Seeing Maui, by Air, on Land and Undersea

The come-ons and sales pitches hit like a hurricane as soon as you step off the plane: Dive in a submarine to a pristine underwater world! Ride horseback along an untamed coast! Soar over Haleakala in a gravity-defying paraglider!

It seems as though every lobby, restaurant and shopping center flaunts racks of tour brochures, each promising a novel piece of paradise. Bike faster! Dive deeper! Fly higher! It all looks so exciting and fun--exclamation mark!

But where do you start? Is a $60 kayak tour better than a $75 snorkeling cruise? And is either better than renting a mask and fins for $7 and diving into a free public bay? With so many tour operators, how do you distinguish a good catch from a bottom feeder?

Last month, I went to Maui fishing for answers. The goal: to see as much of the island as possible in as many ways as possible. With 101 options and only five days, I just scratched the surface. But I did my best, snorkeling with green sea turtles in Makena, snuba diving (a variant of scuba diving) to see moray eels at Molokini, parasailing 900 feet above Maui’s western shore and riding horseback from the cliffs of the Hana Highway to the cool Koolau Forest Reserve.

When I wasn’t on one of these faster-deeper-higher tours, I passed the time with free or low-cost alternatives: swimming among orange-spine unicorn fish at Olowalu, a beach near Lahaina favored by locals; driving the little-traveled Kahekili Highway, which yielded some of the best views of the trip; and hiking the Waihee Ridge Trail, whose panoramas and steep ascent left me breathless.

In the end, I had seen Maui by land, sea and air. Were most of the fancy tours I tried worth their expense? To my surprise, yes.

Must every traveler spend a tidy sum, as I often did, to see the best Maui has to offer? The answer, I’m happy to say, is no.

Visitors spent $583 million last year on recreation and entertainment in the state--61% more than they spent on souvenirs, according to the Hawaii Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism.

T-shirts and puka-shell necklaces are easy buys; you see what you’re getting. But tours are tougher. Many visitors plunk down $44 for a sunset cruise or $170 for a helicopter ride, cross their fingers and hope they don’t feel ripped off in the end.

I stuck to a coastal itinerary that started near the grand resorts of Wailea in the west, continued north toward Lahaina and Kaanapali, rounded the northwest corner of Maui and ended in rural Huelo in the north.

With so much idyllic coastline, it seemed natural to start in the water. Wailea is one of the most popular destinations, with manicured resorts such as the Fairmont Kea Lani, the Four Seasons and the Outrigger Wailea, which completed a $25-million makeover last year. But a few minutes south is a natural beauty called Makena, where the wide, sandy state beach has views unimpeded by high-rise hotels.

I checked into Makena’s only resort, the comfortable Maui Prince, full of Asian-influenced simplicity and less ostentatious than its neighbors (and at $179 a night for a spacious double with partial ocean view, about half the price). The low-key, pleasant ambience was a fitting precursor to my first tour: a low-key, pleasant kayak ride.

Many companies rent gear and send customers on their merry way. Kelii’s Kayak Tours was appealing because of its guides, who lead small groups of paddlers into prime waters.

For half an hour, a honeymooning couple, a mother-daughter pair and I paddled along Makena with Ted Lyau, who showed us how to slide into the water without tipping the kayaks.

Fish were few, but we did get a warm aloha from a half-dozen laid-back locals: green sea turtles swimming in slow motion--on Maui time, as islanders might say. Because sea turtles can’t tuck their head and legs under their shell for protection, speed is their best defense. They can swim 20 mph, but the turtles were in no hurry. They glided with grace, their water dance a hula, not a jitterbug. I played the wallflower, remaining motionless as one giant came up for air, his flippers passing within a few feet of mine.

The tour was $61.50 well spent, not only for the turtles but also for the services of a helpful, ecologically minded guide. Lyau dove to the ocean floor and made sure our anchor was hooked on common rock, not coral. Later, when the bumpy water left the mother too queasy to paddle with the daughter, Lyau hooked his kayak to theirs and towed both back to shore.

