Maui, Just Right

Near the golf courses, shopping malls and hotels of Kaanapali and Wailea, the two prime resorts on Maui’s sunny western coast, there are places in-between, not so sprawling, pricey or perfectly arranged.

Convention-goers and package vacationers who favor the big resorts pass by enclaves like Napili (north of Kaanapali) and Maalaea (at the head of Maalaea Bay) in a blink, briefly wondering what they’re like. Budget travelers don’t frequent them either, heading instead to funky surfers’ hotels and out-of-the-way state park cabins. This is because, though not as expensive as resorts like the Kaanapali Beach Sheraton (where rates start at $310), the places I’m talking about aren’t dirt cheap. They’re in-between in price and almost every other respect, with small, low-rise, Hawaiian-style hotels, modest recreational facilities and a sense of neighborhood that recalls the way the island must have been 30 years ago before developers’ bulldozers rolled in.

Two weeks ago, I spent four days exploring Napili Bay, Maalaea Beach and a few other in-between spots. On such a short trip, I didn’t get much of a tan, but I did come home with lots of ideas about where to stay the next time I go, and strategies for doing it at a reasonable price.

Which isn’t easy. In 1998, the average daily rate for a hotel room on Maui was about $180, slightly higher than the year before--giving the lie to the idea that the Asian economic crisis has turned Hawaii into a bargain-basement paradise. (Asian visitors traditionally have favored Oahu, which meant that Maui didn’t feel the worst of the pinch when visitors from the Far East started staying home.) It only took a few calls for me to figure out that the booming convention business is keeping the island’s major chain resorts too full to offer discounts. And in Hawaii it’s high season (Christmas to Easter, roughly), which only made matters worse. But here’s a tip to file away from a hotelier on Napili Bay: For fair weather, thinner crowds and low rates, the best times to visit Maui are May, the first week in June and the first two weeks in December.

It was a spur-of-the-moment trip--I went on one day’s notice, which, as everyone knows, is lunacy for getting low air fares and good rates at hotels. The major airlines had no seats nonstop from LAX to Kahului, Maui’s main airport, for less than about $1,000. But after spending some time on the phone, I found a $445.65 ticket to Maui from Cheap Tickets Inc. on Hawaiian Airlines, via Honolulu. (For details on my last-minute hunt for a good fare, see Guidebook, this page.)

It would have been faster and simpler to fly into the little Kapalua West Maui Airport, about a five- to 10-minute drive to Napili. That way you avoid the drive south from Kahului Airport over the saddle between Maui’s two volcanoes, then north around the traffic-clogged west coast. The drive should take about 45 minutes, but crowds and construction on Hawaii 30 at Kaanapali made it more like 1 1/2 hours on my trip.

Of course, the real culprits are the humpback whales, plentiful in the waters around Maui from January to March and often visible from the shore. The joke on the island is that the leviathans are the No. 1 cause of automobile accidents among tourists; rainbows are No. 2.

My timing was good for whale watching, though. I saw humpbacks from Napili Bay, which is at the top of my list of places to stay when I return to the island. It’s classic Maui, flanked by homes, the red-earth fields of the Maui Land and Pineapple Co. and the hermetic, mist-veiled West Maui Mountains. The beach is not too big, not too small, but just right, pinioned to the south by a two-story condo complex called Napili Point and to the north by the 162-room Napili Kai Beach Club. The club, founded by two island-enraptured Canadians, Jack and Margaret Millar in 1962 (a year before the Kaanapali Sheraton down the coast opened its doors), sets the tone on Napili Bay. It’s a quietly classy place, catering to families who return decade upon decade and generation upon generation.

The rates start at $180, so I did not stay there. But the night I arrived, I made a beeline to the Sea House restaurant on the waterfront at Napili Kai to see the children of club employees perform their Friday night Hawaiian dances. The fixed-price dinner cost $35, including salad, baked mahi-mahi, delicious homemade coconut cake and the show. The troupe was sponsored by the nonprofit Napili Kai Foundation, which is dedicated to teaching indigenous arts to children age 6 to 18. The darling kids performed the most genuine Hawaiian show I have seen in half a dozen visits to the islands. Easily apparent in the wings, grade-schoolers waited to make their entrances while straightening hula skirts and putting orchids in their hair.

