WAILEA, Hawaii -- Maui no ka oi, the Hawaiian saying goes: Maui is the best. You see it on bumper stickers, in the names of businesses and in the trillions of brochures printed up to sell this second-largest of the Hawaiian islands to the 2 million tourists -- many of them starry-eyed honeymooners -- who visit each year.

And you think, "Oh boy, here we go, another overblown marketing ploy -- give me a break.

Yet if you're like most visitors, by the the end of a week you're likely to concur with the readers of Condé Nast Traveler magazine, which in October named Maui -- for the ninth year in a row -- the best island on the planet.

There are reasons aplenty for the no ka oi honors, and they don't all have to do with fancy resorts and restaurants. On an island overendowed with natural wonders, the great outdoors is what it's really all about.

Think Hawaiian stereotypes -- long, white beaches, gushing waterfalls, verdant rainforests, tropical flowers as bright as jewels -- and you'll find them all here in numbers too high to count. Cliché-quality sunsets are all but guaranteed on the dry western side of the island where most tourists hang their beach towels. And rainbows, as I heard one transplanted resident brag, "are as common on Maui as squirrels are in Canada."

For most visitors to Maui, eye-popping scenery is a mere backdrop to the golden beaches that ring the island's perimeter. Relatively few zoom in on the scenery to consider, for example, the medicinal qualities of the noni tree, the usefulness of the kukui nut or the odd characteristics of the brightly colored fish that flit about in the sea.

To appreciate the island's natural and cultural history, it helps to hook up with someone in the know -- someone, perhaps, like Carole Burk, who most definitely can tell her humuhumunukunukupua'a (Hawaii's unofficial state fish) from her mahi-mahi (dolphinfish, a common item on restaurant menus).

I came across Burk during the course of a morning walk along the gorgeous, 1 1/2-mile Shoreline Path linking a string of upscale resorts and sugar-soft beaches along the Wailea coast. She was staffing a table for the Pacific Whale Foundation, an organization dedicated to the conservation of humpback whales and their habitat. From her Tuesday-Thursday post at the north end of Ulua Beach, Burk talks to "anywhere from 10 to 35 people an hour" about Maui's marine resources.

She also leads snorkeling tours around the rocky point and reef just over the little hill behind her table. And -- wonder of wonders in this generally expensive destination -- the excursions are free (though participants must provide their own gear).

A self-described "large, fluffy person" with a halo of gray hair, Burk stood on the beach and waved a pair of turquoise swim fins to call in her flock for the 9 a.m. tours. The water temperature, a fairly comfortable 78 degrees, was several clicks warmer than it would be in midwinter, and about 4 degrees cooler than in tepid midsummer. "I'm a major water wuss," Burk, wearing a wetsuit, admitted cheerfully.

Admonishing her followers to "take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but bubbles, touch nothing but each other," she led us into the wonderworld that exists beneath the sea's surface.

I love snorkeling and have learned over the years to identify numerous kinds of tropical fish. But I didn't understand how the species interrelate with the reef and each other, and that's where Burk came in. She popped her head out of the water every few minutes to inform us about the fish, eels, urchins and other creatures that she (or we) had pointed out below.

Of the 32 critters ID'd during the 45-minute swim, two that stick in my mind are the trumpet fish, a chameleon of the seas that can change its body markings from stripes to spots and even to plaid; and the red pencil urchin, whose secretions were used as a dye in traditional Hawaiian culture and whose dried spines were used to make indelible marks -- petrogylphs -- on volcanic rock.

And how about that humuhumunukunukupua'a? Its name, Burk told us, translates from Hawaiian to English as "fish with a snout like a pig." It seems the Polynesians who settled these islands about 3,000 years ago held pigs in high regard but didn't have enough of them to make the regular sacrifices their gods required. So the colorful little reef fish -- known in English as the picasso triggerfish -- were used as pig substitutes, a solution that kept both gods and mortals satisfied.

My visit to Maui came just before whale season, which runs from December to March. But already the first mother-calf pair had been spotted in the Hawaiian Island Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary, which encompasses the waters between Maui and the neighboring islands of Lanai and Kaho'olawe.

