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hidden hawaii
By Natasha Dragun.
Published in the January-March 2012 issue.
There’s a lot more to the Aloha State than Waikiki Beach and mega-resorts. From ravishing landscapes to organic restaurants and hip hotels, the archipelago still surprises – if you know where to look.
Maui is not that big – some 1,900 square kilometres in total, slightly smaller than Mauritius. I’d normally tackle an island of its size, Hawaii’s second largest, in two or three days. But I soon discover that’s not going to happen on this trip.
“Yeah, Ka’anapali is around 50 kilometres from here. It might take you a couple of hours to get there,” says Kai Kahoiwai, handing me the rental car keys. What? “But I’ve hired a convertible. Won’t it go fast?”
Kai shrugs, chewing gum like it’s a piece of tough steak. “Probably not.”
He’s not talking about the car but rather, about Maui’s often hairpin roads and the distractingly dramatic upcountry scenery, both of which tend to slow drivers down.
Leaving Kahului Airport, I pass through suburban America: jarringly large fast-food joints and service stations and shopping malls that seem to stretch on forever. But suddenly, there’s just countryside, parched and golden and absolutely not what I’d expected. The Maui I’d dreamt about was green and glorious, not dry and desolate. But as I approach The Westin Maui Resort & Spa in Ka’anapali, I begin to glimpse the island I’d envisaged.
The highway weaves north through channels cut from ochre rock, dropping to the ocean on my left. Palm trees and beaches begin to dot the roadside, and kiteboarders and picnickers tumble out of cars and vans.
The Westin Maui is so sprawling it needs its own map. The main resort is home to more than 750 rooms in two towers and there are another 1,000 or so in an adjoining complex. And when I visit, in late autumn, both sites are almost full.
It’s not your average beachside retreat: flamingos parade between waterfalls and lush gardens in the semi-open lobby, and parrots sit on perches surrounding the main pool. Tropica Restaurant & Bar is steps from the sand and fills up by sunset, when people flock in for peppered martinis and seared diver scallops at tables overlooking the Pacific. And across the road there are two championship golf courses: the Robert Trent Jones-designed Royal Ka’anapali and the Ka’anapali Kai, built on a one-time cane plantation – an old sugarcane train (today used for tours) still passes by a number of the holes.
An hour’s drive south is glossy Wailea, Ka’anapali’s celebrity sibling. The southern city is home to the annual Maui Film Festival and is radiantly beautiful and a bit rebellious, with glamour to spare. You only have to check in to Maui’s Four Seasons Resort to agree.
The Four Seasons is one of those resorts where you expect to see Paris Hilton glide by in a bikini – she has stayed here, of course, as have a long list of Hollywood A-listers. Small wonder, given the offerings: a pool area studded with tall palms where cabana boys in crisp white shirts weave between beach chairs dispensing cool towels and icy cocktails, world-class restaurants from the likes of Wolfgang Puck, ocean-facing suites with bathrooms bigger than most Sydney apartments, and a seriously indulgent spa.
Maui has attracted “seekers” for its healing energy since the 1960s and, more recently, Internet millionaires and mainland celebrities who want to rejuvenate in the island’s five-star spas. The one at the Four Seasons does the trick with treatments such as the "Wai Aulia" – a ritual that sees you massaged in a cocoon of warm water – and the hooulu, which incorporates a lemongrass body scrub, a Thai chai soy mud mask and lashings of coconut-lemongrass lotion. Next door, at the imposing Grand Wailea resort, you can indulge in therapies using seashells, volcanic ash and lava stones.
As pretty as its beaches are, Maui’s real allure is its highlands, towards Haleakala. This massive shield volcano forms more than 75 percent of the island and soars 3,000-plus metres over the countryside. It hasn’t erupted for hundreds of years but its ancient lava flows do account for Maui’s exceptionally fertile soil – terroir that is naturally suited to organic farms such as O’o.
From the Four Seasons, it takes another couple of hours to get to O’o, driving past vast fields of sugarcane. Hawaii owes much of its cultural and culinary mélange to these fields – during the 1800s, generations of Chinese, Japanese, Filipino and Portuguese men and women were brought to the islands to work in the cane and pineapple fields and on cattle ranches. Today, their influence is felt everywhere from the state’s small shops to its restaurants – and even at O’o.
Established in 2000 by a pair of surfing buddies looking to grow produce to sustain their restaurants, O’o’s four hectares are planted with fruit and coffee-bean trees and garden vegetables; there are also greenhouses with flavourful herbs, tomatoes and flowers. The produce supplies two lowland eateries – Pacific’O and I’O – plus a farmers’ market; at the source, there are on-demand tours and organic farm-to-table feasts.
I’m met by orchard manager Ansel Clancey, his skin so leathery it could be tanned and turned into a pair of boots. He leads me past trees of chermoya (custard apple), fuzzy-leaved poha berries, cherries and figs, all planted on lunar and biodynamic cycles. We stop to taste shiso and chocolate mint and to pick greens – chard, spinach, arugula – that farm chef Caroline Schaub will turn into a salad.
