From the Tiger Beat Archives, May 1971
Last month I told you about some of our excitement arriving in the Hawaiian Islands, seeing the beautiful sunrises and about our skin-diving expeditions. This month I’ll tell you about our last three days on Maui and about all the fun we had. So, come on along!
The day after I almost drowned (you haven’t forgotten already, have you?) we got up early to watch the sunrise again with old crack-of-dawn Cassidy, and then we stumbled back into the hotel dining room for another gigantic breakfast. That Hawaiian air really “messes around” with your appetite. The whole time David was ordering, I just kept thinking “This man has gone mad, we’ll never get all that down.” We each had giant servings of pineapple and papaya (papaya is very big over there) and orange juice and scrambled eggs and ham and sausage and toast and a Danish pastry and milk…and there wasn’t anything left on the table at all–it looked like those huge African ants had eaten their way through!
We stared at one another in disbelief at our accomplishment, and then, with some difficulty, we got to our feet and staggered into downtown Lahaina to buy some Christmas presents to take home with us. David hadn’t had time to shop before we left, and we were going home Christmas Eve, so it was then or never. I think David was a little disappointed, because he had expected to bring back all these far-out Hawaiian things for his family and friends, and the only thing he could find for his little brothers were the same exact toys that they sell on the mainland! We turned the whole town inside out and David finally settled for the toys, but he wasn’t really thrilled. This is the first Christmas that David has been able to buy everybody really fabulous presents, and he had really wanted to do it. He did find one thing, though, a beautiful strand of Hawaiian pearls for Shirley, and that made him feel better about things!
Well, by then it was time for lunch, and we were starving. I would have sworn, right after we finished breakfast, that I probably wouldn’t eat until autumn, but there’s no controlling your appetite in Hawaii! I guess we were eating healthily, though, because there were lots of fruits and salads and coconuts and stuff, and besides, we didn’t put on any weight, so it couldn’t have been too terrible. This time we had a salad buffet, with shrimp and crab and seafoods like that, and we made about three trips each!
The rest of the afternoon was devoted to what I like best–sleeping in the sun! David woke up about three times to sign autographs (there were about twenty girls staying at the hotel, and they were all aware of David) and we both got in some serious tanning time. We didn’t really move until the sun was practically down!
Well, getting a tan really gives you an appetite, so by the time we were dressed and ready to go to dinner, we were getting very hungry. We had been getting odd glances from the hotel staff during the last two meals, and we decided to go to a really special restaurant, and we had hold on–turtle steak! That is correct, turtle steak. It’s pretty weird, just as you might imagine. It’s sort of like boneless chicken–have you ever noticed that everything weird, rattlesnake, frogs’ legs, snails–tastes “sort of like chicken?” Well, that’s what turtle steak tasted like, too.
SKIN-DIVING AGAIN
The next morning, we went skin-diving again. This time was even more exciting than last time-we explored a sunken submarine, and some unexpected things happened, but I’m going to tell you about that another time! Once again, though, the incredible beauty of the underwater landscape, which is the closest thing to an enchanted place I’ve ever seen, deeply impressed us both. I can’t think of anything I’ve ever seen in my life that was as beautiful as the bottom of the sea when the water is clear and the warm light slants down in soft rays and the strange sea-plants dance slowly back and forth with the water’s motion. By the time we got back to the hotel (about 4 in the afternoon) we were tired and thrilled with the beauty of what we’d seen.
And hungry. This time, we treated ourselves to steak, barbecued meats, salads, and the food discovery of a lifetime, macadamia nut pie! David and I scarfed up enough macadamia nut pie to supply Los Angeles for a month and a half. It’s impossible to exactly describe the flavor of macadamia nut pie, except to say that it doesn’t taste anything like chicken, but it’s unforgettable! Macadamia nuts grow only on this tiny bit of land on one of the islands and they won’t grow anywhere else in the world. Which is probably just as well, because if they grew all over the place, the whole world would just lie around eating macadamia nut pie, and nothing would ever get done. And we wouldn’t want that, would we? Or would we?
PHOTOS WITH FANS
During dinner, the girl who takes photographs for the hotel came up and asked if she could take some pictures (I guess she wanted proof that David had actually been there) and David said that it was okay. Then he asked a few of the girls who somehow always managed to be sitting at the next table if they wanted to get into the pictures, and you should have seen the stampede! All of them were so excited, and the photographer was apparently pretty shook up, too, because she forgot to take the lens cap off! There were a lot of disappointed girls when that roll of film came out totally black!
Since that night was supposed to be our last night in Maui, we had planned to go out on the town and party a little, but the salt air and the skin-diving made us pretty tired, so we said good night and stumbled up to our rooms and crashed–at about eight-thirty!
SAD TO LEAVE
Almost immediately (or so it seemed) after I fell asleep, my phone woke me into pitch blackness. It was David, naturally, reminding me that I was about to miss my very last Hawaiian sunrise. I made it down to the beach somehow, stared at the sunrise until I felt hungry, and then we went up the beach to the hotel’s open-air dining room for breakfast. By now we were laughing about how much we had been eating, and TIGER BEAT’S super photographer, Kenny Lieu, had decided to take pictures of the meal for you to see with your own eyes!
David had a little more Christmas shopping to get in, so we went and tended to that, and then we wandered around for a little while and then, all of a sudden, it was time to start getting ready to pack up for the trip home. We were both a little sad to leave, but we were also anxious to get home to our families for Christmas, so we hurried through the packing and got to Maui airport in plenty of time.
Unfortunately, our airplane didn’t get to Maui airport in plenty of time–in fact, it was almost two hours late! We paced around waiting until the two girls who worked in the soda fountain recognized David and gave him a giant carnation lei. And also extra-thick malts!
But we were too late getting into Honolulu to catch the plane we had been reserved on, and that was the only plane that could have gotten us home on Christmas Eve! We were pretty upset, I have to admit, and we were both sure that we’d miss Christmas completely! Also, David was worried that our dogs wouldn’t be fed, so we all had to call the mainland.
GIFT FOR FANS
The only plane we could get home didn’t leave until eleven that night, so we decided to go out to dinner at one of Honolulu’s most beautiful restaurants. This time, though, our appetites weren’t so outrageous; I think that eating Christmas Eve dinner in a restaurant brought us down a little bit. We still had a pretty good time though, and the food, as I remember it, was great. Also, there were two little girls there, who were about ten years old, who were having dinner with their mother. When they looked up and recognized David, they almost swallowed their forks! They whispered back and forth like little birds, but they didn’t want David to think they were staring at him, so they always looked away whenever glanced over at them. Finally, David gave them a Christmas present: he suddenly got up and walked right over to their table and started talking to them! They were thrilled and excited, and he wrote each of them a long inscription on their napkins before he came back to our table.
Finally, we boarded our plane and were on our way home. We slept almost all the way, even though David always says he can’t sleep on planes, and when we opened our eyes, bright California sunshine was streaming in through the plane windows, and we were touching down.
It was 6:30 Christmas morning when we landed, and we split up at the airport. David went to his father’s house, and I went home and slept the whole day. I know that we both sort of wished we were still in Hawaii, but Los Angeles tried to welcome us back, because it was clear and blue and cold, and the ride back home through the beautiful, deserted Christmas morning streets felt just great, a fine ending to a wonderful trip!
Don’t forget to tune in right here next month when I’ll be telling you more exciting secrets from David’s past and his present! Until then, be happy!
Comments on this entry are closed.