Aloha, paradise!

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/11/2001 (8904 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

HUELO, Hawaii — The come-ons and sales pitches hit like a hurricane as soon as you step off the plane: Dive in a submarine to a pristine underwater world! Ride horseback along an untamed coast! Soar over Haleakala in a gravity-defying paraglider!

It seems as if every lobby, restaurant and shopping centre flaunts racks of tour brochures, each promising a novel piece of paradise. Bike faster! Dive deeper! Fly higher! It all looks so exciting and fun — exclamation point!

But where do you start? Is a $60 kayak tour better than a $75 snorkeling cruise? And is either better than renting a mask and fins for $7 and diving into a free public bay? With so many tour operators, how do you distinguish a good catch from a bottom feeder?

Last month, I went to Maui fishing for answers. The goal: to see as much of the island as possible in as many ways as possible. With 101 options and only five days, I just scratched the surface. But I did my best, snorkeling with green sea turtles in Makena, snuba diving (a variant of scuba diving) to see moray eels at Molokini, parasailing 300 metres above Maui’s western shore and riding horseback from the cliffs of the Hana Highway to the cool Koolau Forest Reserve.

In the end, I had seen Maui by land, sea and air. Were most of the fancy tours I tried worth their expense? To my surprise, yes.

Must every traveller spend a tidy sum, as I often did, to see the best Maui has to offer? The answer, I’m happy to say, is no.

Visitors spent $583 million US last year on recreation and entertainment in the state — 61 per cent more than they spent on souvenirs, according to the Hawaii Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism.

T-shirts and puka-shell necklaces are easy buys; you see what you’re getting. But tours are tougher. Many visitors plunk down $44 US for a sunset cruise or $170 US for a helicopter ride, cross their fingers and hope they don’t feel ripped off in the end.

I stuck to a coastal itinerary that started near the grand resorts of Wailea in the west, continued north toward Lahaina and Kaanapali, rounded the northwest corner of Maui and ended in rural Huelo in the north.

With so much idyllic coastline, it seemed natural to start in the water. Wailea is one of the most popular destinations, with manicured resorts such as the Fairmont Kea Lani, the Four Seasons and the Outrigger Wailea, which completed a $25-million US makeover last year. But a few minutes south is a natural beauty called Makena, where the wide, sandy state beach has views unimpeded by high-rise hotels.

Many companies rent gear and send customers on their merry way. Kelii’s Kayak Tours was appealing because of its guides, who lead small groups of paddlers into prime waters.

For half an hour, a honeymooning couple, a mother-daughter pair and I paddled along Makena with Ted Lyau, who showed us how to slide into the water without tipping the kayaks.

Fish were few, but we did get a warm aloha from a half-dozen laid-back locals: green sea turtles swimming in slow motion — on Maui time, as islanders might say.

The tour was $61.50 US well spent, not only for the turtles but also for the services of a helpful, ecologically minded guide.

I had gone into the kayak trip hoping for the best, but I signed on for a five-hour snorkel-and-snuba cruise expecting the worst. The brochure for the Four Winds II was full of hot air: photos of babes in bikinis, suntanned jocks and local fishermen showing off a five-foot catch. It screamed tourist trap — the kind with lots of exclamation points. (A 55-foot glass-bottom catamaran! Underwater videos and cameras! An open bar and barbecue buffet!)

And then there was the price: $75 US for the cruise to Molokini, a sunken volcanic crater and marine wildlife reserve 16 kilometres south of Maalaea Harbor. An optional 25 minutes of snuba diving cost $47 US more.

Snuba was tempting because it requires no experience or certification. It allows even a landlubber to dive seven metres underwater and breathe comfortably through a scuba-like regulator tethered to an oxygen tank. Because the tank floats at the water’s surface, there’s no cumbersome equipment to lug.

Motion-sickness medicine had been part of my morning routine, so I was ready to dive in. It took all of three seconds to forget the morning’s unpleasantness and see why Molokini is Maui’s most popular snorkeling site. Large-lipped parrotfish, ribbon-finned moorish idols and tall, slender pink-tail triggerfish did laps around snorkellers.

When my turn to snuba dive rolled around, I was skeptical. What could I possibly see seven metres underwater that I couldn’t see snorkeling?

A lot, it turns out. Guide Jamie Nygren led us toward threadfin butterfly fish with zebra-like stripes, spotted trunkfish and two white-mouthed moray eels tucked in the coral. The difference in depth made the reef seem more alive. Softball-size spiny urchins that at first appeared basic black had a beautiful blue sheen. The trumpfish that resembled a sickly green bamboo shoot from afar glowed canary yellow at close range.

As worthwhile as the cruise-snorkel-snuba extravaganza was, it wasn’t the best buy of the trip. That honour went to a $7 US mask-and-fins rental, which proved that cheap fish can be just as impressive as the $122 US variety.

On to the second leg of the Ironman Triatha-tour: Maui by air.

Parasailing isn’t the most exciting airborne option, but it is the least expensive. For as little as $30 US, several outfits in Lahaina will strap customers into parachute harnesses and send them 200 metres or higher into the sky from a platform on the back of a motorboat.

A reservations agent for Parasailing Kaanapali boasted that its customers fly 300 metres, the highest on Maui. I wasn’t carrying an altimeter, so I took her word on it.

Other parasailers on my boat — two teenage girls and a father-son pair — seemed exhilarated, but I felt shortchanged.

I put it all behind me with a drive along the Kahekili Highway. Kahekili was the last of Maui’s chiefs, the most powerful ruler in all of Hawaii in the 1780s. Along the highway, hotels and condos around Maui’s northwest corner yield to a wilder coast largely undeveloped since Kahekili’s day.

The road’s curves get sharper, the cliffs get steeper and the asphalt narrows to a single lane for two-way traffic. The going is slow — eight km-h in some stretches. I pulled off at a half-dozen turnouts and walked along cliffs that dusted my shoes with rust-red soil. Below, white-topped waves tickled Maui’s black volcanic toes.

I didn’t think the scenery could get much better, but then I reached Waihee and the last leg of my tour: Maui by foot.

Because of its remote location about two kilometres off Kahekili Highway, the Waihee Ridge Trail is a hiker’s hideaway. Few climb the five-km mountainside path, where grassy switchbacks rise 1,300 feet up cloud-enshrouded Puu Kukui.

Parts of the volcano get 1,000 centimetres of a rain a year. Although the skies were partly sunny during my visit, sections of the trail were muddy and the rocks slick. With daylight fading and my night’s lodging still a couple of hours away, I turned back at the halfway point — far enough, though, to reveal more of Maui’s landscape than the morning’s ride in the sky had.

Each of the four Huelo Point rentals has a private hot tub and a full kitchen. My unit, Haleakala Cottage, may have been the smallest, but with its own deck and plenty of privacy, it was a good place to recharge for the final tour of the trip.

Visiting Maui

Getting there