The Hawaiian Tour Guide (Part I)

As I got on the plane to Hawaii, I realized I was suffering from the Gunnar Syndrome. The syndrome was made famous by my college roommate, who, after a hard night of partying, woke up the next day and had this over-whelming desire to apologize to everyone for anything and everything he may have said or done the night before. My night before had involved a large holiday gathering and I was still trying to work out the details. The good thing is that the guilt associated with the Gunnar Syndrome is most often imaginary and just the residue created by the fog of too many drinks. Regardless, this was not the best way to start a week’s vacation in Hawaii, and I was already promising myself that I would skip next year’s event. (Of course, I also realized I had twelve months to recover and that the symptoms of The Gunnar Syndrome would be long forgotten by then.) The good thing about the Gunnar Syndrome is that it distracts you from any of the other effects that may occur from having too many drinks, so generally speaking, the flight went well.

The first couple of days in Hawaii were pretty good. We saw many beautiful places (Honolulu, Hilo, Maui) and did many fun things (snorkel, eat, drink, go on tours), but I was a bit disappointed that we had traveled this far only to meet people who were no more exotic than myself. My primary love of travel is the opportunity to meet people from other cultures, and in that respect, going to Hawaii wasn’t all that different than going to say, California or Florida. These people were pretty American. In fact, there were more people speaking English here than in my home state of Arizona. It was, in this respect, rather boring.

Then half way through our trip, I received a phone call from my sister that our mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer and the trip really took a turn for the worse. I couldn’t wait to get off the ship so I could make my way to Montana to see her, but here I was stuck in the middle of the Pacific.

I stood at the front of the ship, staring off into the endless Pacific. Maybe when the stress of my new situation was over I could disappear for a month or two. I could rent a hut on St. Johns, bring my laptop along so I could work from there. I thought how, from time to time, we all wish we could get away from it all. I wondered if St. Johns had high speed internet access. Then I decided it was time to get back to reality and try make the best of my situation.

The next day, we stopped in Kauai. That is were we met him, the tour guide.



We had been taking tours sponsored by the cruise ship and we were getting a bit bored with that, so we decided to wonder off on our own and find someone interesting to show us around. Kauai is an incredibly beautiful place, but very isolated compared to the other islands. People come here to get away. Whereas people may go to Waikiki for the beautifully packed beaches, clubs and restaurants, Kauai was more for the nature lover. I had already seen quite a bit of nature on this trip and my expectations of meeting anyone interesting had pretty much dissipated by this point, so my expectations were low.

We wondered into a back parking lot and stumbled upon Eduardo. He approached us with an offer to show us the island much in the same way a back-alley vendor approaches someone to sell contraband, very discreetly. We were apprehensive, but desired to do something different, so we agreed.

Eduardo told us to sit tight. He had to drive his economy class car home and pick up his van and his wife, muttering something about his wife being better at describing the island’s plant life. Meanwhile, we were left wondering why he hadn’t had his van and wife along in the first place. When he returned, he introduced us to his wife and we piled into the van.

I am not going to recall all the details of the tour, but the two biggest impressions left on me were his pride in how Kauai was a “family morals” kind of place, and the fact that his wife never brought up anything about the island’s plant life.

As we made our way north, up the east coast, Eduardo pointed out that the road didn’t circle the island, but came to a dead-end at the northern most point. From there, we would have to turn around and make our way back the same way we had come.

When there was a break in his presentation, I tried to fill the dead air by asking an innocent question, “What brought you to the island?”

He glanced over at his wife like he had a big secret and wanted a signal from her that it was okay to share. Instead, he responded, “Well, it’s not like I was running from the law or anything, but it was something like that. I will tell you when we get to the end of this road.”

Oh, my god! We just got into a van with an axe murderer! He is going to take us to the end of the trail, chop us up into little pieces, and scatter our remains through out the dense rainforest. Eduardo changed the subject, describing the island’s rural, slow-paced appeal and how people move here to get away from it all.

We came to the end of the road. It was really more of a small parking lot than a dead-end. At the end of the parking lot, multiple trails meandered up a large hill, disappearing into the green, wet forest that extended for as far as the eyes could see. Eduardo began to tell the story of his life. (And I am not quite sure how I mean that: the story about his life, or just the most outlandish story he ever told.)



In the late 70’s, Eduardo had been a flight attendant for Western Airlines. While making preparations to land in Mexico City during a flight in 1979, Eduardo strapped himself into his seat at the back of the plane. Apparently, there had been some miscommunication with the tower and the pilot attempted to do a touch and go. Unfortunately, he was unaware of the dump trucks parked at the end of the runway. The plane clipped them just as the pilot went to full speed and the plane disintegrated into a Mexico City neighborhood. Those not killed instantly, were at the very least, in critical condition. Eduardo had nary a scratch. He pointed out that in a crash like this, you really want to be in the back of the plane, facing backwards. Most people in the regular seating are instantly decapitated. Physically he was in pretty good shape, but obviously, living through such a thing was an emotional nightmare and it was about to get worse for him.

According to Eduardo, the Mexican Federales interrogation of him turned to torture as they tried to coax him into admitting the pilots had been at fault. They beat him in the back of the head with a phone book when he didn’t answer their questions “correctly”. When the authorities finally gave up on him, deciding he knew nothing, they let him go. Eduardo now realized that this was going to turn into a quarter of a billion dollar lawsuit and people have been killed for a lot less. It was time for him to disappear.

Eduardo left everything behind, his family, his fiance, his life, and escaped to this little isolated island as far away from civilization as one could possibly get. He made his way to this parking lot and disappeared up these trails for several months, living on the kindness of strangers, mostly hippies, or as he preferred to call them, granolas. This is how he had come to live on Kauai, some thirty years before.

I glanced over at my wife, then to our travel partners, Ocamie and Peter. They all sat in stunned silence. I couldn’t help but ponder what a great story this was. True or not, it was definitely going to earn him a great tip. Then I remembered his wife. Obviously, if he was making all this up, he would not have taken her along on our tour. She was there to collaborate his story.

Eduardo went on with his life, making Kauai home, finally marrying and having children. Likewise, the fiance he had left behind after the crash, did the same. Several years ago, through contact of mutual friends, they made a re-connection and realizing they were both now divorced, hooked back up. Our silent passenger was the fiance he had left behind.

Western Airlines was acquired by Delta and through them, Eduardo had received some kind of compensation, but he did not let on what that involved. He said real peace with his past came about when ABC’s 20/20 did an expose’ on his story sometime in the early 90’s. He also said he had written a book but it had not been published. There had also been meetings with people to do a movie. He claimed his lawyers had even met with Ron Howard’s people at one point.

As Eduardo turned the van around and began retracing our route back to the tour ship, I pondered what parts of this story were true or not. Regardless, one thing was for sure, this was the interesting person I was hoping to meet. Little did I know, Eduardo was about to get a lot more interesting.