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That's not all. South of Wailea, Seibu Hawaii Inc., a Japanese company, is building a six-story, 300-room hotel on 1,000 acres—with a golf course, of course. Within the Kaanapali complex, a Hyatt Regency, now half-built, will open in 1980. The $80 million, triple-towered, 820-room hotel, the biggest single construction project in Hawaiian history, will feature, among other things, a mini-Niagara surging through a lobby the size of three football fields.
Far removed from the resort-condo centers is Hana, edging the rain forest on the east coast. It was from Hana's shores in 1778 that King Kamehameha the Great glimpsed the first of the tall ships that were to impose Western so-called civilization on Hawaii; the ship's English captain, James Cook, mapped the island, which he spelled Mowee.* Though Hana can be reached in minutes by air, driving there is half the fun. The shoestring road, with 617 switchback bends and 56 one-way bridges, bumples through a jungle of bamboo, fern, maune loa vines, breadfruit, mango, banyan, banana, kukui and hau trees, perfumed by guava and wild ginger. Then, out of the forest and into the breeze, the white-knuckled driver arrives at the Hotel Hana-Maui, an island landmark.
A 30-year-old retreat for the reclusive, recherche and rich, from Gable to Streisand, the Hana caravansary sprinkles its pastel-colored bungalows (only 57 rooms) over 20 acres of manicured grass, perched between a 14,000-acre cattle ranch and the sandy half-moon of Hamoa Beach. Manager Tony de Jetley, an urbane Englishman who is married to a beautiful Hawaiian curiously named Alberta, enumerates 69 regular activities for hotel guests and their children; they range from frond weaving and night tide-pool fishing to breakfast cookouts and quarter-horse riding through terrain often photographed for Marlboro ads. Some families return to Hana as faithfully as Maui's whales. Charles Lindbergh, who lived for seven years with his wife Anne in Hana, is now buried there. Near by are the Seven Pools, two of which are favored by skinny-dippers: Poohahoahoa (meaning getting heads together) and Nakalaloa (complete forgiveness of sin).
On the other side of Haleakala, on the cool uplands above Wailea, on a clear day you can see, if not forever, a dazzling, dappled distance of meadow, mountain and sea. At the 2,000-to 3,000-ft. level, a host of small farms raise a cornucopia of vegetables, fruits and flowers, notably lychee, avocado, guava, the apple-sweet Kula onion and protea, the flower of a thousand exquisite shapes.
At 2,000 ft., on C. Pardee Erdman's 30,000-acre Ulupalakua ranch, speckled with volcanic boulders, cactus and 6,000 head of cattle, is Hawaii's only vineyard. It was carved out by Emil Tedeschi, 36, an emigre from a Napa Valley wine-making clan. After experimenting with 140 varieties of grape, he has planted 15 acres in Carnelian, a cross between Cabernet, Grenache and Carignane. While the first bottles of his red wine will not reach their prime until 1984, a tasting of an early vintage reveals body and character. Meanwhile, Oenologist Emil and his chemist wife Joanne are making a pineapple wine they call Maui Blanc. It has a fruity aroma but, considering its origin, is a clear, reasonably dry and inexpensive ($3.99) bottle that could go as well with the sorbet as a costly sauterne.