TRAVEL HAWAII

So you think you know Hawaii! Even if you’ve never been to the Islands, you figure you’ve seen enough Magnums and Hula Bowls to know all about the beach boys and hula girls, the balmy nights and palmy days and surfers slicing great walls of water.

If you have made this Polynesian pilgrimage, chances are you’ve done everything de rigueur. You played a few rounds of golf on emerald, seaside links. You spent a few days anchoring a beach mat, sipping on a mai tai. You tried poi at a luau and found yourself coaxed onstage for an impromptu hula lesson. You bought the obligatory aloha wear and the tee-shirts with cute sayings like “Here Today, Gone to Maui.”

But think again. . . there’s much more to the Aloha State than Tiny Bubbles and two-finger poi. There’s also the behind-the-scenes Hawaii, of secret spots and off-road hideaways, the Hawaii that gets you away from the tour groups and into the outback.

It’s a kayak paddle along primeval coastline, or a hike across a volcanic moonscape. It’s a helicopter ride into a hidden valley, or a visit with a Hawaiian family still living the old island ways. Most of all, it’s a real adventure.

In fact, it’s an allocentric’s dream. What’s an allocentric and what’s he got to do with a Hawaiian vacation? Several years ago, a behavioral study published by Cornell University identified two distinct types of traveler. One is the psychocentric, the person more comfortable with familiar destinations and commonplace activities, the one drawn toward the packaged tour with tightly scheduled itinerary.

At the other end of the sociological spectrum, the study found, is the allo-centric, the root word “allo” meaning “varied in form.” They prefer new and different activities, non-touristy areas and considerable flexibility in itinerary,

For the past generation or so, Hawaii has been a favorite destination for psy-chocentrics. But times have changed, and the travel industry with them.

In Hawaii today, the pursuit of the al-locentric market is a booming business. Now come the “super-resorts” featuring innovative dimensions in lodgings, and adventure travel presenting bold new ways to experience the Islands.

Even the confirmed allocentric, of course, can appreciate a toney beach hotel at day’s end. And Hawaii sports some of the word’s most sybaritic son resorts. Maybe more than anything else, it’s this tropical blend of plush and primitive which makes the 50th State so special. So wander off that beaten path. The new breed of exciting tours and activities is the allocentric way to discover all of the Hawaiian Islands-each island different, each with its own brand of high adventure.



OAHU

The Gathering Place



With all its high-rise and hustle, you wouldn’t think any self-respecting allocentric would be caught dead in glittering Waikiki, yet the world-famous resort has lures to hook even the most jaded traveler.

But the face of Waikiki itself is changing, with new and upgraded hotels and a newly formed marketing group. The Waikiki Beach Operators Association calls the area “Life’s Greatest Beach” and helps promote some of its lesser known attractions. While more than three million people vacation in Waikiki each year, for instance, few have hiked up inside the hollowed-out summit of Diamond Head.

And consider that dazzling line-up of state-of-the-art hotels, flanking a beach that’s blue and balmy as ever. There’s the brand-new HalekuLani, a striking, multi-rise hotel with orchid pool and gourmet La Mer restaurant. Nearby is Hawaii’s largest hotel, the Hilton Hawaiian Village, with it’s top-of-the-line Bali restaurant.

At the heart of Waikiki is the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, the “pink palace,” grande dame of the resort’s romantic steamship era, now a Sheraton property and still very much a class act. And close by is the Hyatt Regency Waikiki, with its thundering lobby waterfall and award-winning Bagwells 2424 restaurant.

Toward the Diamond Head end of Kalakaua Avenue-Waikiki’s main beachfront drag-are more fancy digs, including Emerald Hotels’ Hawaiian Regent, home of The Third Floor restaurant. Waikiki has also honed the resort condominium to a fine art; witness the new Waikiki Beach Tower, operated by Hotel Corp. of the Pacific with all the usual hotel amenities and then some. One of the area’s most luxurious hotels isn’t actually in Waikiki. This is the Kahala Hilton, the Hilton International property tucked away on its own beach on the other side of Diamond Head. Daily dolphin feedings have become a Kahala staple-an attraction not to be missed.

Honolulu is also home base for Island Odysseys, the tour packager that has gathered together Hawaiian companies selling adventure travel-from sailing charters to dive shops to helicopter tours.

On Oahu, you’ll find the real adventure outside Honolulu, on the island’s windward and leeward coasts, and on the North Shore, fabled for its big surf in winter The popular attractions still pack them in, of course, like Pearl Harbor and its Arizona Memorial or the Polynesian Cultural Center, Hawaii’s top dollar draw, with amphitheatre shows and tiny South Seas “’villages.”

