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The last two decades have brought golf courses and luxurious
hotels, tourists and traffic to the second-largest Hawaiian isle.
But the landscape surrounding Haleakala, the world's largest dormant
volcano, remains preternatural in its loveliness. If you wanted to
ruin the view, you could fit Manhattan inside its great volcanic
bowl. All over the island, but particularly here, lush forests keep
company with strikingly red and desert like terrain, and some of the
flora and fauna are rare even in Hawaii. The stunning silversword
plant grows only here and at high elevations on the Big Island. It
will bloom just once in its life, near the end of its days. At Iao
Valley State Park, wind and water have sculpted impressive rock
spires. Mark Twain may not have thought much of Venice, but he was
captivated by this place---and no wonder. All over Maui, rainbows
hover over the mists and waterfalls shower the mountainsides. Hop
aboard the charming 1890s Sugarcane Train and take a ride through
the magnificent, lush landscape between Kaanapali, on the west
coast, and Lahaina, the former whaling town that was once Hawaii's
capital and is now the island's main market center. Sugarcane, a
mainstay of Maui's economy for years, was a powerful influence on
the island's history. Production ceased in 1999, but the train has
happily outlived the crop. For local farmers the soil yields other
bounties, among them grapes for wine and rich pasturelands where
horses graze. The vineyards and grasslands create another kind of
landscape on Maui, one that's intimate, charming and a perfect
counterpoint to nature's grandstanding.
For 19th-century missionaries from New England, Hawaii
represented a golden opportunity to save souls---not just Hawaiian
souls but those of fellow New Englanders, whalers drawn to the
Pacific by the big profits to be made on whalebone and whale oil.
For these roistering mainlanders, Maui and its port of Lahaina were
a red-light district where the bars never closed. The 19th-century
buildings where they took their rowdy R&R have been renovated, and
much of the town is now a National Historic Landmark. As for the
North Pacific's humpback whale population, which once numbered many
thousands, only about 1,500 remain. On winter whale-watching tours
from Lahaina you can see them spectacularly breaching and blowing
offshore. Under water, along the western and southwestern coasts,
the sea yields still other spectacular sights. In the Molokini
Crater area, a marine preserve, fish are so tame that they eat right
out of a diver's hand. If you're not certified to dive, you can get
an idea of the island's submarine wonders at the Maui Ocean Center
in Maalaea. Back on land, West Maui's so-called Golf Coast, north of
Lahaina, calls relentlessly to duffers. The velvety cliff-bound
scenery may up your handi-cap by a stroke or two---the Wailea Golf
Club is just one of the options. Still, just steering a car along a
road can be a transcendent experience, as in East Maui on the
winding Hana Highway, one of the most spectacular drives in the
world. And it isn't just the hairpin turns that set your heart
aflutter, although it might skip a beat or two when a car flies
past, seemingly from out of nowhere. It's also the stops along the
way---hikes to waterfalls that pour down to virtually deserted
swimming holes, or Hookipa Beach, where windsurfers ride
15-foot-high waves and take their sport to world-class levels.
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