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Ka'anapali Tried and True
Maui's original tourist coastline 'refinds' its bliss
last updated: October 06, 2007 10:04:28 PM
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Walk along Ka'anapali Beach at dusk, just as the tiki torches in front of the hotels are being lighted and the palm trees are turning to black silhouettes against a peachy sky, and you can almost be forgiven for thinking you've stepped into the most stereotypical of "wish you were here" postcards.
In the morning, you'll pinch yourself again as you awaken to a fantasy world of bright blue sea, golden sand, turquoise pools and landscaping so luminous it appears to be lighted from within. Ah, Maui ...
"Wish you were here," indeed.
More than half a million visitors a year do make it here, and for good reason: Ka'anapali Beach Resort is one of those just-about-perfect sun-and-sand retreats where everything you need (and didn't know you needed) is right there, tucked into an at-your-fingertips package.
Want to tickle your toes in the sand? You won't have to walk far: All but a few of Ka'anapali's rooms are within steps of a three-mile-long strand regarded as one of the best in Hawaii, if
not the world. Wrap yourself in luxurious lodging? Five condominium complexes and six resort hotels with 5,000 rooms among them have all the bases covered.
Enjoy a good meal? Play golf or tennis? Snorkel? Shop till you drop? It's all here. And you don't even need to save room in your budget for a rental car: The three-mile Beach Walk promenade connects the various parts of the resort, and frequent shuttles are available for when your legs give out.
Maui tourism 'started' here
Ka'anapali Beach Resort, the first master-planned development in Hawaii, was designed to keep visitors so happy they'd stay put, and it succeeds at its mission. Conceived at a time when the self-contained concept was cutting edge, the resort served as a blueprint for managing the tourism boom that soon would transform the economy, culture and landscape of the islands. Development along one of Maui's premier pieces of real estate started in 1959, the year Hawaii became a state. The Royal Lahaina Resort was the first on the strip to open, in 1962.
Forty-five years of slow but steady growth, punctuated by substantial rebuilding and remodeling, have helped maintain Ka'anapali 's reputation as one of Hawaii's top vacation enclaves.
If you're the kind of vacationer who likes to be in the middle of the action and comes to Hawaii purely for the scenery, the weather and the comforts of a nice hotel room, Ka'anapali will leave you wanting for nothing. But if you've come for something else -- a glimpse of Hawaii beyond the tourism facade, perhaps -- then Ka'anapali can seem like a paved paradise distinctly lacking in soul.
A woman with whom I struck up a conversation over a shared table at the Hula Grill, my favorite Ka'anapali restaurant, admitted to a bit of disappointment. "It's all just people on holiday; we might as well be in Australia," she said. "We thought we'd learn something about Hawaiian culture here."
She had a point: It's not easy to ferret out a sense of place when the place has been so utterly transformed. Hula-girl logos and tropical-print bedspreads only pay lip service to a rich island culture that remains largely hidden from package-vacation visitors.
In the beginning ...
Every place has a history. At Ka'anapali, it was sobering to learn, during the course of a history-focused walking tour, that one of the bloodiest battles in Hawaiian history -- the culmination of an internecine conflict between rival brothers -- was fought in 1738 on what is now a golf course.
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