But for those willing to dig a little deeper, rural Oahu offers some fine, off-the-beaten-track excursions. At Malaeka-hana State Park in Laie, you can wade out to Mokuauia Island, better known as Goat Island, a perfect little Island microcosm with golden beach to leeward and craggy tidepools to windward. In Hauula, you can hike to Sacred Falls, a silvery torrent plunging into a mountain pool. In Kahuku, you can even take hang gliding lessons from Tradewinds Hang Gliding. The sheer sea cliffs at Makapuu Point, are where world hang gliding records are consistently broken.

Naturally, water sports abound on Oahu, as they do throughout Hawaii. Consider the options at Dan’s Dive Shop: you can sign up for a jet ski and snorkeling excursion, scuba and jet ski, or cruise by catamaran to Rainbow Reef for scuba instruction to include the hand feeding of brilliant, brazen tropical fish.

How about Oahu by kayak? John and Kristie Gray’s Pacific Outdoor Adventures lists not only a Waikiki paddle but also a guided five-mile, half-day kayak tour of the rural shoreline.



MAUI

The Valley Island



Of all these good Neighbors, Maui is the most magnetic visitor draw, pulling in almost two million vacationers a year. Yet only recently have malihinis (newcomers) ventured much beyond the beach resorts of Kaanapali, Wailea and Kapa-lua, or the winding, jungly journey to the remote Hana Coast.

A Haleakala visit, for instance, usually consists of a drive to the 10,000-foot summit to drink in the eye-popping views of the world’s largest volcanic crater But the allocentric thing to do is roll out of bed at 3 a.m. in order to see Haleakala at daybreak, a summit spectacular that fills the new morning with oranges and golds, scarlets and hot pinks.

And the really allocentric way to see the “house of the sun” is by hiking boot, handlebars or horseback. Guided trail rides are available through Pony Express and Thompson Ranch for hoofing it; and escorted 12-mile hikes with Ken Schmitt’s Hike Maui.

But for a real inside look at old Hawaii, hook up with the likes of Trek Hawaii, which includes the Hana Coast in its four-day Maui Mini-Trek. Among other stops, there’s a visit to the semi-submerged caves at Waianapanapa where armed with underwater flashlights, trek-kers squeeze and swim their way through three sea caves.

Where to stay on the Valley Island? Maui’s luxury hotels and condominiums are mostly spread among three master-planned destination resorts. Grandaddy of these is Kaanapali, a sunny stretch of lodgings, golf courses, shops and restaurants and one of Hawaii’s very best beaches. Among its dozen vacation spas are the storied Hyatt Regency Maui, sporting lush gardens and waterways, a half-acre waterfall-fed swimming pool with grotto bar and restaurants like the elegant Swan Court. Next door is the beautiful Maui Marriott Resort, another culinary mecca with eateries like the Nikko Steak House for teppan yaki and the top-of-the-line Lokelani. Both the Hyatt and Marriott are ideal respites after a day of allocentrical pursuits.

Also on the west Maui coast is Kapa-lua, the sophisticated, master-planned resort area which encompasses the Kapalua Bay Hotel & Villas, two challenging 18-hoIe golf courses (which host two major international professional events), tennis gardens, elegant shops and pristine Fleming’s Beach. Kapalua dining possibilities are among Maui’s best, including the oceanfront Bay Club and the hotel’s Plantation Veranda specialty restaurant.

Maui’s third major resort is Wailea, across the island where Haleakala’s southwestern slope meets the sea. Here are a pair of magnificent golf courses built around ancient Hawaiian living sites, a tennis club which includes Hawaii’s only commercial grass courts, five beaches, condominium villages, a shopping center and two luxury hotels: the Maui Inter-Continental Wailea with its beautiful La Perouse restaurant and the Stouffer Wailea Beach Hotel with its colonial style gourmet restaurant, Raffles’.

For the visitor to the Hana Coast, the Hana Maui Hotel is perfect. Owned and operated by Dallas’ Rosewood Corporation, when remodelling is completed it will be like moving The Mansion to Paradise.

No visit to Maui is complete without taking time for Lahaina, the old whaling port that’s a mix of fascinating past and funky, free-wheeling present. Lahaina is still a kind of whaling capital, these days just for watching. Between December and April, pods of humpbacks migrate from Alaska into the warm island waters to mate and bear calves. Don’t miss a whale-watching cruise to eyeball these gentle giants sporting and spouting.