Hailing from Korea, Caroline has spent the morning roaming O’o’s grounds, composing a lunch menu based on produce that’s ready to be picked. We sit down to roasted golden and candy-striped beets with tofu, baked monchong (a local deepwater fish) and homemade ciabatta slathered in coriander pesto. Afterwards, there’s coffee grown and roasted on site as well as cherry biscotti and chocolates. Everything bar the fish and tofu was sourced from the surrounding fields.
Pacific’O and I’O sit side-by-side on the beach in Lahaina, just south of The Westin. The O’o boys also operate the nightly Feast at Lele, a luau of sorts celebrating Polynesian culture on the sand between their two restaurants.
I’ve never been a huge fan of these song-and-dance getups. They always seem fake and forced – tourist traps that leave you and the performers yawning. But the Feast at Lele bucks the trend of out-of-tune singing and lame leis, offering entertainment from four Polynesian nations. The tables are private, the cocktails are free, the food uses O’o produce, and it actually appears as though the performers hail from some of the nations they’re singing and dancing about. As I polish off another mai tai, the sun begins to set over the Pacific, lighting up the island of Lanai in the distance and casting aglow a couple of cruise ships on the horizon.
On the other side of Haleakala is Mama’s Fish House, an island institution. The drive there takes you through the town of Paia, filled with arts-and-crafts stores selling sarongs and handmade jasmine soaps, and boutiques stocked with vintage gauzy cotton dresses. It’s full of shaggy-haired surfers who left their small towns in California and Germany and Australia and came to call Hawaii home.
Mama’s reminds me of Bali’s alfresco beachside bars, which is to say there are palm trees aplenty, a chilled-out clientele and a warm ocean breeze. But in Maui, the alcohol is strong and cheap. Every mai tai at Mama’s comes in a skull-sized glass with all the requisite trimmings: pink paper umbrella, orchid, Maraschino cherry.
The Polynesian-influenced menu has changed daily since the place opened back in 1973. Favourites include papio (small trevally) ceviche, served in coconut shells with mango and coriander, as well as mahi mahi and slow-cooked Big Island wild boar. The daily specials depend on what the restaurant’s team of fishermen hauled in that morning. The day I visit, there’s opah, caught while the crew of the Victoria were fishing for tuna, and ahi, reeled in by captain Alan Cadis while trolling on the North Shore. They also favour local farms, and regularly source cheese from the nearby Surfing Goat Dairy – an agri-tourism venture where happy goats roam over seemingly endless green pastures in the shadow of Haleakala.
The volcano’s foothills aren’t just home to artisanal producers – adventure sports enthusiasts also flock to the area for its steep slopes and lush terrain. Mountain-bikers zoom down Haleakala’s western rise while zipliners fly through the trees. The countryside around Skyline Eco-Adventures is strangely reminiscent of the Australian outback: zip cords wrap around tall stands of rainbow eucalyptus, a thick layer of leaves padding the ochre soil.
If you keep taking the snaking coastal road east, you’ll eventually reach Hana. As with all places in Maui it takes a couple of hours to get there but brings you back 50 years, to the Maui of secret waterfalls, empty beaches and pervasive spirituality –with nary a high-rise in sight. If you go even farther east, across the Alenuihaha Channel, you’ll hit Big Island (Hawai‘i). But I’m headed in the opposite direction.
The island of Molokai – the Friendly Isle – is known for two things: Jurassic Park and its rather unfriendly locals. “They seem nice when you’re just passing through. But if you decide you want to move there… they’ll make sure you don’t,” chuckles Bill, the captain of the seven-seat Eco-Star helicopter that I’ve just strapped myself into. “The thing is – they want the island to stay as it is.”
From Maui, it’s a breezy 15-minute chopper ride to Molokai, the long-time home of Belgian Father Damien De Veuster, who once cared for sufferers of leprosy at a small north-shore colony. The camp is long gone, but the natural defences that persuaded the Hawaiian government to set the camp here remain.
Carved from two enormous shield volcanoes, Molokai’s northern coast is like the end of the earth – making it the perfect setting for scenes from Jurassic Park III. A catastrophic collapse some 1.5 million years ago sent a large hunk of the East Molokai volcano crashing into the Pacific Ocean, leaving behind the highest sea cliffs in the world. Knife-edge drops are only braved by helicopters and birds, which glide over waterfalls and jungle to reach the ocean, and the U.S.’s longest continuous fringing reef.
Circling the island in the chopper I spot Lanai (also known as the Pineapple Isle for its former plantations) as well as Oahu, my next stop and, for many visitors to Hawaii, the only stop.
Most tourists either avoid Waikiki – Oahu’s infamous beach strip – or never leave it, both of which are mistakes. Yes, the place may appear to be one big eyesore, its concrete-clad resorts and chain restaurants slowly consuming the sand. But it’s also where the fantasy of modern Hawaii was born.