The bay must have been a deserted marvel when the club was built, but now it’s lined with small, moderately priced places to stay. Most are condo complexes composed of individually owned units rented out by the management (usually with a three- to five-night minimum stay). This accounts for the fact that the degree of wear and tear and the decoration vary from apartment to apartment. I liked the tiny Hali Napili (rates $98 to $155), which doesn’t have a pool but is right on the beach, and the Napili Surf Beach Resort ($109 to $229) best. But I doubt you could go far wrong at any of them, provided you ask if there’s a pool, whether the complex is actually on the beach, and how close the unit you’re thinking of booking is to Lower Honokowai Road (not a main artery but somewhat noisy).

I stayed just around the southern arm of Napili Bay at Honokeana Cove Vacation Condominiums, which has 38 units in three two-story buildings set around a little pool. The cove is rocky but great for snorkeling, and there’s an oceanfront path that leads to the sandy beach at Napili, a five-minute stroll away. Just off the beach, you can get provisions at the general store or rent gear at Snorkel Bob’s while paging through “Snorkel Bob’s Reality Guide to Hawaii” (Hara Publishing, $15).

My unit (priced at $110 a night) had a small living room and kitchen area, a bath and a bedroom. The place was well decorated but not elegant, with a large-screen TV, ceiling fans and some nice personal touches, among them an owner’s guest book containing such comments as “Love the cove, third time here.” And all the units have porches looking across Pailolo Channel to the neighboring island of Lanai.

In the morning people sit on their porches in nightgowns and pajamas, drinking coffee and waving when you pass by. In fact, the atmosphere is so friendly and neighborhoody that you’re seldom tempted to leave. But for those who like to explore, Kaanapali and Lahaina are about a 15-minute drive south on Lower Honokowai Road. It twists and turns past the street that leads to Napili Plaza (with a market, cafe and inexpensive Maui Tacos restaurant), more small resorts, two waterfront parks and pretty little Kaanapali Congregational Church, built in 1850. Or you could drive north to Kapalua, a handsome planned resort area with two luxury hotels, a golf course, the Bay Club Restaurant (pricey at dinner, but affordable for sunset drinks) and the Kapalua Shops, which I prefer to the Whalers Village mall in Kaanapali. The small shopping mall, adjacent to the Kapalua Bay Hotel Resort, has an inviting Hawaiian quilt store and Sansei, widely considered the best seafood restaurant on the island. At the sushi bar there, I tried the Asian rock shrimp cakes ($6.95) and Hawaiian ahi carpaccio ($10.95), both fresh-fish taste sensations. Entrees are about $20.

Another tip: One of Maui’s chief tourist attractions is the road around the northeast side of the island to Hana, which is gorgeous but hours long. A similarly scenic and serpentine route leads around the northwest coast from Kapalua to Kahului. I drove it from west to east (which is safer, since you get the cliff side of the narrow road) in under two hours, finishing the trip in time for lunch at the Saigon Cafe in Wailuku, a reasonably priced spot for Vietnamese food.

From there it took me 15 minutes on Highway 30 to cross the isthmus between the West Maui Mountains and Haleakala to reach Maalaea Bay. I was headed for the Maalaea Surf Resort, one of a handful of condominium complexes located at the north end of South Kihei Road, near Suda’s snack shop (famous for burgers and saimin, a Japanese noodle soup), where there’s a farmers market on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings. The sprawling town of Kihei starts about five miles down the road. With its fast-food outlets, high-rise condos and shopping malls, it “resembles Beirut,” according to Snorkel Bob’s book--which, by comparison, makes the Maalaea Surf Resort a better place to stay.

There’s a narrow ribbon of beach running all the way from the little harbor on the west side of Maalaea Bay to Kihei. It’s not as nice for swimming as Napili, but walkers love it, taking morning constitutionals past Kealia Pond National Wildlife Refuge, favored by Hawaiian stilts, an endangered species of shorebird, and sea turtles. And the Maalaea Surf Resort, backed by the road and sugar cane fields, is the best condo complex in the area. It has two swimming pools, shuffleboard, tennis courts and rates that start at $186 for commodious one-bedroom apartments situated in eight two-story buildings. The atmosphere is slow-paced and quiet because the majority of guests are seniors and the resort is far enough from the road to minimize noise from passing cars. Actually, though, the location is the resort’s most attractive feature. Kahului Airport is a 15-minute drive north, and Maalaea harbor, lined by boats that take visitors on snorkeling and whale-watching cruises, lies about 10 miles west.

