Afloat In Hawaii Island Hop - Spend Your Nights On Board And Your Days Experiencing The Individuality Of The Hawaiian Islands

Ancient Hawaiians claimed the demigod Maui could slow the passage of time. His secret: a magic lasso that snagged the sun when it dashed over the peak of 10,000-foot-high Mount Haleakala, a dormant volcano on the island that bears his name.

Shivering in Maui’s footsteps as I waited for daybreak on Haleakala’s frosty summit, I was willing to give the Polynesian legend its due. But I’d found my own way to stretch a week’s vacation in Hawaii: a floating hotel called the S.S. Independence.

During my four-island, five-port journey aboard the only American-owned ship to cruise America’s only island state, I rode a bicycle down one of the world’s steepest highways on Maui, soared above the wettest spot on Earth on Kauai, hiked into a lava tube on the Big Island of Hawaii, and watched the sunrise glint off the high-rises of Honolulu.

Back on board, I took a lesson in ancient Hawaiian instruments and spent a Sunday morning listening to the haunting strains of “O Kou Aloha No,” a hymn written by the late 19th-century Queen Lili’uokalani.

Best of all, because my “hotel” was afloat, I accomplished my multi-island visit without the hassles of using inter-island air shuttles. This saved at least a day’s worth of transit tedium - packing and unpacking, rounding up rental cars, standing in airport check-in lines and checking in and out of hotels.

Launched in 1951, American Hawaii Cruises’ Independence is the only ocean-going, U.S.-built and -owned passenger ship still in service. (Its sister ship, the Constitution, was mothballed last summer when a long-planned refurbishment proved too costly.)

And thanks to a 19th-century law that bans foreign-flagged vessels from stopping at consecutive U.S. ports unless they also call at a foreign port, the 817-passenger Independence is the only ship to offer Hawaiian cruises without a Pacific crossing.

Sailing from Honolulu every Saturday night, the ship spends Sunday at sea, Monday in Kauai, Tuesday and Wednesday in Maui, and Thursday and Friday on the Big Island before returning to Oahu Saturday morning.

American Hawaii Cruises poured $30 million into the Independence during an extensive 1994 renovation, but the old gal shows her age.

Dubbed a “floating Motel 6” by one nonplused passenger who posted his assessment to an electronic bulletin board, the ship lacks the soaring atriums and high-tech amenities that characterize new vessels. Hallways tend to be narrower and cabins smaller than on more modern ships. And some of the ship’s budget-priced bathrooms are so cramped that, in the words of travel agent and fellow passenger Carol Rice of Williamsport, Pa., “you can flush and brush at the same time.”

Maintenance can be spotty, too: During my late-summer sailing, windows were streaked with grime and the ship’s classic teak deck chairs were in desperate need of varnish.

The Independence has lost some luster since the days when her sister was a star attraction in the Cary Grant weeper “An Affair to Remember” (which still airs weekly in the Independence’s theater), but the ship compensates by immersing passengers in Hawaiiana.

The centerpiece of the Independence is its Kama’aina Lounge. Handsomely furnished with oversized rattan chairs, potted palms, gleaming wood floors and French doors that lead to covered lanais, the room has become a favorite gathering spot - a popularity enhanced by its role as a floating branch of Honolulu’s renowned Bishop Museum.

Passengers can listen to a recording of Sybil Ka’ae Grace recall how she learned to craft lau hala hats, and marvel at the heft of a stone implement used to pound taro into poi, a staple of the Hawaiian diet. In the adjacent Kumu Study, a cozy retreat named for the Hawaiian teacher who accompanies each cruise, walls are lined with photos and portraits of 19th-century Hawaiian ali’i, or rulers.

Kumu Haunani Kaui, a 40-year-old, third-generation Kauai resident, “talks story” about Hawaii’s past and present, weaving her tales into the panoramic views unfolding beyond the deck rails.

One Sunday morning, while the Independence crawled along Kauai’s accordion-pleated coastline, she told her charges about nearby Niihau. Off limits to anyone but residents, the “forbidden isle” is home to about 250 pure-blooded Hawaiians who live without electricity or telephones. It’s also famous for highly prized - and high-priced - necklaces made from tiny, luminescent shells called pupu.

“If you can find one in the stores, they probably won’t let you touch it,” Haunani warned us. She, however, was more than willing to show off her own strand - an invitation that sparked a swarm of hands-on admirers.

The Independence’s entertainment and casual shipboard ambiance reflect a sense of place, too. To be sure, the daily program includes its share of mass-market, Caribbean-style diversions: ice carving, jackpot bingo, a “newly wed/ not so newly wed” game. And some of the Hawaiiana offerings were pedestrian, at best: Cheery exhortations of “ah-low-HAAH” and renditions of “Little Grass Shack.”

The ship’s genial, all-American crew does a good job of introducing Hawaii to their mostly retired customers - more than half of whom are visiting the islands for the first time. They’re aided by local performers who join the ship along the way - including a winsome contingent of keikis (children) from Halau Hula O Kahikilaulani, a Hilo-based hula school.

Aloha shirts outnumber dark suits at the captain’s welcome-aboard party, and even the menus have a local flavor: a “plate lunch” with lomilomi salmon and poi supplements pizza and hamburger.

As for that cruise-ship staple, the midnight buffet, the pared-down Independence version is served at 10:30 p.m. - a reminder that on this ship, what’s happening ashore the next day takes precedence over gluttony the night before.

