“The Duke… the Duke is a living legend.”

Mick Fanning immediately realises what he’s said and cracks up at his Lazarus faux pas.  He’s sitting in front of The Big Guy’s statue in Waikiki, and I gaze over Mick’s shoulder at the 14 foot Bronze Duke, half waiting for The Big Guy to break off his pedestal and start throwing Japanese tourists through souvenir shop windows, cartoon horror style.

But today the Duke will remain where he is, with tourists from Tokyo and Idaho clambering all over him, the women squeezing his bronze butt, oblivious to who the fact they’re grabbing, in quite a sacrilegious manner I might add, the hindquarters of surfing’s godfather.

After three weeks in the country its, well… relief isn’t the word I’m after. We’re in downtown Waikiki, and while the North Shore is currently overrun with stormwater and chickens, Honolulu is clogged with human flotsam and jetsam, all living the Hawaiian holiday dream.

There’s the guy strolling down the beach in reading glasses, sluggoes and booties. The entire family with no member under 200lbs. But they’re presently being outdone by a lone Euro guy, sporting tight Euro shorts, doing narcissistically Euro things. He’s obviously been bouncing between the mirror and the gym and giving them both a good nudge, cause he’s cut, and he has the strut of Robbie Williams playing an arena gig. He waits until he knows he has an audience, then starts backflipping down the beach. He’s killing it, right up until the point where he mistimes the third one, and flips face-first into the sand. He hits hard, and the local boys who are hiring us our longboards absolutely lose it with laughter.

“Check out Bobby and Anna!” Mick laughs mockingly as Tommy Whitaker and his girl, Yolanda drag their 10-foot mal down to the waterline. It’s the annual Waikiki Tandem Surfing Invitational, and Mick and his wife Karissa are up against the Whitakers and the Durbidges for the title.

We paddle out and the fun begins. The girls, who aren’t regular surfers, are frighteningly natural. Karissa, however, turns out to be a goofyfoot, much to the displeasure of Mick. “I gotta do something about that!” Taryn Durbidge hedges her bets and rides one wave goofy then the next one natural. Yolanda meanwhile ditches Tommy and hooks up with a local tandem surfing specialist, a guy known only as The Bear. He’s flabbergasted at how shallow the tandem talent pool is in Australia. “You guys need a world champion,” he says, ironically to Mick.

The surf is small, and the long waits between sets gives plenty of time to goof off. Tommy, who’s been ditched for the Bear and is bobbing around treading water, looks in to shore and laughs. “That’s got to be the world’s best car park.” He points.  Smack bang in the middle of the Waikiki Legloand shoreline is an eight-storey car park, affording anyone who leaves their car there an uninterrupted and surely priceless view all the way up to Diamond Head. It’s worth the $4 an hour it costs, but no doubt it’s got a date with a wrecking ball at some stage.

Getting back to the beach proves sketchy, considering the waves are possibly only six inches and as far from North Shore as you can get. First up cameraman Shorty slices a nickel-sized chunk out of his foot on the reef, which, unlike the waves, isn’t so gentle apparently. Karissa makes it all the way to shore unscathed, only to somehow find a way to stagger and fall in the shorebreak… in front of two cameras rolling away.

“That was so embarrassing! You’re not going to put that in the clip are you?”
Mick, 30 seconds later: “Can you please, pleeease, pleeeeease run that in the clip!” [After an On The Rock production meeting a few hours later we vote unanimously on the latter. Sorry, Karissa].

While we wait for On The Rock Web Yoda, a man known only as “B1”, to get his entire upper right arm inked up with hibiscus flowers, we rejoin Mick and his crew over at the palatial Halekulani Hotel.

It’s almost impossible not to get lost in labyrinth of gaudy 1970s hotels in the Waikiki backstreets. You’re almost waiting for Steve McGarrett to come running out of one of the hotels, chasing some equally 1970s Hawaiian drug warlord.

Mick proceeds to sell me up the river with the promise of free mai tais… which I figure is the only fitting way to kill a couple of stray hours in Waikiki. As much as I love fleecing anything free out of Mick, he equally loves liberating anything hard earned out of my wallet. If you believe Mick – and frankly, who would? – the dead presidents on the notes coming out of my wallet all squint in the daylight. Short arms, deep pockets is the term he likes to use on me. The promise of a $500 bar tab, however, proves to be just that, a promise.

I start handing over 20 dollar bills as the astronomical bill is laid out in front of us, and Andrew Jackson starts blinking like he hasn’t seen the sun in 160 years. //SEAN DOHERTY

In the Hawaiian Islands, Haleakala, "The House of the Sun", holds heavenly court.

Lording its bulk over all of Maui and on to Molokai, Lanai, and the big island of Hawaii, it dominates the skyline from every angle. This massive dormant volcano, the world's loftiest at over three kilometres high, last erupted in 1790, but nevertheless retains an awesome presence. When filmmaker, Bali Strickland and I completed our ascent late yesterday afternoon, we were almost overwhelmed by the utter majesty of the place. The caldera itself is some nine kilometres across, and sits quite comfortably above the clouds.

Cruising around this massive, ethereal landscape, there is a certain strange sensation in actually gazing down at the cloud layers. Aren't clouds something you look up at? The high altitude only exacerbates the weirdness, as the thin air leaves us constantly breathless and slightly intoxicated, and we tried vainly to hold ourselves together enough to film and photograph it.
   
It can be difficult to do spectacular scenarios like Haleakala photographic justice upon initially confronting them, as you tend to shoot from the hip at first, all excited and bright eyed and bushy tailed. After calming down a bit, letting yourself soak up the sensory overload and coming to terms with what's all around, you can finally work some angles and get some decent material. Even then, it's all a rush, and you don't really know what's good or mediocre until you come back down to earth, literally.

The sunset was awesome and serene at the same time, and the view of the increasingly illuminated town of Kahului, as dusk gave way to night, was simply sublime. The wind by this time was glass cuttingly cold, and sent us packing before we really wanted to go, but our artistic aspirations were put to bed by our almost hypothermic bodies. We are determined to go back on a pre-dawn mission though, as word has it that the sunrise, flaring up a fantastic light show over the eastern rim of the caldera, is even more amazing than the sunset. //DAVE SPARKES