Makawao’s proximity to Haleakala, and my first morning’s trip up the volcano, colored the rest of my stay on Maui and not just in the pastels of dawn. And with handmade quilts on the poster beds, claw-foot tubs that beckon a lazy soak, and a lanai that opens onto a garden to catch breezes off the mountain, the Ho‘okipa Inn was about as far from the big-box glitz of the coast as I could get. But at 480 meters above sea level, Makawao, a funky amalgamation of galleries and organic restaurants tucked in a highland cleft on the flanks of Haleakala National Park, is more Boulder, Colorado, than Baywatch. The great misconception about Hawaii is that it’s all beaches and bikinis separated by waterfall-festooned tropical rain forests. My first couple of nights I spent in the artistic enclave of Makawao, where I checked in to a converted 1920s plantation house that’s run as a bed-and-breakfast called the Hale Ho‘okipa Inn. And so most of them do-which is why I headed east. On arrival, it counseled, tourists should make haste westward to either historic Lahaina or chichi Wailea. “The oldest, biggest, and most glamorous resorts on Maui are on the western coasts,” said one guidebook I consulted prior to my trip. It was the only kind of honking I could tolerate this early. The sun streamed up from the sea, and two nenes, or Hawaiian geese, broke my reverie when they waddled over to me and began squawking. Perhaps finding Maui’s hidden allures would be simpler than I’d imagined: just watch the tourist cavalcade, and head in the other direction. I watched in peace as the sun rose from the silvery Pacific, while somewhere in the ashen morning behind me, carloads of holidaymakers streamed upward to share this same view with thousands of others. With views like this, I could understand the desire to stretch out the moment. According to local legend, Maui-the Polynesian demigod for whom the island is named-lassoed the sun from atop Haleakala in order to lengthen the day. The sky shimmered from salmon to baby blue, and fleecy brown cinder cones materialized like mushrooms below the crater’s craggy rim. Leaving the car, I scrabbled down the empty trail to a glass shelter offering views deep into the crater of the world’s largest dormant volcano.
Instead, in the pale light I could just make out a faint path. Deciding to skip the sunrise swarm, I swung into a parking lot to turn around. Even if it was the over developed, overhyped honeymooner haven I’d long believed it to be, I figured I could surely ferret out a bit of laid-back tranquility. Seven million visitors descend on America’s farthest-flung state each year, and, as far as I’m concerned, no matter how physically stunning or meteorologically blessed or culturally endowed a place might be, paradise overrun by crowds is no paradise at all.īut time and curiosity had worn me down, and I eventually booked a flight to Maui. But flashing taillights and honking horns only reminded me of the reasons I’d steered clear of the Hawaiian Islands all my life.
Hence the bumper-to-bumper crush of tourist vehicles. Sunrise at the summit of this 3,000-meter shield volcano is reputed to be glorious on an 1866 visit, Mark Twain described it as “the sublimest spectacle” he ever saw. On the pre-dawn drive to the top of Mount Haleakala for daybreak, grinding tourist traffic was fast turning the road up the sacred peak into ungodly gridlock. A circuitous tour of Hawaii’s second-largest island reveals that there’s much more to Maui than luaus and mai tais Above: rain forest foliage on the luxuriant slopes of Haleakala National Park.
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