"Visual effects supervisor Pablo Helman (who worked on Lucas' Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace and Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, as well as Spielberg's War of the Worlds and Munich) traveled to Brazil and Argentina to photograph elements that were composited into the final images.[56]"
Sending one guy to shoot still photographs to composite in cgi hardly counts as going on a location shoot so you can keep dreaming. Also Hawai is a part of the us.