Waimanalo is a half hour's drive from Honolulu, and yet it feels like another planet. The village faces a long, curving white-sand beach, one so luscious that it is used as a backdrop for the television series Baywatch Hawai'i. Behind the village climb acres of farmland, most of it given to raising ornamental plants. People keep horses and chickens. The salty trade winds spice the air even in the foothills.
Villagers paddle outrigger canoes and grow taro and other traditional staples.
An increasing number speak Hawaiian, a language discouraged in schools during pre-statehood days, and some locals even agitate for an independent Hawaiian nation. It's a defiant symbol of the Hawaiian sovereignty movement, a heated subject in Waimanalo's neighborhoods. Get the whole story in the pages of National Geographic magazine. Share your experiences . In More to Explore the National Geographic magazine team shares some of its best sources and other information.