I went out on the Trilogy V, a catamaran that looks like a butterfly when its colorful sails are unfurled. The cruise, which lasted from 6:15 a.m. to 1 p.m. and cost $69 (including hot cinnamon rolls for breakfast and barbecued chicken for lunch), went to the islet of Molokini, about 1 1/2 hours from Maalaea, where we snorkeled. Throughout the trip the bay was full of whales, which make their summer home in the waters off Alaska but come to Maui every winter, usually in late November, to give birth and fatten up their calves before heading north. And what a show they put on, blowing, breeching and flipping their tails, before vanishing like so many good omens back into the deep!

Afterward, I drove down the eastern shore of the bay through Kihei, where I stopped for a shave ice at Tobi’s across from Kalama Park, and found another place I’d like to stay, a little beachfront condo complex called Kale Hui Kai. It has a pool and 40 two-bedroom apartments priced at $120 to $200. It is located just north of Wailea, where the resorts are pricey and posh. But if you keep going south on Wailea Alanui Road, you come to Makena, a tucked-away corner of the island with a smashing state park beach, good snorkeling spots, gated homes grand and modest (but no in-between sorts of hotels) and eventually the end of the road just short of La Perouse Bay. Along the way, turn off on Makena Road right after the Maui Prince Hotel to see Keawalai Church, founded in 1832, with blooming poinsettia plants on all the surrounding graves--and Makena Landing, where cattle once were herded onto ships after being fattened on the slopes of 10,023-foot Haleakala.

I meant to hike on the King’s Highway Coastal Trail, which picks up near La Perouse Bay. But the sun was setting, and I had a plane to catch early the next morning. In retrospect, I think it was good to leave something undone, because it’s bound to make me want to go back. And when I do, I’ll have plenty of options.

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GUIDEBOOK

Maui for Less

Getting there: American, Delta and United fly nonstop LAX to Kahului Airport; lowest advance-purchase fares about $310 round trip. On March 14, Hawaiian Airlines will start round trips at about $490.

For a last-minute flight, check Priceline.com (https:// www.priceline.com), which tries to meet travelers’ bids for tickets (though it had nothing to Kahului for my $200 bid).

Two package tour specialists--Pleasant Holidays, telephone (800) 2-HAWAII, and Sunquest, tel. (800) 930-1230--sell air-only tickets to Maui for under $300 round trip. Standby tickets for Pleasant Holidays charters (operated by ATA) are available for $129. Reach the air fare discounter Cheap Tickets Inc. at (800) 377-1000, Internet https://cheaptickets.com.

Flying tips: You may save money by booking the least expensive flight you can find to Honolulu, well in advance. Then call inter-island carriers Hawaiian, tel. (800) 367-5320, or Aloha, tel. (808) 935-5771, for a ticket to Kahului Airport on Maui. Aloha’s one-way fare: $70.25, with AAA discount.

If staying on Napili Bay, fly from Honolulu to Kapalua West Maui Airport on Island Air, (800) 323-3345. Car rental agencies are at the foot of the access road; there’s a courtesy phone for arranging pickup.

Where to stay: Napili Kai Beach Club, tel. (800) 367-5030; fax (808) 669-0086; Internet www.napilikai.com; e-mail nkbc@maui.net. Studios $180-$265 (suites and Christmas rates higher).

Hale Napili, tel. (800) 245-2266; fax (808) 665-0066; Internet https://www.maui.net/~halenapi; e-mail halenapi@maui .net. Rates $98-$155 Dec. 20-March 31, $93-$140 April 1-Dec. 19.

Napili Surf Beach Resort, tel. (800) 541-0638; fax (808) 669-8004; Internet https://www.napilisurf.com. Rates $109-$229; many special packages.

Honokeana Cove Vacation Condominiums, tel. (800) 237-4948; fax (808) 669-8777; Internet www.honokeana-cove.com; e-mail office@honokeana-cove.com. One- to three-bedroom units $110-$180; lower rates for extended stays.

Maalaea Surf Resort, tel. (800) 423-7953; fax (808) 874-2884; Internet https://www .maui.net/~msurf; e-mail msurf@maui.net. Rates $205-$307; fifth night free April 15-June 30, Sept. 1-Oct. 31.

Hale Hui Kai, tel. (800) 809-6284; fax (808) 879-0600; Internet https://www.beachbreeze .com. Two-bedroom units $135-$240 Dec. 15-May 1, $100-$185 May 1-Dec. 15.

For more information: Maui Visitors Bureau, 1727 Wili Pa Loop, Wailuku; tel. (808) 244-3530; Internet www.visitmaui .com; e-mail maui@hvcb.org. Hawaii Visitors Bureau; tel. (800) 353-5846.