Paradise found in Hawaii

MAUI, Hawaii — As our Zodiac-type raft glided across the deep blue waters of the Pacific Ocean, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of adventure.

Hawaiian adventure.

Our destination? The sparsely inhabited island of Lanai, which loomed in the distance.

Even from our takeoff site on Maui, it looked close. But in reality, we were in for a ride.

“Lanai may look close, but we’re about 9 miles away,” said Steve Lawless, who runs Captain Steve’s Rafting Adventures. “It’s worth the ride, though.

“The waters along Lanai have some of the best snorkeling in Hawaii.”

Minutes later, my wife, Jana, and I were bailing out of the raft to explore a different world.

The minute we peered into the underwater scene through our masks, we felt as if we were traveling through a saltwater aquarium. As we floated over a coral valley, fish with electric colors ignored us and kept pecking at the bottom for bits of food.

Schools of humuhumunukunukuapuaa (I’m not making this up), a fish with a longer name than its size, stood out with their bright yellow, black and blue colorations. Often called the reef triggerfish, it is Hawaii’s state fish.

But there were many other colors to welcome the adventurous. Tropical-reef fish of chartreuse, bright orange, red and blue lazily swam through the craggy coral. It was a fascinating scene, a reminder that we were in true paradise.

We got an even stronger reminder when were back on the raft and Lawless steered the craft into a pod of spinner dolphins. As we skimmed across the surface, dolphins followed us on both sides of our raft. Others porpoised through the water and around us and occasionally jumped into the air with a spinning motion.

“There are probably 300 dolphins out there,” Lawless said. “We can get right at the edge of the pod and it doesn’t bother them.”

Paradise found.

Jana and I had been here before, although it had been 40 years ago, for our honeymoon. But I don’t remember appreciating nature’s tremendous display as much as we did this time. We were here with our close friends, Terry and Kathy Nordberg of Caledonia, Ill., to celebrate both of our anniversaries, and we weren’t content to just sit on the beach or by the pool.

We were out to explore nature at its finest. That didn’t require getting far off the beaten track.

I remember last fall when I traveled to Alaska and wrote a column about enjoying the beauty of the rugged scenery of the state by vehicle. A reader from Alaska sniffed that I hadn’t seen the real Alaska, far off the roads and accessible only by float plane.

I disagreed. Maybe I wasn’t far off the beaten path, but I still was able to take in scenery that few will ever set eyes on – beautiful waterfalls, rushing rivers, salmon-filled waterways and abundant wildlife.

The same was true of our trip to Hawaii. We gave our rental car a workout, but it took us to some fascinating sights.

On our first trip, we drove the winding and often treacherous road through Haleakala National Park. Following a path filled with hairpin turns and steep drop-offs on one side, we literally drove through the clouds until we reached about 10,000 feet elevation. Then we took a short hike to the summit.

The view was breathtaking. We looked down on the crater of an inactive volcano and took in the puffy white clouds that lay below us. Then we paused as Terry scattered the ashes of his mother, who had passed away in the spring. The unofficial ceremony had special significance. Aunt Harriett and my uncle Dick loved Hawaii and would vacation there almost every year.

That trip was a warm-up for a more challenging one. Later, we took a guided excursion in a van on the road to Hana, a 60-mile trip that turned into an all-day outing.

We stopped to admire waterfalls, vistas high above the rugged coastline, a lush rainforest, tropical flowers, black-sand beaches and the famous Seven Sacred Pools, a waterfall that flows into a series of pools before it empties into the ocean.

The road featured 600 curves and 54 bridges, most of them one lane. Forget about pulling over onto the shoulder. There wasn’t any. The road hugged the rocks on one side and had a steep, almost sheer, drop-off on the other.

It got its name because of its destination, Hana, a quaint town in the middle of paradise, where natives sell everything from coconuts to leis along the road just outside the village.

A different world. A world filled with nature’s wonders.

I went most of two weeks without a fishing rod in my hands, although I did go on a half-day bottom fishing trip. That alone was noteworthy to my wife and our friends.

But I would gladly “sacrifice” again. Count me as one of many who can’t wait to return to paradise.

MAUI: THE ISLAND OF PARADISE

WHAT: Maui is the second largest of the Hawaiian Islands. It covers 730 square miles and has 120 miles of linear shoreline.

POPULATION: About 120,000.

LOFTY HONORS: Maui has the second-highest waterfall in the United States, Honokohau Falls, which tumbles 1,100 feet in two tiers. It also has the largest dormant volcano in the world, Haleakala, which can be viewed from the summit in the national park of the same name.

TOURISM: Maui attracts 2.2 million visitors a year.

DISTINCTIONS: Maui has been voted “Best Island in the World” by the readers of Conde Naste Traveler magazine for 10 consecutive years.

WHALES: Maui is known for its whale watching, which reaches a peak in the winter months when the humpback whales migrate from Alaska to the waters outside the Hawaiian island to breed. The whales usually leave the area by April.

OTHER MARINE LIFE: Maui has more than 780 species of coral reef fish. It also is known for its trophy gamefish that roam the depths of the Pacific Ocean.