Maui and its Kid Sister Islands

Story and photography by
Nancy & Eric Anderson 

 

Maui has everything. Secluded beaches to the South in fashionable Wailea with gorgeously designed and landscaped destination resorts like the Kea Lani, now a member of the Fairmont group. Visitors staying there in the recently upgraded villas have their own private pool and private patio and the option of the executive chef preparing dinner on their private barbecue. Anyone saying, So what? really needs to savor the experience of sitting back like, say, Donald Trump or that equally obnoxious fellow in “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” and having your own chef cook to your specifications. It is an extraordinarily delightful, even exquisite thrill.

But Maui has the less chic but ever popular Lahaina in the Northwest, confident and busy where high-rise condos like the Kaanapali Alii offer easy parking, a huge pool and individually owned and decorated suites that, like the Kea Lani’s villas, have a full kitchen. The Westin Maui Resort & Spa lies on one side of the condo complex and the Hyatt Regency Maui and Spa Moana on the other, so tourists staying in the condos can stroll in either direction for an upscale meal or “Pohaku” hot stone spa treatment or lomi lomi massage.

Maui also has Wailuku, the real Hawaii where sugar barons and bankers built their mansions in a more genteel time. Some of those spacious homes have been converted to cozy B & Bs like the 10-roomed Old Wailuku Inn. The inn owners spoil visitors with big quilted beds, full breakfasts -- and pantry guests can raid any time their stomachs feel empty, an exceptionally generous extra for any lodging to provide. Wailuku is a particularly attractive part of Maui, the sort of place that makes any traveler resolve to return to another time to discover it more fully. It’s a great town for walking and it sure has its share of appealing churches!

Maui’s attractions are as scattered as its lodgings. Lahaina has the most activity; it has the long-established Old Lahaina Luau which offers the island’s history in song and dance, a native feast and an open bar where contented visitors line up frequently for their Mai Tai, Lava Flow and ChiChi drinks. We’ve found this luau the best of any we have attended—even its website is enchanting as a click will demonstrate (skip introduction then click on the speaker icon, bottom right, and hit choice 3.

More recent tourist attractions in Lahaina include the Atlantis submarine dive that goes down to 150 feet, and the multiple aquariums at Maalaea of the Maui Ocean Center. There’s no claustrophobia in the submarine as the interior is brightly lit, in fact you are down to 130 feet almost before you realize it. The Ocean Center opened in 1998 but is already named “Hawaii’s Top Rated Family Attraction” by the Zagat survey.

Unexpected pleasures in Maui are the little towns upcountry so beloved by artist colonies where lavender farms and cattle and Hawaiian paniolos (America’s original cowboys) roam. Paia, nine miles to the east of the main airport, is like a Texas town of the 1930s and Makawao, a farther ten miles to the south, is a similar small town jewel. Says Randy Groden, an artist standing in his gallery before portraits he’s done as diverse as Hawaiian beauties and Bill Clinton, “Makawao has been called the Sedona of the Pacific. Visitors coming this far into the interior are discriminating about art, have done their research and are great customers. We love’em.” He is passionate about his island as are other locals. Dave Kodama, another fanatic, opened his Sansei seafood restaurant in 1996 and his classic Japanese cuisine has already won more than two dozen national honors, a major one being HONOLULU magazine’s Gold Award.

Maui itself wins awards. Declared the “world’s most visited island,” it has avoided the errors made by Honolulu’s Wakiki Beach in Oahu that has grown to now resemble Miami Beach. In its success Maui has sought to help tourism in the two little islands nearby, Lanai and Molokai.

Those little islands have not been visited much and tourists are the loser. Maui’s kid sister islands give a glimpse of what Hawaii once was: remote, rural, peaceful, comfortable, contented. They formerly grew sugar cane and pineapple until companies found such crops cheaper to grow elsewhere, another sad example of the outsourcing that is changing our world.

Lanai is easier to get to know; the two luxury resorts have shuttles and Lanai City (a village really) is a fun walk. You can’t miss Lanai City. It has just two parallel streets at the top of which is both the island’s movie theater (don’t expect a multiplex but that’s the charm) and a quaint Old-World hotel that has an excellent restaurant. The streets have an eclectic bunch of boutique, trading posts and small cafes enough to engage you for a couple of hours. And there’s a small church at the bottom of the streets to check out as well.