More grandiose (and often less expensive) Caribbean cruise ships are marketed as destinations in themselves. But the Independence is merely the means of getting to the real star attraction, the Hawaiian Islands.

American Hawaii sells more than 50 shore excursions, ranging from a $15 Pearl Harbor tour to a $179 helicopter ride above the West Maui mountains and the sea cliffs of Molokai.

Some of the ship’s offerings provide a sanitized, through-the-tour-bus-windows perspective. But a well-chosen selection of Hawaiiana Tours and Hikes, limited to small groups, give newcomers and jaded repeat visitors a deeper look at the state’s ecology and history.

On the Big Island, I signed up for a six-mile hike through a rainforest and into the Kilauea Iki crater - a vast, moonlike lake of crunchy lava formed by an eruption nearly four decades ago.

Our Hawaiian Walkways tour guide, a wispy-bearded taro farmer from the nearby Waipio Valley, told his pilgrims not to worry about the gloomy weather that had prompted us to don sweaters and rain ponchos.

“You’ll feel the magic even more,” he promised.

He was right - though I’m not sure whether the chills running down my spine emanated from the steam that billowed from the crater floor, or from his entreaty to “let your heart sing a song of thanks” to the Hawaiian spirits who made it possible.

On Maui, I set my cabin alarm at the ungodly hour of 2:30 a.m. for a bicycle ride down Mount Haleakala.

About 15 years ago, a pair of enterprising Los Angeles refugees came up with the idea of putting tourists on fat-tired bikes and letting them coast from summit to sea - a 38-mile journey that was a lot less demanding than it sounded. The company they founded, Cruiser Bob’s, is out of business, but others fill the void, and on any given morning, the summit parking lot is jammed with vanloads of sleepy riders waiting to take off after the spectacular sunrise above Haleakala’s crater.

After a thorough safety briefing (“the last thing we want is to see you gone with the Schwinn,” our leader said), my own four-hour ride was an uneventful blu’. The views were staggering, but so were the smells - from menthol-laced stands of eucalyptus trees and pungent dairy pastures to macadamia nut pancakes in Kula, where we stopped for a much-appreciated refueling.

My greatest (and guiltiest) pleasure of the trip was on Kauai, where I swooped above the island in a helicopter.

An aerial tour of the aptly named Garden Isle, which shows few scars from Hurricane Iniki’s pummeling in 1992, is anathema to hikers hoping to explore its velvety canyons in solitude, without the chatter of helicopters overhead. Business plummeted when stringent altitude restrictions took effect two years ago, but a subsequent easing of those regulations means the skies above Kauai are once again filled with mechanical birds - and open-mouthed spectators who stumble off the tarmac in a beatific daze.

My mid-August sailing was too early for spotting the humpback whales that sometimes frolic within a few hundred years of the ship during their winter hiatus in Hawaii. But Madame Pele, the goddess of volcanoes, was cooperating as the Independence rounded the southeastern tip of the Big Island late one drizzly Friday evening.

The ship’s decks were soon jammed with camera-draped volcano watchers, peering into the mists as the captain maneuvered the Independence within a mile of shore.

Kilauea’s dark flanks were punctuated by orange bruises - lava flows that had broken through the surface of a honeycomb of underground tubes. And at land’s end, barely visible through a barrage of rain and flashbulbs, fire met water in a burst of angry steam.

Our last day on board, I rose early to watch the ship’s return to Honolulu.

Before swarms of 747s brought mass tourism to Waikiki and points beyond, “boat day” was a celebrated event. Arriving passengers tossed coins into the harbor, where they were quickly retrieved by entrepreneurial young boys. The air was redolent with sweet plumeria, strung into leis sold by a gantlet of muumuu-clad vendors. Looming above it all was Hawaii’s tallest building and best-loved landmark, the Mediterranean-styled Aloha Tower.

Today, 70 years after it was built, the Aloha Tower is dwarfed by the sinuous high-rises of downtown Honolulu. No one throws coins anymore, and the ship’s early morning arrival keeps flower sellers at home.

But I still caught my breath as the onetime mariner’s beacon came into view, and held it as the rising sun glinted behind the rim of a far more ancient landmark, Diamond Head.

Once again, I gave thanks to the demigod Maui for his magic lasso - and to an aging ship that managed to snare a lifetime of memories from a week at sea.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: IF YOU GO Standard fares for the Independence’s seven-night cruises range from $1,145 to $3,195 per person, double occupancy; discounted airfare from the mainland is additional. Most passengers take advantage of pre- or post-cruise hotel packages on Oahu, Maui, Kauai or the Big Island, which range from $82 to $302 per person, per night, double. The ship’s extensive roster of shore excursions range from a bus tour to Oahu’s Polynesian Cultural Center to a rainforest walk on Maui. I found some excursions were less expensive if booked independently: A 90-minute walking tour of historic Kona, the Big Island town where the ship moors each Friday, cost $15 per person if arranged on board, $10 in town. But others, such as the sunrise bicycle ride down Mount Haleakala, were a few dollars cheaper through the ship’s excursion office. As I discovered after making several phone calls to save $10 off the ship’s negotiated car rental rate of $40.50 per day, the convenience factor of letting the ship make arrangements can be considerable. The Independence cruises Hawaii year-round, but the inter-island channels tend to be rougher during the winter (which also brings more rain). For more information, contact a travel agent or American Hawaii Cruises at 800-474-9934. The company also maintains an extensive Web site (www.cruisehawaii.com).