Cowboys In Paradise Climb Into The Saddle, Pardner, At A Working Ranch On The Hawaiian Island Of Molokai

I’m sitting under a hot sun on a spirited chestnut mare named Muffin. A few yards away, Bobby Joe sits on a feisty little quarter horse named Fanny. About 30 head of cattle churn the red dust as they trot past us.

Also keeping an eye on the small herd are a few more dudes and cowboys on horses. We’re in a scrubby landscape of prickly shrubs and grass.

This is not your everyday Hawaiian vacation.

Beyond beaches and palms trees is a Hawaiian culture that lives among mesquite and cattle. On the island of Molokai, you can vacation among Hawaii’s paniolo - cowboys - and experience a Hawaiian home on the range. Even travelers who know Hawaii find a fresh view of the island state on the Molokai Ranch, where an all-inclusive adventure tourism program aims to attract outdoorsy vacationers who like to do the different thing.

At 53,000 acres, the Molokai Ranch constitutes nearly a third of the island of Molokai, and is the second-largest ranch in Hawaii. (The Parker Ranch, on the Big Island, is several times larger.) Known as “His Majesty’s Ranch on Moloka’i” in the 1800s because the land was controlled by Hawaii’s King Kamehameha V, the property was bought in 1908 by the Cooke family, who only recently sold it to pursue other business interests. The ranch’s new owner, New Zealand-based Brierley Investments, is broadening the ranch’s horizons with tourism.

The island of Molokai is not the Hawaii most tourists know. Nicknamed “the most Hawaiian island” because nearly 40 percent of its 7,000 residents are of Hawaiian descent, it is 25 miles southeast of Oahu and a world away in style. Molokai has no high-rise hotels, one highway and no stoplights. It is best-known for the leper colony founded there in the 19th century by Belgian priest Father Damien. About 75 people with Hansen’s disease - as leprosy is now known - still live at the colony, but since drugs were developed to treat the disease, isolation is no longer necessary.

The Molokai Ranch is a working ranch. Cattle are bred here for shipment to the mainland, and a horse training and boarding operation is being developed. Meanwhile, the ranch is making room for guests among its 7,000 head of cattle, 80 horses and nine cowboys.

What guests find here is a landscape unlike the lush tropics of our usual Hawaiian dreams. Visitors compare the raw, red earth to Oklahoma, Southern California, Africa and the moon.

Accommodations fit the rugged scenery. Guests don’t exactly camp out - but close enough - in comfort. Two campsites have been developed: the hilltop Paniolo Camp, and the lowland Kolo Camp. A third campsite, the beachfront Kaupoa Camp, is scheduled to open this year.

At the Paniolo Camp, accommodations are in “tentalows,” wood-frame, canvas-covered tents nestled among Cook pines. Though six miles away, the Pacific is a thundering presence, and spacious decks offer long views of craggy land and sunsets over the sea. Queen-size beds have flannel sheets and mosquito netting, and at night, sleep comes on a symphony of wind, the chuck-chuck of geckos, the distant roar of surf and the mournful lowing of cattle.

About five miles away, Kolo Camp is a rocky, rugged site laced with paths resembling lava flow. Here, guests stay in yurts, round structures fashioned after traditional Mongolian homes. The yurts are larger than the tentalows, but offer the same amenities. A trail from the Kolo campsite leads to a beach, where volleyball, archery and sea kayaking are available, and a dirt road leads to other beaches.

Tentalows and yurts have attached private bathrooms with composting toilets and showers open to the sky. Ceiling fans, water heaters and reading lights are solar-powered, and a cooler in each room is stocked with snacks and drinks. Buffet meals are served in open pavilions at each campsite; lunches are brown-bag. Both camps have large tanks that serve as chilly swimming pools, horseshoes, volleyball and - especially popular - hammocks and swings for lounging.

Guests may grab mountain bikes, kept at the campsites, to explore the ranch, home to more thorny kiawe (mesquite) trees than coconut palms. Lantana, a sturdy little flower I nurture in my garden back home in Texas, is an exquisite weed here. Gray francolins (quail-like birds) scuttle through the underbrush, North American and red-crested cardinals are colorful flashes in the trees, and pueos - a type of owl active during the day - glower from low branches.

Ancient Hawaiian archaeological sites are scattered throughout the property, and the staff is learning the significance of the calendar rocks, petroglyphs and ku and hina stones in order to give tours. The full meaning of some of the structures remains a mystery in this culture based on oral, rather than written, history.

You’ll also come across mock “petroglyphs,” made for fun and as signs and markers. In respect for Hawaiians’ reverence for rock, these pseudo-petroglyphs are on man-made stones.

In the cattle operation, which has been constant throughout the ranch’s history, guests see a tradition that has survived other economic whims. Cattle were introduced to the islands in the 1700s, and Mexican vaqueros taught Hawaiians the skills of cattle ranching. “Paniolo” derives from “Espanola.”

