Hawaii

From ancient stone heiau (Hawaiian temples) to 21st-Century high-rises, Oahu is an island of endless contrasts. Geographically only the third largest of the inhabited Hawaiian Islands, it is nonetheless home to nearly three-quarters of the state's 1.2 million residents — 370,000 of whom are concentrated in urban Honolulu, the ultra-modern, south-coast cityscape kama'aina (residents) refer to simply as "Town."
But take a 45-minute drive to the "Country" — the famed surfing Mecca on the island's north shore — and you'll find sleepy Hale'iwa town (pop. 2,225) existing much as it has since it was established by missionaries in 1832.

The demi-god Maui is a household name from Tonga to the Society Islands, to the Marquesas to Hawaii. Something of a trickster, Maui had a place in his heart for mortals and is celebrated throughout the Pacific for such feats as giving fire to humans (after stealing it from its supernatural guardians) and fishing the islands of the Pacific from out of their watery depths.

While Kauai's reputation as home to the wettest spot on Earth — Mount Wai'ale'ale, averaging 485 inches of rain per year — has lead to its popular designation as "The Garden Isle," the island has another, older name: "The Separate Kingdom." In part this is because Kauai may have been the first of the Hawaiian Islands to be settled by Marquesan seafarers, somewhere around 750 A.D. Combined with its remoteness from the rest of the island chain, this may also have led to the belief that Kauai's royal bloodline was the purest in the Islands.

Legend has it that two deities — the volcano goddess Pele and the demi-god Kamapua'a (the latter of whom could control the weather) — struck a deal to make the vast Big Island of Hawaii's west side so dry, and its east side so wet. The story's short version is that, after a battle, the pair divided the island in two, with Pele taking the western half and Kamapua'a, the eastern.
Even so, the island's weather isn't so cut-and-dried. Twelve distinct climate zones exist here, ranging from East Hawaii's tropical rain forests and Mauna Kea's frozen tundra to Ka'u's arid desert in the south.