Maui harbors paradise for tourists

Humpback whales love it. So do plenty of tourists who love nothing better than to hit the beaches in Maui.

Joni and I recently returned from a 25th anniversary trip to the scenic Hawaiian island.

There were no whales there. They winter there. By June, they're long gone.

But there were plenty of tourists. The whole island is one big tourist attraction.

But much of the tourism centers on the views. Here, unlike Florida, there's still plenty of undeveloped coastline where relentless waves crash on jagged lava rocks.

Then there are the cloud-trimmed mountains, formed by now-dormant volcanoes, which dominate the interior landscape.

You've got to love a place where T-shirts, shorts and sandals are considered formal attire.

Along the resort beaches of west Maui, every day seems sunny and mild. "Just another day in paradise," Joni and I would tell ourselves every morning in our vacation condo where we could get breakfast by the sea.

Of course, even paradise has its problems. Gas was selling for nearly $2.78 a gallon. Real estate is expensive. Most of the island's 130,000 residents can't afford homes. They rent.

And when you're out in the middle of a big blue ocean, even a gallon of milk is expensive -- costing more than $5 a gallon even at the one and only Wal-Mart store.

In Lahaina, an old whaling town that now draws tourists the way it once did drunken sailors, there's a seemingly endless number of T-shirt and sarong shops. I bought a T-shirt dyed with curacao, a liqueur popular in all those umbrella drinks.

Joni bought T-shirts dyed in Kona coffee and even volcanic ash. As to the latter dye, the T-shirt creator will tell you it's older then dirt.

Speaking of dirt, there are even T-shirts dyed with red dirt with logos proudly proclaiming its dirty origins.

In Maui, even bad roads are a tourist attraction. The Road to Hana is heavily promoted as a way to see the waterfalls and lush foliage of the rain-forest side of the island. But the real attraction is to navigate the 617 hairpin turns -- many of them built on the edge of mountain slopes -- and 56 one-lane bridges over a 52-mile stretch of roadway that takes three hours to drive, assuming you don't have an accident along the way.

There's barely room for tourists to pull over to the side of the road so they snap photos of a waterfall, the ocean or the jungle.

We were accompanied on our rental-car journey with a CD in which a narrator told us what was around the next turn and where to pull off for one of those Kodak moments.

The narrator even pointed out that "Maui Wowie" marijuana is grown on this side of the island. Only on Maui does a criminal enterprise rate as a tourist attraction, although the narrator cautions tourists against trespassing on growers' land.

But on this small island, you don't need any drugs to chill out. You can do that on top of a 10,000-foot volcano where the wind practically knocks you over. But if you're not freezing to death, you'll love the view.

It's easy to get around the island, unless you count the Road to Hana. Every other vehicle seems to be a rental car.

The only problem is that you have to take an 8 1/2-hour flight from Chicago to get to the island. But then if it were easy to get to, maybe it wouldn't be paradise.

Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.