I had gone into the kayak trip hoping for the best, but I signed on for a five-hour snorkel-and-snuba cruise expecting the worst. The brochure for the Four Winds II was full of hot air: photos of babes in bikinis, suntanned jocks and local fishermen showing off a 5-foot catch. It screamed tourist trap--the kind with lots of exclamation points. (A 55-foot glass-bottom catamaran! Underwater videos and cameras! An open bar and barbecue buffet!)

And then there was the price: $75 for the cruise to Molokini, a sunken volcanic crater and marine wildlife reserve 10 miles south of Maalaea Harbor. An optional 25 minutes of snuba diving cost $47 more.

Snuba was tempting because it requires no experience or certification. It allows even a landlubber to dive 20 feet underwater and breathe comfortably through a scuba-like regulator tethered to an oxygen tank. Because the tank floats at the water’s surface, there’s no cumbersome equipment to lug.

I signed up for the whole $122 experience, fully expecting this would be a cautionary tale of a traveler’s money wasted. The 1 1/4-hour ride to Molokini wasn’t encouraging either. A breakfast of bagels, fresh fruit and juice was accompanied by unusually rough water. Babes in bikinis and suntanned jocks soon were running for the boat’s side rails. Even the local on board giving fishing lessons got seasick.

Motion-sickness medicine had been part of my morning routine, so I was ready to dive in. It took all of three seconds to forget the morning’s unpleasantness and see why Molokini is Maui’s most popular snorkeling site. Large-lipped parrotfish, ribbon-finned moorish idols and tall, slender pink-tail triggerfish--Angelina Jolie Fish, Rhythmic Gymnast Fish and Malibu Barbie Fish--did laps around snorkelers, probably wondering who invited Pasty-White Tourist Fish into their pool.

When my turn to snuba dive rolled around, I was skeptical. What could I possibly see 20 feet underwater that I couldn’t see snorkeling?

A lot, it turns out. Guide Jamie Nygren led us toward threadfin butterfly fish with zebra-like stripes, spotted trunkfish and two white-mouthed moray eels tucked in the coral. The difference in depth made the reef seem more alive. Softball-sized spiny urchins that at first appeared basic black had a beautiful blue sheen. The trumpfish that resembled a sickly green bamboo shoot from afar glowed canary yellow at close range.

As worthwhile as the cruise-snorkel-snuba extravaganza was, it wasn’t the best buy of the trip. That honor went to a $7 mask-and-fins rental, which proved that cheap fish can be just as impressive as the $122 variety.

Off Olowalu, a public beach south of Lahaina identifiable only by the Mile 14 marker on the Honoapiilani Highway, no pricey guide was needed to enjoy little yellow tangs and blue-striped butterfly fish.

A half-hour north of Olowalu, at Kapalua Bay, well-heeled guests make the Ritz-Carlton and Kapalua Bay hotels their home, but anyone can play in the resorts’ backyard, a sandy public beach with abundant marine life a short swim away.

Like party guests plucking hors d’oeuvres from a waiter’s tray, elegant fish picked morsels of food from nooks in the volcanic rock fringing the bay. Big brown puffer fish were decked out in white polka-dot coats, a 2-foot needlefish looked sleek in silver, and surgeonfish made the rounds in blue and yellow scrubs.

On the way back to shore, I was staring at an unusual lava rock when I realized the rock was staring back at me. Fatter than my arm and buried halfway in the sand, the black blob of an eel probably wondered when the white blob of a human would skedaddle.

It was time for the second leg of the Ironman Triatha-tour: Maui by air.

Parasailing isn’t the most exciting airborne option, but it is the least expensive. For as little as $30, several outfits in Lahaina will strap customers into parachute harnesses and send them 500 feet or higher into the sky from a platform on the back of a motorboat.

A reservations agent for Parasailing Kaanapali boasted that its customers fly 900 feet, the highest on Maui. I wasn’t carrying an altimeter, so I took her word on it.

When it was my turn to fly above the harbor, I felt like a kite being launched toward Lanai, then pulled toward the emerald ridges of Puu Kukui, the dormant volcano on west Maui. Even so, my spirits stayed grounded. Maybe the novelty was diminished because I’ve parasailed before. Maybe I just needed a good cup of Kona coffee to jolt my senses. Either way, the eight-minute flight turned out to be the least dazzling of my Maui adventures.

