Male 1: Chichiri Island is unique with a collection of enchanting qualities of their own. Maui is for many the crown jewel of Hawaii. There's so many activities here that it would take a lifetime to experience them all. There’s golf, whale watching, snorkeling, snubas, scuba’s, sailing, bigging, fishing, helicopter sight seeing, surfing, wind surfing, kite boarding, climbing, hiking, beaches of every description, entertainment, culture, restaurants, pineapple plantations, history, volcanoes, waterfalls, rainforests—It’s a breathtaking merely an inexhaustible panoply of pleasure. Add to that, a local population that goes out that little extra bit to make everyone feel welcome and you have Maui Wowie.
The island hasn’t always been just fun in the sun. Lahaina was the capital of the sand rich islands and the whaling capital of the word. Here, the King and his court presided over a relatively tranquil island kingdom. A local courthouse built in 1859 is on the grounds where there once was originally the Old Canal Fort. On the town side, a magnificent Banyan tree planted in 1873. It’s 60 feet high and covers almost the entire block. It’s a gathering place for artist and artisan showing off a variety of Maui made art.
David Lang: We have Macaws, cockatoo and a bird called an Eclectus. Macaws from South America, you have the Scarlet, a little green one called the Severe, Blue and Gold and the largest parrots species in the world, the Hyacinth Macaw which is extremely rare, endangered, a native to Brazil actually.
Not pretty much my little kindergarten class, we’ve got something like 17 different birds that I get to play with. We rotate them in and out of here, like kids, they get pretty tired and thank you after a few hours. You don’t really want to try and make a bird do anything they’re happy and let you know that they won’t stop. You respect them, you treat them with the respect that they deserve and you have wonderful animals that are like family to you.
Male: There are numerous historic sites around Lahaina, a community that has managed to embrace tourism while maintaining a colonial dignity fitting the King’s land that it once was. In the early 1900s, the Baldwin family began raising pineapples through a variety of acquisitions and trades. That company has become the Maui land and pineapple company preserving a 100-year of plots tradition of pineapples in Maui.
Taylor Kellerman: Maui Pineapple Company currently maintains approximately 6,000 acres of pineapple. And we have two plantations, one here on West Maui and the other in central Maui which we call Haliimaile. This plantation is called Honolulu. To this day, ever single pineapple plant that you see is planted by hand. And the typical acre holds over 30,000 pounds per acre and harvesting is still as you can see is completely done by hand as well.
We plant in blocks, they’re about 110 feet wide. That boom that you see there is a conveyor that takes the fruit from the pickers to what we call fresh fruit loading bins. And that boom is about 55 feet long, so it covers exactly one block. They come along one bottom half and they turn around and they come right back on the other half. We typically make about 3 boxes to harvest all of our fresh fruit. And currently, our fresh fruit operation starts at 4 o’clock in the morning and our packing actually starts at 9, we’re trying to basically minimize the time between pick and pack.
Once the fruit is picked, it’s brought in from the field, we do an incoming quality control check and we categorize it and we run it by field because typically we do have a problem that will be consistent throughout a particular area so we want to take care of it all at once. Our fresh fruit bins are dropped into this, we call this a bloom. Essentially it serves three purposes, number one is for our sanitation purposes of molds and yeast. There’s a mildew plain solution here, the food grade chlorine that we use. Also, it’s a way to transport the fruit from the bin to our packing line minimizing the bruising or any sort of handling. And the third is that a pineapple that is going to have a good short life and what we want to get to our customer will bloat. If it’s overripe, it will sink because the cell structure breaks down to the point that it makes it heavier than water. And those, we still use for canneries so those are actually big enough and basically diverted to the cannary,
Male: At Kaanapali Resorts in West Maui, there’s a conscious effort to surround guests in Hawaiian culture.
Female: Poi pounders are made to form—was made in form for the hand that uses them. And of course, I don’t know if you’ve seen old pictures of poi pounders, they would have a long board and one man would be on one end and the other one on the other end, and all the finished product would come to the center.
After you’ve steamed it, what we normally do is we put a little bit of water and you mash it into a texture like a pudding texture. The coolest thing about this is that people don’t like it in the pudding style, they like it just the way it is, as steamed, and then they’ll add their condiments. My husband is spoiled, he likes it with a little bit of raw sugar on it. After it’s steamed, we cut it in sizes and we’re going to back it in the oven and it crumbles and the sugar caramelizes, well a little bit of pineapple juice caramelizes it too. It’s like the best thing.
Male: Well, there’s another part of Hawaiian magic.
Scott Ashworth: Golf in Hawaii, obviously, it’s paradise. I mean, the obvious thing is that the weather is perfect, but also the scenery. You’ve got the different islands. Especially here on Maui, you’ve got Lanai, Molokia and some of your views. This time of the year, you can stand up here and watch the whales jumping out of the water. It’s really spectacular. Golf in Hawaii is very special. Maui is unbelievable. We have some of the most spectacular golf courses anywhere in the world. It really does not get any better than this. Great golf courses, great views and great weather.
Here we are at hole number five here called the Wa’a and I’ll read what it says. It says that Hawaiian word for canoe used for fishing, racing, sailing and paddling between the islands. Canoes were abundant throughout the shores of Keka’a, a fishing village located against this beautiful beach. So what you’ll see in hole number five here which is one of the more famous golf holes really all of Hawaii, it’s quite often put in Hawaii’s __. It’s very difficult. Par 4 is about 475 yards from the back beat. What’s really neat about it is about the last 150 yard is right up against the beach. If you miss your shot, it will get right on your second shot, you’re literally right in the middle of the beach. So it’s quite a spectacular hole.
Male: Maui is a magnificent piece of island real estate.
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