking in the state and national parks, deep-sea fishing off the Kona Coast, golfing in the Kohala resorts, or snorkeling in Kealakekua Bay - but most visitors are content to while away days on end meandering between beach and brunch.

Thanks to massive immigration, the population of modern Hawaii is among the most ethnically diverse in the world. The Big Island divides into roughly 27 percent Hawaiian or part-Hawaiian, 25 percent Caucasian, 22 percent Japanese, 10 percent Filipino, and 16 percent others, though as more than half of all marriages are classified as inter-racial such statistics grow ever more meaningless. However, as befits the birthplace of King Kamehameha, the first man to rule all the Hawaiian islands, the Big Island has maintained a strong continuity with its Polynesian past. Only just over two centuries have passed since the isolation of its original inhabitants came to an end, and their heiaus (temples), petroglyphs (rock carvings), and abandoned villages are scattered throughout the island. Otherwise, though many of its smaller towns have an appealing air of the nineteenth-century West about them, with their false-front stores and wooden boardwalks, few of the island's historical attractions are likely to lure you away from the beaches. Any time you can spare to go sightseeing is better spent exploring the waterfalls, valleys and especially the volcanoes that were themselves so entwined with the lives of the ancient Hawaiians.