LANAI

The Pineapple Island



Most people discover Lanai aboard one of the Maui cruise boats. The best known is Trilogy Excursions, a full day adventure which includes a sail from Lahaina to Lanai’s Manele Harbor, swimming and snorkeling at nearby Hulopoe Reach a white-sand marine preserve.

Although Castle & Cooke plans a resort hotel near Hulopoe, Lanai is still virgin visitor territory today, and the true allocentric may even want to spend a few days at its only lodging, the 11-room Hotel Lanai. You can rent a Jeep and explore such remote attractions as the Garden of the Gods geological formations and Shipwreck Beach, with its rusting, lobster-rich hulks marooned just offshore, Maui-based Ocean Activities Center, which manages the little inn, can provide all you’ll need by way of recreation.



HAWAII

The Big Island



You won’t find the Big Island’s hottest activities on any tour itinerary or calendar of events. You can’t schedule a volcanic eruption or snow skiing in the tropics, or fighting a 500-pound Pacific blue marlin.

Here are the Aloha State’s wide open spaces, where all the forces of nature play in concert. They call the island of Hawaii the Big Island to avoid confusion with the state name and because all the other Hawaiian islands could fit within its palm-packed shores. Bigger than Connecticut, it’s a land of diversity, with environments ranging from vast, glistening lava fields to dripping rain forests.

On the Big Island you can ride the range at Parker Ranch, one of the largest privately owned spreads in the country. You can gape at cascades like 420-foot Akaka Falls, dropping past bamboo and ginger into a deep-cut stream bed. You can sail and snorkel in Kealakekua Bay, where Captain James Cook-who discovered the Islands-was killed in 1779 by disenchanted natives. You can poke through the county seat of Hilo, with its quaint storefronts, colorful fish auctions and lush neighborhoods. You can drive to Ka Lae, the southernmost point in the U.S., where olivine crystals create a beach of green sand nearby.

But the Big Island’s biggest draw is undoubtedly its volcanoes, two of which, Kilauea and Mauna Loa, are still active. Every few weeks for the past three years, Kilauea has staged a fireworks display inside Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. But even when the mountain is silent, the Park is a hot attraction, with its yawning craters, sulphur-yellow steam vents and thick fern forests. Its rimside hotel, Sheraton’s 37-room Volcano House, is a truly unique inn dating back in various forms to 1864.

Hawaii’s tallest volcano is 13,796-foot Mauna Kea, capped by several world-class observatories and accessible by four-wheel-drive. Some winters, when snow conditions are right, Mauna Kea even offers skiing on long runs with names like the Poi Bowl and Kameham-eha’s Run.

The Big Island’s main visitor mecca is its leeward shore, where the Kona and Kohala Coasts meet. The Kona Coast is best known for its excellent gamefish-ing. You can spend a few hours or a full day trolling its waters in charter boats with names like Black Bar, Reel Hooker and Blue Hawaii. The quarry here is abi (yellowfin tuna), ono (wahoo), opaka-paka (pink snapper) and the prize catch, the fierce blue marlin.

But you don’t need fish stories and singing reels to enjoy the Big Island from offshore. You can charter a sailboat from free spirits like Dick & Lynne Hodge, who left their thriving computer software company in Austin for the blue waters off Kona.

What about a base camp for all this brawny outdoor adventure? Both the Mauna lani and the Mauna Kea fill the bill perfectly. The Mauna Kea is the prototypical, self-contained resort, with all the requisite Kohala hotel features: awardwinning restaurants like the Batik Room a location well-removed from the rest o: civilization, million-dollar condomin iums nearby, water sports, 16 tennis courts and a top-ranked golf course sprouting oasis-like from the stark fields of lava.

South of the Mauna Kea resort is the Mauna Lani resort, with Emerald Hotels’ Mauna Lani Bay Hotel, luxury condos, acres of historic fishponds to explore and the Bay Terrace and The Third Floor gourmet restaurants. Over $17 million was spent to carve a jewel of a world-class golf course out of the lava rocks.

Further south is the sprawling Waiko-loa resort, whose partners include Fort Worth’s Bass family. Waikoloa encompasses two golf courses, condominiums and the beautiful Sheraton Royal Waikoloa, soon to be joined by the Hyatt Regency Waikoloa, Hawaii’s most ambitious hotel project yet.

Just south is the Kona Village Resort, a cluster of 100 individual bales (houses) without telephones or TV sets, air conditioning or elevators; just balmy breezes, great food, a curving beach and meandering, torch-lined tropical ponds.

The Big Island’s other master-planned resort is Keauhou at Kona, south of the main fishing village of Kailua-Kona. Here are vacation condos, an 18-hole golf course, a small boat harbor and three hotels, including the flagship Kona Surf, with its dramatic architecture, fine art collection and sensational vistas.



