Nakalele Means "The Leaning"

A few hours to kill before the airport, so we drive up the coast to a place called the Nakalele Blowhole along a road that twists and turns, like most of the roads on the north side of the island, through shaded green residential streets and magnificent vistas that look out over a windy blue sea. Not everyone is happy we're there, however: we see many upside down Hawaiian flags (a symbol of the Hawaiian separatist movement), and a sign at one prominent curve reads, "We are NOT Americans."

We hike down from parking to the blowhole, which is a natural fountain created by a lava tube that funnels the tides hammering the cliffs below up into a furious waterspout surrounded by a basin of black rock. It's slippery in a few spots, but we scramble to the cliffs to spend an hour watching the water shoot up dozens of feet in the air, where it disapates in a pillar of mist like a ghost spinning itself out of existence.