Monday, September 30, 2024 Tendered: 8:00AM to 10:00PM
From Lahaina, Maui, get high in a helicopter soaring over the dormant Haleakalā volcano and peer down on the spectacular Manawainui Valley waterfalls. Play 18 panoramic holes of golf from 1,100 feet up a mountain slope overlooking the Pacific.

A Maui cruise allows you to do some whale watching for acrobatic 40-ton humpbacks. Spot wild spinner, bottlenose, and spotted dolphins from a catamaran off the Maui coast at sunset. Jump in among the dolphins as they do their flips and leaps on a snorkel adventure off the coast of Lanai.

On cruises to Lahaina, learn about Hawaii’s agricultural foundations by touring a working plantation. The local cuisine was invented in the first millennium when Polynesians arrived on the first cruises to Maui. They planted taro, coconuts, sugarcane, sweet potatoes, and yams in the rich volcanic soil, and cooked meat and fish in earthen ovens.

In the 18th century, Europeans and Americans developed sugarcane and pineapple plantations, and in the 19th century, cruises to Hawaii brought labor from China, Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Portugal to work the fields. They all brought their own cuisines.

On your Lahaina cruise, try a “Hawaiian plate lunch,” any combination of rice, kalua pig, pork or chicken laulau (wrapped in ti leaves), dried beef, and lomi salmon, poi (starchy taro), and coconut cream pudding. Saimin is Hawaii’s traditional soup, with noodles inspired by Chinese chow mein in a broth evolved from Japanese dashi. Poke (po-káy) is raw seafood salad, similar to ceviche, featuring chunks of tuna or octopus, with sea salt, kukui nuts, and local seaweed.

Shave ice is Hawaii’s iconic frozen treat. Japanese laborers shaved blocks of ice, then poured fruit juice over the shavings. Updates include strawberry, pineapple, even red adzuki beans as a sweet paste.

While shopping on your Maui cruise, pick up macadamia nuts — plain, salted, honey roasted, or chocolate covered. The first macadamias arrived from Australia in the 1880s. Today they are iconic. Another gift that says “Hawaii” is local jewelry — pearls, koa-wood rings, pendants with sea turtles or sandals.

The ultimate souvenir of Hawaii cruises would be the aloha shirt, aka Hawaiian shirt. Created in the 1930s for tourists—boldly patterned, brilliantly colored, with Polynesian motifs—the aloha shirt was adopted by locals in the 1960s and now qualifies as office attire.