KAUAI

The Garden Island



For years, the island of Kauai was one of Hawaii’s best kept secrets. It was a billing guaranteed to make an allocentric’s eyes light up. Why so secret? For starters, the Garden Island is set apart from the rest of the major islands, floating like Bali Hai more than a hundred miles from the bright lights of Honolulu.

And with its incredibly lush tropical foliage, pristine wilderness and winding, golden shoreline, Kauai is a natural for secret spots. There’s the beautiful strand near the Kilauea Lighthouse that’s even called Secret Beach.

These days, the once-secret Garden Island is being discovered by more and more vacationers, drawn by its spectacular natural attractions. These include Waimea Canyon, dubbed the Grand Canyon of the Pacific; the riverboat ride to the famous Fern Grotto, a massive lava tube festooned with fernery; the magnificent Na Pali Coast, a true national treasure; and the fine beach resorts at Poipu, Princeville and in the Wailua area.

If Kauai looks familiar, it’s because Hollywood discovered it early on. During your Kauai stopover, you can stroll The Thorn Birds’ Kee Beach or Body Heat’s Haena Beach or picture-perfect Lumahai Beach, where Rossano wooed Mitzi in South Pacific. You can tramp the taro patches which passed as rice paddies in Uncommon Valor or float down the lagoon where Elvis was married in Blue Hawaii. You can even swing from a vine into a Kauai river a la Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark. The folks at the Sheraton Princeville can pinpoint the locations where these films were shot.

But a better way to see Kauai’s rivers is by kayak. You can rent one from Pedal & Paddle in Hanalei and explore the Kalihiwai and Hanalei Rivers. Or you can hook up with Island Adventures, which takes small groups down the Huleia River to the Menehune Fishpond, the mysterious structure supposedly built in one night by the menehunes, Kauai’s leprechaun-like little people.

The real jewel on the Garden Island is Na Pali Coast, a dozen miles of towering, furrowed sea cliffs and gorgeous beaches accessible only by boat or hiking trail. The most exciting way to experience the coast may be with Captain Zodiac, whose fleet of rubber rafts zips into sea caves past thundering waterfalls and stops at deserted beaches for sunbathing or swimming.

You can also see Na Pali and the rest of the island by whirlybird. Kauai is Hawaii’s copter capital, with more chopper companies per cubic foot of air space than any other island. Besides veteran Jack Harter Helicopters, there are Kenai, Papillon, South Sea and several newer companies. Once aloft, with your headphones playing soaring sounds from Chariots of Fire or Rachmaninoff, you’ll find yourself swooping into green-carpeted valleys, buzzing over ocean swells or surrounded by waterfalls inside the crater of cloud-shrouded Mt. Waialeale, the wettest spot on earth.

As more people discover Kauai, of course, the room inventory is growing- to include some really first-rate new luxury hotels. The grande dame here is the Coco Palms Resort, with its lazy lagoons, dramatic nightly torch-lighting ceremony and plush tropical decor. Don’t miss their luau or their complimentary lessons in lei-making and bamboo pole fishing. In sunny Poipu, there’s the Sheraton Kauai, recently reconstructed in high style; the Kiahuna Plantation, a beautiful garden condominium with golf course and tennis club; and the Waiohai, Poipu’s most luxurious hotel. The Sheraton Princeville, the swankiest property on the island, made its debut last year on the sea cliff above Hanalei Bay at the Princeville resort. While dining in five-star environs we counted eleven waterfalls within sight of the Sheraton. And next month, Hilton Hotels is scheduled to open its own contribution-the Kauai Hilton, overlooking the sands of the new Hanamaulu Beach Resort.



MOLOKAI

The Friendly Island



Small wonder, Molokai. It’s only 260 square miles long, yet the Friendly Island holds some of Hawaii’s most unusual drawing cards.

Mandatory on a Molokai visit is a trip to the leprosy settlement at Kalaupapa, a little town on a tongue of land jutting into the Pacific from the sheer northern coast. You can fly into the Lilliputian Kalaupapa Airport, but better yet is the Great Molokai Mule Ride, a breathtaking adventure down a 1,600-foot cliff on a trail which roller coasters around 56 switchbacks. The scenery is sensational, the mules sure-footed and the paniolo (Hawaiian cowboy) guides jovial.

For travelers seeking the real, off-road Hawaii, Molokai is what it’s alt about. Like each of its sister islands, it’s a unique travel experience, the kind which can make a Hawaiian vacation anything but predictable.