The Hawaii Island
The Hawaiian Islands are an archipelago of eight major islands, several atolls, numerous smaller islets, and undersea sea mounts in the North Pacific Ocean, extending some 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) from the island of Hawaiiʻi in the south to northernmost Kure Atoll. Once known as the “Sandwich Islands”, the name chosen by James Cook in honor of the then First Lord of the Admiralty John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, the archipelago now takes its name from the largest island in the cluster. The United States state of Hawaii occupies the archipelago almost in its entirety, with the sole exception of Midway island, which is instead an unincorporated territory within the United States Minor Outlying Islands.
Incredible (and rare) wildlife can be found on the islands, from purple crabs and Philippine mouse-deer to Philippine pangolin and beautiful butterflies. Just be sure to avoid the creepy-looking Palawan bearcat at night.
We suggest heading into the water and going below the surface. Palawan has some of the best spots to scuba dive in the world — barracuda-filled shipwrecks, for example, line the bottom of Coron Bay.
The Hawaiian Islands are the exposed peaks of a great undersea mountain range known as the Hawaiian-Emperor sea mounts chain, formed by volcanic activity over a hotspot in the Earth’s mantle. The islands are about 1,860 miles (3,000 km) from the nearest continent.
