Maui is the best

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Maui, the Valley Isle

We spent three days on Maui, just one day on the Big Island, one day on Oahu, two days on Kauai and were wholly satisfied with our choice.

Maui has a lot to give and is generous with her gifts.

Each island of Hawaii is predominantly associated with a particular activity. The Big Island is synonymous with Kilauea volcano; Kauai evokes an image of canyons and rainforest while Oahu gets identified with Pearl Harbor and Diamond Head overlooking the Waikiki beach.

Each island has a ‘leeward’ side and a ‘windward’ side, and consequently, soft-sand beaches and wild, craggy coasts are found on all the islands. The difference in the weather of Hilo and Kona even though they are on the same island and separated by less than 100 miles, can also be attributed to their locations on the windward and leeward sides of the island.

Surfing, snorkeling, horse-riding, glass-bottom boating, scuba diving, submarine riding, helicopter riding, bike-riding, shopping, luaus, volcano watching, whale watching - all these activities are found on all the islands

Maui has all this and more, and generally speaking, better.

The very first day on the island of Maui, we went for shopping to Kahumanu Center. I wish I had bought my gold Plumeria set there. That mall had more varieties of goods and more reasonable prices than elsewhere in the islands. Later, at Kona, I had to pay more to buy the same set. Lahaina shopping too was more expensive.

The ‘Ulalena’ show that we saw there was out of this world. The show is beautifully scripted, beautifully crafted, beautifully acted and beautifully orchestrated. It tells the story of the Polynesian people’s migration to the Hawaiian Islands and how they settle down and cultivate the land, harness the seas by fishing and in so doing, evolved a culture of their own. The Dream interlude was particularly lyrical.

The orchestra was live, not taped, and at the crescendo, the spotlight used to be on the orchestra in an open side balcony. There were only three or four men in the orchestra, but they more than made up for the small number by their energy and their versatility. The drummers actually had to jump in the air and beat the drums for maximum impact during the crescendo. One bearded, long-haired man, in particular, was simultaneously handling 3-4 musical instruments, drums, cymbals, chimes etc. and during the crescendo, he moved from instrument to instrument in such whirlwind of frenzy, that he looked like a ‘whirling dervish’. His face was flushed and his hair was flying all around.

He so strongly reminded me of the Hindu God Shiva dancing ‘Tandav’, (Dance of Destruction) that I said the first two lines of ‘ShivTandav’ hymn sotto voce to propitiate the Deity.

The effect on the audience was electrifying. We were galvanized into action and gave the orchestra a standing ovation.

After the crescendo, the spotlight returned to the stage and soft music wafted in the air from the selfsame orchestra, that just a minute ago, had looked maniacal.

Our Haleakala tour also was remarkable mainly because we started at seashore with lush greenery and tropical weather and at the summit; we were witnessing alien, moon-like landscape, Alpine flora and shivering with cold despite parka. The ‘alien’ feeling was enhanced by the sight of domes of the observatories, which do NOT look like any buildings on earth.

The transition was gradual, but in going up 10,000 feet, we had crossed 5 climatic zones.

Biking down the slope of Haleakala is a highly popular activity, and no wonder it is so popular. Where else on earth do you get a 13-mile slope? We met a group going downhill merrily on their bikes.

The Haleakala Crater was filled with cloud reducing the visibility to a few hundred meters, and one particularly grumpy tourist bemoaned ‘What! We come here all the way just to see a cloud?’

Haleakala did not bother to answer.

I remembered that once we had spent 4 days at Darjeeling and never saw the Kanchenjunga massif, thanks to the haze.

The humpback whales too were totally impervious to the touristic aspirations of ours to see them in their entirety. Like bashful maidens, they sometimes just showed their fins or their tails above the water, while sometimes we could only see their ‘blow’. However, it still was a very enjoyable tour. The weather was just fine, the scenery fabulous, with the tops of green hills of Maui misted over and the lovely azure sea beneath.

Paradoxically enough, the ‘killer’ whales or orcas were more kind to us tourists. Our ship was cruising along its set course and we were sitting in the lounge when we first saw them. An orca mother and a baby were swimming side by side. We could clearly identify them as ‘orcas’ because orcas have distinctive white spots on the side of their faces. The mother was probably teaching the baby how to dive, (I don’t suppose they have to teach the babies how to swim) because she was diving every now and then, while the baby just gamboled along the surface of water and pretended to dive, and being frolicky, once it jumped clear out of the water, and gleefully squealed to its mother “Look Mom! I jumped”. The mother looked at the baby indulgently and tried to hide the inordinate pride she felt in her offspring’s achievements as she said “Well done, baby!”

No, I did not HEAR all this, but I SAW it.

Sometimes, there is empathy between humans and wild animals for a fraction of a second and the communication channel closes again. Anyone, who has had a pet (I don’t mean goldfish) dog, cat or parakeet will know what I mean.

Once, at the Darjeeling zoo, my 5 year-old daughter was walking ahead of us when suddenly she screamed in abject terror. We all went running to her and while I gathered her in my arms and calmed her, I asked her “what happened baby? Why are you so scared?” She was still shaken, but managed to answer “a tiger jumped on me, Mom”. I looked up to see, beyond the tall, secure wire fence, an almost fully grown young tiger looking over his shoulder at us and sniggering gleefully as he walked away after his prank. An old, world-weary tiger sleeping in the adjoining compound looked up disapprovingly, all but shook his head resignedly and said “Teenagers!”, put his head again on his paws tiredly and went back to sleep. The whole tableau is still frozen before my mind’s eye.

Later, the zoo-keepers told us that the young tiger had made it a regular practice to ‘jump’ on young children and scare them. Thank the Lord for the very secure, tall, strong wire fence that separates the tigers from visitors in the Darjeeling zoo.

As we looked at the orca mother and baby undulating side by side I was reminded of Darjeeling zoo and its tigers.

They told us that once, a humpback whale baby, uncoordinated, as all babies are, had miscalculated and jumped on the boat, where it landed on a lady’s leg and broke it. The mother whale became very agitated and started rubbing against the sides of the boat. Somehow, the crew of the boat managed to push the baby back into the sea and the mother and the baby thankfully vanished.

Imagine the plight of that poor lady. Her leg was broken and she could even go home and tell the truth. Would anyone believe her if she had told them “A whale baby jumped on my leg and broke it”? We know exactly what her friends would have said “Yah! Yah! We believe you!”

I wish we had more time at Maui. There was so much more to see and do there.

As they say: ‘Maui no ka Oi’. Maui is the best.

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Photos

Maui Hotel
Our hotel as seen from our ship

"Nylon" pine Haleakala
This pine looks like a 'Nylon' pine but it is real

Maui coast
Maui coast as seen from the whale-watch cruise boat