Hawaiian paniolo are no different from their counterparts in Texas, Colorado or Montana.

“We look up to the mainland cowboy. They set the direction for us,” says ranch manager Jimmy Duvauchelle, a fourth-generation paniolo on the ranch.

Visitors may sample paniolo activities. The Paniolo Round-Up, two hours of faux cowboying in the ranch’s rodeo arena, lets guests get in the saddle to compete in team cattle round-up and cutting races. I’d ridden horses before, but the closest I’d ever come to rounding up cattle was ordering a burger. After some coaching from Kala Pana Keliihoomalu and his wife Deanna, a fifth-generation member of her family to work on the ranch, I was racing across the arena with a half-dozen other dudes, whooping like a Gravy Train commercial, rounding-up the herd of half-grown cattle, and clutching the saddle horn only when absolutely necessary.

After the exhilaration of the arena, I was disappointed that an out-on-the-range cattle drive listed in the brochure was not available. Kinks in the business were still being worked out when I visited last September, seven months after the debut of the guest program. The delicate mix of ranching and vacationing is a work in progress.

“It’s a very big picture and you can’t force it,” says Jim Mozley, ranch president and CEO. “It will improve as we go.”

A cattle drive was tried, then withdrawn for rethinking. A nature trail was closed during my visit because cattle were mistakenly set out to pasture on it, trampling trail markers and leaving markers of their own.

A horseback ride along high green cliffs made a lovely brochure photograph, but the logistics of trailering horses and guests to the trailhead proved too difficult. The cattle operation is restructuring to free more land for the use of guests.

As the brochure cautions, “Activities are subject to change without notice” due to the logistical quirks, as well as the whims of weather and sea conditions.

But the program is taking shape. Guests may sign up for two activities each day that range from sea kayaking to guided, downhill mountain bike excursions. Also offered are nature walks; deep-sea or shore fishing; trips in outrigger canoes; whale watching in season; snorkel excursions and kids’ programs. More intensive mountain biking, hiking or kayaking can be arranged with advance notice.

Sea kayaking excursions, in lightweight kayaks, are leisurely two-hour paddles in sight of the lush green Kamakou Mountain and Preserve, between tangles of mangrove roots into a 13th-century stone fish pond, past palm groves and tiny beaches. Sea turtles swim by far faster and more gracefully than their clunky shapes suggest possible, and in season (December through May), kayakers also can spot whales.

During my stay, the beach at Kolo Camp suffered from what the staff calls “chocolate water.” Runoff of red dirt often stains the water there an uninviting (though harmless) brown. When Kaupoa Camp opens, guests will have easy access to a beach with clear water for swimming, snorkeling and boogie-boarding. Until then, guests are shuttled to a pretty beach off ranch property.

The Outfitter’s Center, about a mile from the Paniolo Camp (guests are driven there from the campsites) is the pulse-point of the guest operation. Activities start there, and Outfitter’s Center staff can help arrange rental cars and off-property tours, such as the popular mule ride 1,700 feet down Kalaupapa Trail to the leper colony. Off-ranch excursions are with outside tour operators and cost extra.

Surrounding the Outfitter’s Center is tiny Maunaloa, a village built on the ranch for workers during its years as a pineapple plantation, from the 1920s to the ‘70s. Brierley Investments is investing in its village as well as its ranch, by restoring homes and building new ones, opening a general store, restoring original plantation houses as the Maunaloa Museum and Cultural Park, building a movie theater and bringing community activities to the village square.

After full days, guests enjoy relaxing evenings listening to local kumus (teachers) teach Hawaiian traditions, or the strums and yodels of a three-piece band (guitar, bass and ukulele). Or, they just find a comfortable spot to lose themselves in the shimmering night sky, where it seems all the stars go when they flee the bright lights of the big cities.

Molokai is near Oahu and its glitzy hotels, fruity drinks and swinging night life. But just as the island’s red dirt stains your clothes and gets under your nails, the low-key experience of the ranch gets under your skin.

Airline pilot Chris Roberts and flight attendant Claudia Wait spent three days at the ranch. They mountain biked, rode horses, swam and sunned. Then they left for Kauai, where they had rented a condo for the remainder of their vacation.

But somehow, they couldn’t make the transition from ranch life to the glamorous life.

“We waited in line for airline tickets, we waited in line for the rental car, we were staying in a condo… .” Wait said.

“When we got there, I turned on the TV and I thought, ‘What am I doing?”’ Roberts said.

The next day, they were back on the ranch.

2 maps: Hawaiian Islands, island of Molokai

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: IF YOU GO Daily rates start at $185 per person, including meals and most activities. Horseback excursions are an additional $125 per person per day. A three-night package ($555 per person, double occupancy) includes one horseback excursion; a five-night package ($925 per person, double occupancy) includes two horseback excursions. Deep-sea fishing is an additional cost. For more information and reservations, call 800-254-8871 or visit the ranch’s Web site at www.molokai-ranch.com.