Other parasailers on my boat--two teenage girls and a father-son pair--seemed exhilarated, but I felt shortchanged. Helicopter tours had been tempting but expensive; ditto the $275 paragliding ride from Haleakala. Just $95 would have put me in the cockpit of a motorized glider for 30 minutes, but the trip departed from Hana, on the opposite side of the island.

I put it all behind me with a drive along the Kahekili Highway. Kahekili was the last of Maui’s chiefs, the most powerful ruler in all of Hawaii in the 1780s. Along the highway, hotels and condos around Maui’s northwest corner yield to a wilder coast largely undeveloped since Kahekili’s day.

The road’s curves get sharper, the cliffs get steeper and the asphalt narrows to a single lane for two-way traffic. The going is slow--5 mph in some stretches. I pulled off at a half-dozen turnouts and walked along cliffs that dusted my shoes with rust-red soil. Below, white-topped waves tickled Maui’s black volcanic toes.

I didn’t think the scenery could get much better, but then I reached Waihee and the last leg of my tour: Maui by foot.

Because of its remote location a mile off Kahekili Highway, the Waihee Ridge Trail is a hiker’s hideaway. Few climb the three-mile mountainside path, where grassy switchbacks rise 1,300 feet up cloud-enshrouded Puu Kukui.

Parts of the volcano get 400 inches of a rain a year. Though the skies were partly sunny during my visit, sections of the trail were muddy and the rocks slick. With daylight fading and my night’s lodging still a couple of hours away, I turned back at the halfway point--far enough, though, to reveal more of Maui’s landscape than the morning’s ride in the sky had. The verdant Waihee Gorge opened up, the wrinkled green ridges like shells of sea turtles crawling toward the ocean.

As beautiful as that was, the most welcome sight of the day came at the Huelo Point Lookout cottages, where I spent my final two nights. The cottages sit on a remote spit of land bordered by the Pacific on three sides. With muscles sore from two slips on the Waihee trail, my eyes went straight to water of a different sort: a 102-degree hot tub bubbling under a sea of stars and two palms lighted by a half moon.

Each of the four Huelo Point rentals has a private hot tub as well as a full kitchen. My unit, Haleakala Cottage, may have been the smallest, but with its own deck and plenty of privacy, it was a good place to recharge for the final tour of the trip.

Adventures on Horseback leads rides across ocean-side cliffs, ragged back roads and pastures unscathed by resort development. It is, as the brochure touts, “unspoiled” land, most of it private property otherwise inaccessible to the public. It’s also expensive: about $193 for an all-day excursion that includes guided trail ride, a short hike, breakfast and lunch.

I rode with a family of four from Mar Vista and guide Rob Fernandes, who promised to match each of us with a horse geared for our size and skill level. Over the next five hours, Hanapo, my mount, and I got along just fine. Because I had no riding experience, Fernandes gave me a quick lesson on the basics, but Hanapo worked on autopilot, following Fernandes’ lead as we clopped along coastal cliffs 10 paces from land’s end.

We moseyed along the former Hana Highway, a dirt path even more scenic than its paved replacement, and passed fields of knee-high grass shimmering in the breeze like rolling ocean waves. Fernandes, a former Yosemite park ranger, pointed out 40-foot mango trees and wild passion fruit vines; he picked fragrant white ginger blossoms for us to smell and pointed out flowering Hawaiian mint brushing against our stirrups. As No. 2 in our single-file caravan, I had a prime spot: positioned for unobstructed views and, equally important, upwind.

After the horses maneuvered down a steep, mucky trail to the edge of the Koolau Forest Reserve, we dismounted, hiked a quarter-mile to a fern-covered grotto and swam under a 35-foot waterfall before breaking for a picnic lunch.

Tired and finally tanned from five days in the Hawaiian sun, I rode back to the stables with my final view of Maui framed by Hanapo’s cinnamon ears. The route was exclamation-point beautiful, but I couldn’t help but consider the other ways one might spend $193. A night in a Kaanapali resort. Four tickets to a luau. A dozen self-help books on coping with vacation-induced financial anxiety.

Hanapo bucked all those silly comparisons out of my mind as we cantered back toward the ranch. The Pacific appeared from behind a bend in the road, a mist fell from the sunny sky and, for a blink of time--15 seconds tops--a rainbow glistened over the cliffs.

