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The conversation about Hawaii almost always starts badly, because it starts with the wrong question: how many islands can be seen. The useful question is another: which one. And it has an answer, because the islands are not variants of the same thing but different stages of one geological process.
01 Why one and not three
The arithmetic is unforgiving. Each island change means returning the car, packing, getting to the airport with time to spare, flying, picking up another car and settling in again. In practice each hop eats most of two days. With ten nights, three islands mean six usable days and four of logistics.
And there is an added factor: on these islands almost everything interesting is far from the accommodation and demands driving. Staying on one lets you do something continuous hopping cannot fit in: return to a place you liked, change plan if the sea is rough and keep a day with nothing scheduled.
02 The young island: lava and altitude
Hawaii Island covers 10,432 square kilometres — more than all the others combined — and has only 200,629 inhabitants. Its rock is 700,000 years old or less, so the landscape is bare lava, without ravines and with little vegetation across wide areas. It is the only island where active volcanism can be seen.
Its other peculiarity is altitude: Mauna Kea reaches 4,205 metres, so in a single day you go from the coast to an ash desert where it can snow. The windward side, by contrast, is wet and green, with tall waterfalls and rainforest.
The cost of that variety is distance. It is an enormous island and the drives are long: crossing from one end to the other takes much of a day. Here more than anywhere it pays to use two bases, one on each side, rather than attempting everything from one point.
03 The old island: ravines and water
At the other end of the row is Kauai: 1,430 square kilometres, 73,298 inhabitants and rock about five and a half million years old. All that erosion has produced what you see: canyons over a thousand metres deep, fluted cliffs and wide green valleys.
It is the choice for someone coming for landscape and walking, and by far the quietest: seventy-three thousand people on an island several times the size of Menorca. It is also the one with the least infrastructure, the least nightlife and the most weather-dependent, because its windward side is among the wettest places on the planet.
You are not choosing between beaches. You are choosing between five million years and seven hundred thousand.
04 The two in the middle
Oahu is the case apart: 1,545 square kilometres and 1,016,508 inhabitants, making it the archipelago's only urban island and the one holding most of the state's population. It is the choice for someone who wants city, museums, restaurants and nightlife, and the only one where a trip without a car is viable.
Maui, with 1,883 square kilometres and 164,221 inhabitants, is the compromise answer and is usually best for a first trip. It has easy, sheltered beaches, a spectacular coast road and a 3,055-metre volcano, Haleakalā, with a red sand crater you can drive up to. Without the big island's distances or Kauai's solitude.
05 What to know beforehand
The first warning is the car. Except on Oahu you drive daily here, and public transport covers almost nothing you come to see. Book it ahead: in high season supply is short and prices climb sharply.
The second is the sea. The swell changes sides with the season: in winter it breaks on north-facing coasts and in summer on southern ones, so the beach in the photograph may not be swimmable the month you go. Choose beaches with a lifeguard and ask before going in.
The third is price. Hawaii is expensive on all its islands, in accommodation, cars and food. That is precisely the best argument against island-hopping: every internal flight and every extra rental is money that does not turn into days of trip.
06 How the trip ends up
If it is your first time and you want a bit of everything, go to Maui for ten nights with two bases, one on the west coast and one in the east. If you are going for landscape and walk a lot, Kauai. If volcanoes interest you and distances do not frighten you, Hawaii Island with two bases. And if you want a city as well as a beach, Oahu.
As for dates, the two best windows are April and May, when the sea is at its calmest, and September and October, when the water reaches its 26.9 degrees and school holidays are over. Avoid the second half of December, the priciest of the year.
And one last thought that saves frustration: the island you do not choose will still be there. Better to come back in a few years to a whole new island than to take away four half-islands and the memory of three car rental desks.
Martin Falbisoner Nara for someone who had it down as a half-day trip
Arne Müseler The Veneto for two travellers who do not want the same thing: one asks for museums, the other for mountains
Carsten Steger