MAUI

It’s time you knew the secret. Travel writers have a trick to determine the recreational value of a vacation spot before they ever visit it. The trick is simply this: An inverse corollary exists between the number of bikini-clad blondes in a travel brochure and the relative fun value of the destination.

Blondes in St. Tropez-style G-strings seem to abound in brochures for places that look nothing like St. Tropez. The more boring the resort, the more blondes it needs for cover-up. One of the most blonde-abundant brochures I’ve ever seen depicted a hotel in Amarillo. Amarillo is about as much of a fun spot as a minimum security unit of the Texas Department of Corrections. As best as I could tell, the only assets the Amarillo hotel had to offer were an outdoor swimming pool and little packets of instant coffee in every room.

Maui, by contrast, had me hooked from the start. No blondes. The people who wanted me to come to Maui sent me a copy of “This Week on Maui,” the cover of which features a Mauian dance band decked out in BanLon leisure suits. This place, I reasoned, had to be good.

I was right.

Four weeks later I was hovering over tropical rain forests in a helicopter, awestruck by the most beautiful panoramas I’ve ever encountered. An hour after that, I was soaking up the rays on a beautiful, secluded beach that was only a few paces from my plush quarters at the Kapulua Bay Hotel. That same afternoon 1 found myself at a mountainside winery sipping Maui blanc, a white wine made from the island’s pineapples. And that evening I was dining on continental cuisine and anticipating the polo match I would take in the next day.

Maui truly has everything.

The best thing about Maui is that it is two plane rides from Dallas. The first ride, an eight-hour ocean crossing to Honolulu, takes you away from the ravages of Texas weather and into a meteorological wonderland where bathing suits are the appropriate year-round uniform. (Both Braniff and American offer nonstop service to Honolulu from D/FW airport.) The second plane ride, a 30-minute prop-jet jaunt from Honolulu to Kahului Airport on Maui, takes you away from the vast majority of the tourists who were aboard the first flight.

Maui has everything you’ll find on Oahu (the island on which Honolulu, Diamond Head and Waikiki Beach are found), but Maui is more remote and less crowded than the more populous Oahu.

The resort hotel that was the headquarters for my stay had the same basic advantage that Maui has – remoteness, but highly civilized remoteness. Kaanapali, a conglomeration of high-rises overlooking beaches and golf courses, is a virtual city of fine hotels. There’s a Hyatt Regency, a Sheraton, a Marriott and numerous other highbrow domiciles all within a brief stroll of each other. While this makes the beaches and other recreational facilities ideal for those who like to see and be seen, it can be a disappointment for those who want to be sun-soaked in solitude. The Kapulua Bay Hotel is about 10 miles up the highway from Kaanapali. Those 10 miles make a big difference. Kapulua Bay has a feeling of remoteness, yet it has amenities to the point of sheer decadence. The best way to describe Kapulua Bay to a Dal-lasite is to ask him to envision Highland Park plunked down on the northwest corner of Maui. We’re talking golf courses (two, designed by Arnold Palmer), tennis courts (with an appropriate pro shop featuring Kapulua Bay pullover shirts by Izod), restaurants offering everything from hamburgers to haute cuisine, 22 shops that dispense everything from designer clothes to suntan lotion, and, if you can find time for it, a beautiful secluded beach that’s just out the back door of the hotel.

At the beach, you can rent snorkel equipment and surfing gear or book passage on a giant catamaran. It’s impossible to overstate the beauty of the beach area. Not only do you have the classic white sand and warm blue water, in the background loom two nearby mountains protruding from the horizon -the islands of Molokai and Lanai.

We got a first-hand look at Lanai via helicopter. (Helicopter rides can be booked in the lobby of the Kapulua Bay Hotel.) The helicopter rides, while relatively expensive at $75 for a half-hour, are easily the most worthwhile part of any visit to the Hawaiian Islands. The tour we took ventured into the canyons of Lanai after traversing the ink-blue channel between the islands. The lush greenery of the forests, the steep red cliffs overlooking the ocean, the crystal waterfalls that cascade hundreds of feet down the mountainside; all are beautiful to the point of defying accurate description. Of the three days I spent on Maui, the 30 minutes aboard the helicopter were the most memorable. Unfortunately, on the day of the flight the southeastern half of Maui was too overcast for access to Haleakala Crater, the 10,023-foot volcano that crowns the island. On clear days you can fly into the mouth of the volcano and stop there for cheese and wine.

Fourteen miles from Kapulua is the town of Lahaina, once the royal capital of the Hawaiian Islands and, in the mid-1800s, a world-class whaling town. The nearby Alalakeiei Channel is a breeding ground for the humpback whale. (From November through June, it’s possible to see the 40-ton mammoths frolicking in the channel, frequently “breaching,” or leaping straight out of the water in a maneuver that brings about half of their 45-foot-long bodies above the surface for a split second before they splash down with a resounding crash that can be heard all the way to the shore.) In the height of the whaling days, Lahaina was a port of call on which as many as a thousand sailors would descend at a time. The rowdy harpoon handlers are gone now, replaced by throngs of tourists bearing Instamatics and American Express cards. Much of the 19th-century architectural charm remains, as does the slightly more modernized version of the ubiquitous pub. Lahaina is doubtless the curio capital of the islands, with shops selling coral jewelry, post cards, flowery sports shirts and T-shirts with slogans whose tasteless-ness is rivaled only by those sold along Bourbon Street in New Orleans.

Lahaina is a must on any trip to Maui, if for nothing else than a point of purchase for that God-awful shell lamp you’ll bring home for Aunt Sarah. The townspeople of Lahaina seem to lean toward that Austin-Berkeley-Haight Ashbury look. They are, for the most part, relaxed. Very few Wall Street Journal readers there.

One of the better side trips available on Maui is a little journey up the mountainside to the Tedeschi Winery. Emil Tedeschi and his wife, Joanne, are mainland transplants who have been laboring since 1974 to create a vineyard that will produce a native Hawaiian wine. After several years of experimentation with about 120 types of grapes, Tedeschi has selected the Carnelian, a grape developed at the University of California at Davis. It is from this grape that Tedeschi plans to produce cabernet sauvignon, grenache and car-ignane wines. While awaiting the development of the grapes, Tedeschi helps his cash-flow situation with the production of a sparkling, white pineapple wine. Tedeschi produces about 4,000 cases a year and markets it through restaurants and a few wine shops in Hawaii.