The Hawaii Traveler

Here at The Hawai’i Traveler, we primarily talk about the eight main Hawaiian islands of interest to tourists and armchair travelers, but thinking outside the box brings us, strangely, to a triangle–The Polynesian Triangle, that is.

Hawai’i is actually comprised of a chain of 137 islands, islets, and shoals. Only seven of these islands are inhabited year round and four are the main attractions: The Big Island, O’ahu, Maui, and Kaua’i.

At first glance, Hawai’i is a lot like a little piece of Americana wrapped in ti leaves and served with poi. The atmosphere is unlike what most of us travelers experience at home, but it seems not so far away. But at over eighteen hundred miles from the nearest continent, the Hawaiian Island archipelago is the most isolated grouping of islands on Earth (Macdonald, Abbott, and Peterson, 1984).

Polynesia, which means “many islands,” covers a gigantic, 16 million square mile triangular geographical area of the Pacific, with Hawai’i at the northern apex, New Zealand at the southwest corner, and Easter Island at the southeast corner. Within that triangle lie thousands of islands, which have all been explored, colonized, and/or inhabited at one time or another. According to the Polynesian Cultural Center on O’ahu, there are over 30 different groups of Polynesian people living within or near the Polynesian Triangle. In addition, the Polynesian Cultural Center also provides information on several other Polynesian island groups, including the Cook Islands (the site of a season of Survivor, of all things), Niue, the Tuamotu archipelago, Tuvalu, Wallis and Futuna.

Stay tuned for more posts on the entire chain of Hawaiian Islands, which were once referred to as The Sandwich Islands.  Kind of makes you hungry, doesn’t it?

Photo by Flickr–Creative Commons, by Justin Brockie

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