Stroll along the beach and you’ll see Japanese tourists in polo shirts and sun visors fanning themselves to keep cool; surfers so tanned that you’d be hard-pressed to guess their ethnicity; raucous twentysomething Aussies bursting out of bikinis; and wrinkled women in clacky heels. It’s at once American and exotic, Yankee and Asian.
The Asian element can be surprising and, as I find on a visit to Oahu’s newest Japanese restaurant, mostly wonderful. Occupying a floor of Waikiki’s oh-so-cool Modern Honolulu hotel, Morimoto’s is all leggy blondes and clinking cocktails when I arrive. But it’s not all show – the food here comes courtesy of Iron Chef hero Masaharu Morimoto and is seriously good.
The poke, for instance, is brilliantly paired with bocconcini and avocado-wasabi sorbet, topped with dashi foam; and a starter of hamachi and toro tatare comes presented in a mini bento box with hand-grated wasabi, Maui onion and dashi soy. It’s almost too pretty to eat.
The same could be said of the food prepared by chef George Mavrothalassitis. One of the founders of the 1990s Hawaiian Regional Cuisine movement – a group of 12 chefs who banded together to replace uninspired international hotel cuisine with fare based on locally grown foods – Mavrothalassitis’ Chef Mavro restaurant is like the UN of dining rooms. French-born Mavrothalassitis is married to a New Yorker and serves up Provençale cuisine with Japanese aesthetics and native Hawaiian flavours – think Big Island abalone served with a garam marsala oyster sauce, cassava pearls and sea-asparagus tempura, or Kurobuta pork on a bed of glazed Molokai sweet potatoes and an étuvée of watercress.
For inspiration, Mavro eats regularly at Hawaiian restaurants, not that there are many left: two, at his count, and we’re headed to one of them for lunch.
Even at 11:30 a.m. there are queues out the front of Helena’s unassuming shopfront, decorated as it probably has been since it opened in 1946 – lace curtains, Formica tables, plastic bowls. It’s no-frills, but the moment I taste the lomi salmon (a fresh fish and tomato salad), I understand why people are prepared to wait for this.
We fill the table with pulled Kalua pork with pickled cabbage, luau squid (steamed in taro leaves) and haupia – sweet hunks of gelatinous coconut. A handsome Hawaiian with a greasy apron slaps down a lipstick-pink bowl full of short ribs, pipikaula style; his daughter, perhaps, chews gum and orders people to wait outside for a table, waving an armful of glittery bracelets at them.
It’s a tableau you’d find only in Hawaii: slack-key music filling the air, the smell of coconut, lime and jasmine, and the certainty that the next day and for many days after, these two unlikely co-workers will be standing in the restaurant, waiting for customers who may or may not arrive. •
Photography by Natasha Dragun and courtesy of the Four Seasons.
TRAVEL FACTS
getting there
Hawaiian Airlines flies five times a week (daily in peak holiday periods) from Sydney to Honolulu on Oahu, with regular connections on to Maui. 1300-669-106;
hawaiianairlines.com.au
getting around
Hertz and Avis have vehicle rental outlets at all of Hawaii’s main airports. hertz.com and avis.com
when to go
Hawaii is good year-round, though the best weather is typically found in April, May, September and October.
where to stay
• Aqua Hotels & Resorts. 1-808/924-6543; aquaresorts.com
• Aston Hotels and Resorts. 1-808/924-2924; astonhotels.com
• Four Seasons Resort Maui at Wailea. 1-808/874-8000; fourseasons.com
• Hilton Hawaiian Village. 1-808/949-4321; hiltonhawaiianvillage.com
• Hyatt Regency Waikiki Beach Resort and Spa. 1-808/923-1234; waikiki.hyatt.com
• The Modern Honolulu. 1-866/970-4161; themodernhonolulu.com
• Trump International Hotel, Waikiki Beach Walk. 1-808/683-777; trumpwaikikihotel.com
• Turtle Bay Resort. 1-808/293-6000; turtlebayresort.com
• The Westin Maui Resort & Spa. 1-866/500-8313; westinmaui.com
where to eat
• Chef Mavro Honolulu. 1-808/944-4714; chefmavro.com
• Feast at Lele. feastatlele.com
• Helena’s Hawaiian Food. 1-808/845-8044; helenashawaiianfood.com
• Mama’s Fish House. 1-808/579-8488; mamasfishhouse.com
• Morimoto Waikiki. 1-808/943-5900; morimotowaikiki.com
• O’o Farm. 1-808/667-4341; oofarm.com
what to do
• Blue Hawaiian Helicopters. bluehawaiian.com
• Skyline Eco-Adventures. 1-808/878-8400; zipline.com
further information
Contact the Hawaii Tourism Authority for tips on travelling to the American island state. discoverhawaii.com.au and gohawaii.com
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