Only 2,000 to 3,000 of the threatened humpbacks are thought to exist. They migrate south in three "spurs" from the Bering Sea, with about 65 percent making a beeline for Hawaii. Of those, about 85 percent hang out around Maui to breed, calve and nurse their young.

What makes these Hawaiian waters so welcoming is, in part, their relatively shallow depth. The maximum diving depth of a humpback is about 600 feet, and the plateau linking these islands doesn't get any deeper than that, Burk explained. "Baby whales sometimes get disoriented and swim down too deep -- they're OK as long as the mother can get in underneath and lift them up."

 I didn't see whales this trip, but I did see green sea turtles in abundance during the course of a morning kayak trip that led from Makena Landing in South Maui to Ahi'hi Bay, a few miles down the coast. 

If you think the pages of National Geographic are as close as you'll ever get to a large marine animal like the green sea turtle, think again: In Maui, you can swim eyeball to eyeball with the amazingly swift creatures. And you don't have to depend on luck to encounter them. Sea turtles congregate at "cleaning stations" where a specialized type of fish removes loose scales and parasites from their bodies. Any guide worth his or her salt can lead you there.

"You see more large marine animals off of Maui than in most places," said Brian Yesland of Kelii's Kayak Tours."We always see sea turtles on our tours, and we also see spinner dolphins, spotted rays, manta rays, sharks. ... "

From the water we could also see two beaches -- Big Beach and Little Beach -- prized for their undeveloped status. They were much as I remembered them from the mid-1970s: Little Beach populated by clothing-optional Adams and Eves, Big Beach a long sweep of golden sand sparsely sprinkled with human figures. 

My orientation on Maui was from the uncrowded Wailea-Makena area on the southwest side of the island. Given more time, I would have ranged farther afield -- to the 10,000-foot-high summit of Haleakala, perhaps, for a hike through the volcano's crimson crater or to the tranquil community Hana, at the end of a torturous, 50-mile corkscrew of a road. 

But there was plenty in Wailea to keep me happy for the four days I had. The only time I strayed was for a waterfall hike on the island's wet, windward side. 

Roger Bush, a wildlife biologist, quit his job with the state to lead hikes for Hike Maui, a 19-year-old enterprise that takes visitors off the beaten track and into the rainforest. The excursion proved a good opportunity to observe Maui's rural interior, where fields of sugar cane wave in the breeze and flower stands offer bunches of heart-shaped anthurium blossoms for $5. 

On the way to our destination, Bush gave the passengers in his van a short course on Maui's natural history, covering everything from captive propagation of the endangered state bird -- a type of goose called the nene -- to the history of sugar cane and pineapple growing. 

Our route took us through rustic Pa'ia, a former company town abandoned in the 1950s, discovered by hippies in the '60s, surfers in the '70s and windsurfers in the '80s. Nearby Ho'okipa Beach Park is where the world's best windsurfers come to compete in hair-raising conditions. Watching from the bluffs above the beach is grand spectator sport.

So, too, is watching the landscapes change from one part of the island to the other. While the dry leeward side of Maui gets just 7 to 17 inches of rain a year, the windward side gets more than 200 inches, and the landscapes are correspondingly wet, wild and jungly.

Our hike took us three-quarters of a mile from a trailhead at the Garden of Eden, a commercial enterprise on the Hana Highway, along a private trail leading to Puahokamoa Falls. Bush supplied tabis -- Japanese fishermen's socks made of sticky rubber with felt soles -- for the trek through the slick streambed to a setting that was classic Hawaii.

 Awaiting at trail's end was a deep limestone pool perhaps 100 feet across, fed by a cascade of water pouring down a sheer cliff face at least 30 feet high. A warm sun rendered the cool water swimmable and refreshing.

Sitting there on the warm rocks, slicing into the hot-pink meat of a fresh guava, waterfall shooshing in my ears, there was no denying the obvious: Maui no ka oi.

About the Writer:
Janet Fullwood can be reached at (916) 321-1148 or jfullwood@sacbee.com