Lying low in Hilo

'Hilo -- it is what it is" probably isn't a tourism slogan that would get a thumbs-up from the Big Island city's Chamber of Commerce.

But I don't mean it as a put-down. It's just advice from a longtime visitor who loves Hawaii's "second city." I also know the worst thing anyone can do for Hilo is to try to oversell it. No one is going to spend a weeklong honeymoon in Hilo or plan a championship golf tournament there.

That's all over on the other side, the rocky brown Kona Coast, with its 10 inches of rain per year and $400-per-night megaresort hotel rooms.

Hilo, on the other hand, is a place often defined by its deficiencies. No famous gourmet restaurants, no luxury hotels, no postcard-worthy beaches. It's more often wet and gloomy compared with the west side. Rain? Count on it. More than 125 inches a year.

But it has something you won't find while strolling the T-shirt shops over in Kailua-Kona.

"Hilo is more relaxing and down-to-earth," said Wilma Kuamoo, a waitress at Ken's House of Pancakes, a local hangout. "In other places, I think people have lost the Hawaiian spirit. They don't have time to stop and talk. They're too busy. Hilo isn't that way."

Tourist-archaeologists can visit Banyan Drive, which seems caught in time before the 1980s. The trees that flank the curving parkway have plaques to the famous visitors who were honored with a tree planting during their visit. Babe Ruth and Amelia Earhart are on the drive. The most recent famous name is Richard Nixon, who stopped by when he was running for vice president in 1952.

But the very things that Hilo isn't -- slick, pricey, touristy -- make it a draw for Hawaii vacationers looking for a different experience. Disney recently opened a resort on Oahu, and more than a few commentators have riffed that the resort is unnecessary because tourism, the No. 1 industry, has already turned the islands into one big theme park.

Hilo has been eclipsed in popularity by the Kona side. The Big Island is big -- you could fit all the other islands inside it and still have lots of room. On the west coast, visitors drive long distances to get to a "destination" resort where enough greenery has been planted and watered to make you forget that you are on the brown, rocky flank of an old volcano.

Seeing the west side from the air is known to give vacationers "Kona shock," an affliction that hits when you realize the weeklong vacation destination looks more like the moon than a tropical paradise. Once inside the resort gates, the irrigation and gardeners can hide it all pretty well. That's not a problem in Hilo. All that rain may be a nuisance, but it makes it the garden side of the island.

Hilo, while it has places for tourists, is a real town maintained for locals. Its green hills and waterfalls are perfectly in tune with the lush Hawaii of most travelers' imaginations.

A force of nature

But it is the ocean that has twice ravaged Hilo. The recent disasters in Indonesia and Japan have only added to the public interest about the killer waves that have smashed the area at least five times since the early 1800s. Hilo was struck in 1946 and again in 1960; downtown was moved back several hundred feet from the water's edge after being flattened by the second tsunami.

Hilo has turned its sometimes deadly relationship with nature to its advantage. It is the jumping-off point for tours of Kilauea, the most active of the island's volcanoes. The lava and smoke have steadily moved away from Hilo in recent decades, though as late as 1984, lava from the currently dormant Mauna Loa made it to the outskirts of town.

The Imiloa Astronomy Center spotlights the work done far up-slope at the observatories atop 13,796-foot Mauna Kea. It's unlike any other planetarium you're likely to visit because it ties the science of the cosmos to how that science was interpreted in traditional Hawaiian legends and used by Polynesians on their epic voyages across the Pacific.

All that rain has an upside. Hilo is home to some of the most beautiful gardens and parks in the islands. Plumeria, orchids and anthurium bloom magnificently here, alongside the massive banyan and monkeypod trees.

My favorite stop in Hilo is Liliuokalani Park, out near Banyan Drive. Though it is named after Hawaii's last queen (overthrown in 1893 by a coterie of businessmen who later pushed for U.S. annexation), it's actually a Japanese garden with red arch bridges, stone lanterns and bonsai. Nearby is Coconut Island, once the home of a traditional Hawaiian temple, or heiau. It can be reached by a short bridge.

Downtown: The real deal

Downtown has retained the type of old Hawaii feel that many island tourist towns have wiped out or turned into a sickly sweet nostalgia. Here the stuccoed buildings and clapboard-sided stores, some still with corrugated tin roofs, are the real deal.

Hilo was, above all, a port, and it attracted fishermen and workers from around the world. You'll find the usual Hawaiian mix of Japanese, Chinese and Filipino. But here there are also bits of Russia and the Caribbean, Portugal and the American Midwest.

The big annual event in Hilo is the Merrie Monarch Festival in April, which celebrates David Kalakaua, the last king of Hawaii, who reigned from 1874 to 1891. Kalakaua tried to roll back many of the restrictions on traditional Hawaiian arts imposed by European missionaries, who arrived on the islands after their "discovery" by Capt. James Cook in 1778. The Merrie Monarch Festival has parades, hula competitions, food fests and arts displays. It's the only time of year when getting a room in Hilo can be a chore, I've found.

Foodies' delight

For fish, head to the Seaside Restaurant and Aqua Farm. It's not the prettiest spot in the islands for dinner, crowded between some industrial buildings near the airport. But it's a place to try moi, the traditional Hawaiian fish once reserved for the kings. It was kapu -- forbidden -- for any commoner to eat it. While Seaside's version won't make me forget the moi at Mama's Fish House in Maui, it comes at about a third of the price.

Whether you find it inspiring or depressing, a visit to Lyman Mission House is important to understand the Western influences that were brought to the islands. It's the home of Hilo's first missionary, David Lyman, and reflects how it would have looked in 1854.

The house is a mix of here and there -- built in a New England style that wouldn't be out of place in a Massachusetts village green, but with tropical koa wood floors. The house has exhibits on local history, as well as the flora and fauna discovered or brought by the missionaries and those who followed. The nearby Haili Congregational Church also looks like it was beamed in from the Boston area, circa 1857. By the 20th century, commerce had added ethnic as well as religious diversity to the area, which is manifested by the Taishoji Soto Mission, a Buddhist temple established in 1913.

There are two choices for those who want to see what all that rain does besides fall on your head and car roof and make flowers bloom. Rainbow Falls, on Waianuenue Avenue, is a five-minute drive from downtown.

"It's best on a clear morning, when the sun hits the water just right and you get the rainbow effect," said Sheryl Omori, who helps run Extreme Exposure, a shop in downtown Hilo that sells art-quality, large-format nature shots.