TROPICAL PARADISE
ON MAUI, SEEK OUT THE HIDDEN WOWS OF WILD HAWAII
The best roads to drive are those that you would really rather not drive at all, the ones that practically yank you out of the car every mile to hike, surf, ski or just breathe in the tantalizing world beyond the windshield. Maui has a deep bench of such roads, among them a 25-mile stretch that runs along the coast on the north side of the West Maui Volcano.
Last April, during a nine-day stay on the island with my wife and kids, we twice ventured along this route — once from Kahului, on the Kahekili Highway, and once from Kaanapali, on the Honoapiilani Highway — and each time found pockets of wild Hawaii, along with far less traffic and fewer people than I've encountered on the famous Hana Highway.
Not that I've got anything against that marquee route. In the iconic-one-daydrive department, it delivers on high expectations and, to be honest, deserves a three-to-four-day commitment.
But unless you follow the hard-to-follow advice to start early, beeline to Hana and work your way back, you'll be sharing your special vacation moments with a lot of other people.
On a breezy Tuesday, we pick up the Kahekili north of Kahului, Maui's main city. The road is named for Kahekili II, who ruled Maui, Molokai, Lanai and part of Oahu in the late 1700s. His claims to fame include conquering holdout Oahuan chiefs and building a house with their bones. Within minutes of passing the sacred Iao Valley, where Kahekili's army fell (in his absence) to Kamehameha I in 1790, the road jumps out of its saddle, morphing from a carefree, two-lane cruiser to a narrow, harrowing zigzag with afterthoughts of pavement squeezed between looming rock walls and plunging ravines. More than once, I catch myself struggling to top the posted 5 mph speed limit. In many places, the rocks above are restrained by industrial netting, which often reaches dozens of feet above the road.
Where the Hana Highway is coddled — hemmed by guardrails and loamy, darkgreen forest bridled with waterfalls — the Kahekili is exposed, featuring single-lane curves — with inches separating driving from free-falling — and open fields of bright lime vegetation tumbling toward the sea. Every half-mile or so, my eye catches a must-shoot photo, such as a glistening bay far below or a gulch disappearing up the hillside toward the peak of Puu Kukui, an extinct volcano that summits at 5,788 feet above the sea and, with an average of 362 inches of rain a year, is one of the wettest places on Earth.
About 15 miles along, we park in a dusty pullout and hike a couple hundred yards down an eroding hillside to a series of volcanic-rock tide pools, called the Olivine Pools. Most are wading depth, although
one is about 15 feet deep and teeming with fish.
Four miles farther on, we coast into another pullout for one of the most popular attractions on Maui's backside, the Nakalele Blowhole — which, I later learn, the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau considers too dangerous to promote. We pass a couple of handscrawled signs ("Warning . . . You can be sucked in and killed. It's not a waterpark.") before descending through chaparral and down a vague trail of red dirt and rock to a basin of lava overlooking the ocean.
It's easy to guess where the hole is, both by the people standing nearby and the puddles all around it, and we don't have to wait long for certainty: Every 20 seconds or so, a plume erupts.
On our return toward Kahului, we stop at a viewpoint high above Kahakuloa Bay and its namesake village. We peer over the edge, which itself offers little room for error, into a mosaic of brilliant marine pigments washing onto a blackrock beach below a handful of tenuous homes and a freshly painted green church. Dominating the view across the bay is a 646-foot rock formation, Kahakuloa Head, from which Kahekili II was said to leap into the ocean every morning.
A few days later, we follow the Honoapiilani Highway around from Maui's resort-heavy West Coast. It takes us longer to ditch civilization from this approach but eventually we do, rising from the villas and golf courses of Kapalua to find, glinting in a paved pullout, the El Taco Borracho food truck. Our first clue that we need to eat here is the small crowd waiting in line, on a 100-degree arc of pavement, to eat hot Mexican fare.
We take our assortment of fish tacos, carne asada and quesadillas, hop a guard rail and follow a short trail to a pine-shaded ocean overlook. Across a channel, the outline of Molokai slopes gently into the sea. In the middle distance, a catamaran crosses our view. And even closer we can see, in the heaving surf, the lightbrown shells of sea turtles navigating the shallows.
A mile down the road, we alight on the gem of this drive, Honolua Bay. The charm of Honolua starts well before you reach the beach, with a walk through an open forest of moss-draped banyan trees, coconut palms and other tropical plants. Sunlight splinters through the canopy and golden-hued chickens and roosters scurry up from a stream bed. There are other people here, but it's all okay: With the soft ground, warm light and sweet smell of vegetation, the communal stoke is high, as if we're all on the path into a hippie music festival.
That path opens to a rocky cove cupped by hills carpeted in grasses and trees. Out on a far point, a half-dozen surfers jockey for waves that peel into the bay and form dreamlike barrels before playing out into pillows of white foam.
We strap on our snorkel gear and kick across to the far side of the bay. Near shore, the water is murky but it clears up as we move toward the point, where a menagerie of colorful butterflyfish, Moorish idols, pinktail durgons, spotted trunkfish and others mingle with sea turtles among huge, smoothly rounded boulders. Cutting back across the bay brings us to a maze of coral heads, where the water is deeper and clearer, with clusters of healthy coral.
At the risk of sounding jaded, so much of what we experience in Maui is precisely what we expect: knee-buckling views, azure seas brimming with life, hikes into Jurassic-style forests, volcanic sunsets, fresh seafood and wonderfully modern cocktails. Our surprise comes from how much of this magical island remains serene and roomy.
We find it not only along the Kahekili and Honoapiilani but also on a back road up the flanks of Maui's 11,000-foot crown, Haleakala, where we stand alone above the clouds, gazing upon the West Maui Volcano from afar and later, driving down the same road and seeing wild pigs dart from our headlights.
We find it on Makena Road, at a small cove called Kanahena, which we have to ourselves for an hour-long snorkel session.
We find it on the long lonely road beyond Hana, a strip of asphalt that bucks along the southern cuff of Haleakala, through acres of brown lava rock cast in sharp relief against the turquoise ocean. When the sun sets on us here, miles from the nearest lights of Pukalani, I feel as alone and exposed as I have in a long time.
I even find it in the heart of resort country, snorkeling off the sacred black rock at the Sheraton Maui. I am out a ways, around the bend from where most of the other tourists are bobbing and I glance up into the eyes of a giant sea turtle, literally two inches from my face. We both pause, heads just above the surface in the warm morning sun. She regards me passively before diving, suddenly sleek and athletic as she disappears around a rock, leaving me alone, suspended and buoyed by gratitude in the Hawaiian sea.