If I had to guess, I’d say the pot of gold was somewhere near the stables. It was a sign, perhaps, that travels like this aren’t measured in dollars but in time--the length of time that a moment can linger in memory.

--Craig Nakano is an assistant editor for the Travel section.

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Guidebook: Mapping Maui

* Getting there: American and United airlines have connecting service from LAX to Maui. Restricted round-trip fares start at $402.

* Where to stay: Maui Prince Hotel, 5400 Makena Alanui, Makena, HI 96753; telephone (800) 321-6284 or (808) 874-1111, fax (808) 879-8763, Internet https://www.mauiprincehotel.com. A comfortable oceanfront property near fantastic state beach. Published rates for double room start at $300 a night; I booked an Internet special, $179.

Outrigger Napili Shores, 5315 Lower Honoapiilani Road, Napili, HI 96761; tel. (800) 688-7444 or (808) 669-8061, fax (808) 669-5407, https://www.outrigger.com. Budget condo complex steps from Napili beach. What it lacks in charm it makes up for in practicality. My studio was recently refurbished, with a full kitchen but otherwise spartan furnishings. Studios start at $109 a night, one-bedroom “villas” at $139.

Huelo Point Lookout, P.O. Box 790117, Paia, HI 96779; tel. (800) 871-8645 or (808) 573-0914, fax (808) 573-0227, https://www.mauivacationcottages.com. Three cottages plus a four-bedroom house, with kitchen, private hot tub and access to a swimming pool. Rates run $145 to $195 per night, cash only.

* Where to eat: I skipped fancy restaurants in favor of less expensive options.

In Wailea, Caffe Ciao at the Fairmont Kea Lani, 4100 Wailea Alanui Drive, local tel. 875-4100. Specialty deli has good sandwiches, salads and packaged gourmet foods; entrees under $10.

Fives minutes south of Napili, Honokowai Okazuya Deli, 3600-D Lower Honoapiilani Road, tel. 665-0512. Strip-mall setting isn’t too appealing, but locals lined up for plate lunches and dinners of chicken katsu , teriyaki steak, mahi-mahi ($6.45 to $8.50). Also, Mama’s Ribs ‘N Rotisserie, 5095 Napilihau St. (in Napili Plaza), tel. 665-6262. Good takeout, including a citrus-teriyaki half-chicken with two side dishes, $7.50.

In Paia, Moana Bakery & Cafe, 71 Baldwin Ave., tel. 579-9999, https://www.moanacafe.com. A local favorite with European-Asian cuisine; entrees $7 to $24.

* Tour operators: Reservations required, except for Snorkel Bob’s rentals. Prices include tax.

Kelii’s Kayak Tours, departs out of Makena; tel. (888) 874-7652; lasts 2 1/2 hours, $61.50.

Maui Classic Charters operates the Four Winds II out of Maalea Harbor, tel. (808) 879-8188. Five-hour excursion includes snorkeling, breakfast and barbecue lunch; $75. Snuba is $47 extra for 25 minutes.

Snorkel Bob’s rents gear at three Maui locations: Kihei, tel. (808) 879-7449; Lahaina, tel. (808) 661-4421; and Napili, tel. (808) 669-9603. For about $7 a day, I got a mask and anti-fog solution, fins, a fish identification chart and advice on the best snorkeling locations.

Parasailing Kaanapali departs from Lahaina, tel. (808) 669-6555. Each ride lasts about eight minutes; solo riders $40 before 9 a.m., $45 after; $60 for two.

Adventures on Horseback operates from a ranch near Haiku; tel. (808) 242-7445 for reservations agent, (808) 572-6211 for ranch. Six-hour session includes breakfast, guided horseback ride, lunch; $192.70.

Booking agencies, acting as clearinghouses for tour operators, offer small discounts on some tours but tack on commission for others. One of the largest is Lahaina-based Activity World, which also does business as Snorkel World, tel. (800) 624-7771 and (808) 667-7777, https://www.hawaiiactivityworld.com.

* For more information: Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau, 2270 Kalakaua Ave., Suite 801, Honolulu, HI 96815; tel. (800) GO-HAWAII (464-2924), fax (808) 922-8991, https://www.gohawaii.com.

--Craig Nakano