Television

When Oceanic Air Flight 815 crashes on a mysterious South Pacific island somewhere between Sydney and Los Angeles, the four dozen survivors who are "Lost" encounter a strange world that might be a fever dream, purgatory — or just a highly addictive television series.

But finding the real world of Dr. Jack, Kate, Locke, Charlie, Sayid, Sun and all the others (including "The Others") doesn't take anything more than a rental car from the Honolulu airport and a map of the North Shore of Oahu.

The brilliance of the creators of Lost is that they have staked out one of the island's few truly islolated spots, just 90 minutes from Honolulu.

To get to the heart of Lost country, visitors take a drive familiar to generations of surfers, up over the saddle roads that cut through the heart of Oahu. Past the Army's famed Schofield Barracks, the Dole Pineapple Plantation Visitors Center and acres of what used to be sugar cane fields. The road eventually dips down to the town of Haleiwa.

Most people turn right to visit the famous surf beaches of Waimea Bay, Banzai Pipeline and Sunset Beach.

But not Lost fans. They turn left and take the two-lane road past often rocky beaches. There's a youth camp, some houses and farms, before the road essentially dead-ends at Kaena Point. Tourist facilities? Unless you want to go glider soaring at Dillingham Field, get lost.

I've been coming to this part of Oahu for two decades and used to find the beaches mostly abandoned. But now there is a steady stream of people with rain-splattered maps trying to glimpse a familiar setting from their TV sets.

The grail for Lost fans is Mokuleia Beach, also known as Army Beach, a thin strip of white sand with rock-strewn waters. It's here that the Lost plane crashed in the opening episode. Once two trees marked the spot, but one burned down a while back.

The geography presented in the show often bears little resemblance to reality. When "The Others" are shown observing the plane going down in the distance and are told by their leader to "go to the other side of the island," their enclave is actually Camp Erdman, a YMCA facility just across the highway from the crash site.

"It's been a great experience," said Josh Heimowitz, the camp's executive director. "It's added to our bottom line — about $70,000 over the past two years alone. And the cast are always very nice. When they shot at night last year, they had all the kids out and showed them what they were doing and yelled 'action.' The counselors said it was the best camp ever. Early on, my 2-month-old daughter played the baby Aaron. My YMCA colleagues on the mainland are always asking if I can get them photos or autographs. There are some inconveniences when they film, but we will miss them when they are gone."

To keep the cast close by, sometimes Hawaii sites double as spots elsewhere in the world during flashback sequences. The Nigerian church visited by the character Eko is actually Kealiiokamalu Church. The connection: Both are tiny wood churches built by missionaries.

You don't even have to leave Waikiki to see some familiar if less atmospheric spots from show. The Royal Garden Hotel in Waikiki was transported in the show to Seoul, South Korea. But the hotel with the biggest Lost link is the venerable Ilikai. It's figured several times in flashbacks.

The Ilikai doesn't quite get the position of honor it did on the only other television show that can match Lost in driving visitors to Hawaii.

From 1968 to 1980, an aerial shot swooped in on the Ilikai as a drum-and-horn-driven surf tune played. Actor Jack Lord, as Detective Steve McGarrett, stood on the balcony of his "apartment" at the Ilikai. Unlike Lost, viewers knew exactly where they were located when they saw Hawaii Five-0.

Click on it: Lost Virtual Tour (www.lostvirtualtour.com) is the indispensable guide to finding the key spots from the show. It not only shows the locations, but also has screen grabs of key scenes from the show lined up with some photographs of what the place looks like in "real" life.