Beach lovers will want to stay at the luxury Manele Bay now a gorgeous Four Seasons but those craving solitude might chose the similarly upscale Lodge at Koele which also has been taken over by, arguably, the finest hotel group in the world. We’ve been sent by magazines to many exclusive properties in the past and sensed, at some of them, that any hotel group re-branding those hotels with its name would have a lot of work to do. But staying at those two on Lanai just before the Four Seasons put its marque on them surely left us thinking all that was needed was to change the sign.

The Lodge has hiking sticks in every bedroom because Lanai is a place to come to with stout walking shoes -- or a book, several in fact and unwind. It’s a land of rolling hills and sloping meadows, old wooden fences and old chromium-plated cars. It could be any place from your childhood.

Molokai is more remote and more simple yet it is more busy in the sense that its rush hour traffic has five cars instead of one. The Lodge at Molokai Ranch, its prime accommodation, perches on a bluff about 1200 feet above the sea almost lost amidst the 65,000 acres of ranch around it. If you’re lucky you’ll get there at a time when local worthies perform, for their own pleasure as much as guests’ on a variety of musical instruments -- some of which may not have names. And because you’re close to the sea you’ll enjoy the water sports available like snorkeling, scuba, ocean kayaking, deep sea fishing and whale watching -- and because you’re on a ranch you’ll want to go hiking, mountain biking and horseback riding. If you enjoy horses and are comfortable on them you’ll maybe think you’re ready for the famous Molokai mule ride. Well…. Let’s talk about that.

First for this, er, escapade, you’re in the hands of a most well trained bunch of strange people when you show up for this adventure. To begin you are sent to meet the boss, Buzzy Sproat, a former vice president at GM who has become ”the most famous Hollywood cowboy in Hawaii” because of the mule ride. “That’s Buzzy over there with his mule,” the receptionist says pointing, “he’s the one wearing the hat.” We ask if we could photograph him with the best-looking mule and are told, “No don’t do that. It would make Buzzy look bad!” 

Actually we can’t get Buzzy’s favorite mule to stand still for a photograph. We ask why the mule is so skittish and get the reply, “he tried to call in sick this morning but we said, No.”

Now some numbers: you start close to the edge of a cliff 1,700 feet above sea level and you’re going to stumble down the poorly defined trail to the surf on an animal that’s known to be both stubborn and stupid. But sure-footed, right ? a sort of cross between a mountain goat and a yak, right? Well yes and no. The track record for the company is excellent but some politically-correct buffoons decided the zigzagging trail worn smooth by years of mules’ feet should be re-inforced or “improved” for hikers so reinforced metal inserts were developed to create steps at intervals. As a rider you know when the mules have come to such an intrusion because they swear and skid when their hooves bounce off metal and you’d swear yourself you were going to go over the handle bars, so to speak, as they fall down to their knees.

You start off, step one is virtually the point of no return, so you’re on your way. You decide to show how confident you are. You are so brave, you can chat, eh? “This is my first mule ride” you cry out to the head guide. “Mine too,” he replies, “and the mules’ also!” Down you continue, closing your eyes when you come to the hair pin bends when you are exposed to the sheer drop to the rocks below you. And all the way down for an hour and a half you are thinking, Jeez, we have to come back up.  And remembering that back at the ranch you have a claw-foot tub in your room because you’ll sure be soaking in it soon after your famous ride down the cliffs.

But before you do you’ll visit Father Damien’s former leper colony at the base of the cliffs and pay tribute at the grave of this Belgian priest who did so much for this group of 816 lepers that was so unkindly ostracized.

It is a sad story in medical times gone by and in the history of our country. Leprosy, a Biblical-era condition now called Hansen’s disease, was a skin and nervous system infection of limited communicability yet patients with it were shunned and quarantined vigorously. To limit their activities persons with the disease were brought by ship to the north shore of Molokai to the surf below the high cliffs and either taken by lifeboat to this lonely beach accessible only by boat or mule train above or, if the seas were too rough, just dumped in the water and told to swim for the shore. Remnants of the colony still live here, scarred by the disease but no longer infectious. Traces are everywhere of this courageous and compassionate priest who chose to live among his parishioners even though he knew he would develop their disease, did so and died from it after 15 years of service to his flock. In one of his final letters he penned, "My face and my hands are already decomposing, but the good Lord is calling me to keep Easter with Himself." He died on April 15, 1889. Though his grave still sits beside his little church of Kalawao, he was reburied in Louvain, Belgium in 1936.

Thoughts of sacrifice like this may make your Maui memory special. Not a movie you saw on vacation, not a wave you caught or a fish you landed. Just a moment of serenity surrounded by the sea and reflecting on the kindness and majesty of Man.