HIGHWAY TO HEAVEN : ROAD TO MAUI'S HANA LEADS TO 'MOST HAWAIIAN OF ALL PLACES'.

Byline: John Flinn San Francisco Examiner 

Evening falls gently on this most Hawaiian of places. The day trippers have departed to coax their rental cars back along the tortuous road to the other side of the island, and Hana slips easily into its own rhythms ancient and some quite modern.

Along the rocky shore of Hana Bay, men with sprawling tattoos on their backs wait with their nets for the signal from fish-spotters up on the hill that schools of akule have gathered. White-haired old men and women return from their taro paddies, their legs spackled with mud. And as the lights come on at the ballpark, the boys of Hana take infield practice, a few of them barefoot.

For the vast majority of visitors, Hana is the end of the road, the turnaround point in an exquisite, exhausting day trip over the 52-mile, 54-bridge, 617-curve ribbon of asphalt that even the Maui Visitors Bureau says is ``optimistically'' called ``The Hana Highway.''

After negotiating this writhing roadway, with the pounding blue Pacific on the left and Zen-like waterfalls on the right, most are content to let their nerves unjangle over an ice cream at Hasegawa's General Store before climbing back into their cars to try to reverse the route by nightfall.

We had other plans. Focused on the destination rather than the journey, we rose before dawn and drove as fast as we dared - we didn't want to take the road's nickname, ``The Highway to Heaven,'' literally - arriving in Hana before most of our road-competitors had finished their buffet breakfasts. The idea was to spend two full days exploring Hana itself - and the beguiling territory beyond.

Hana may seem like a distant outpost today, but it is a place of lasting importance to both Hawaiian folklore and history. Kauiki Hill, the cinder cone in Hana Bay, was said to be the demigod Maui's favorite place. Legend says he transformed his daughter's lover into the hill and her into the soft, sensuous rains that wash down on it to this day from the slopes of the volcano Haleakala. Other stories tell of the deity who once stood atop the hill and threw his spear through the sky.

The fortress-like mound was the scene of fierce battles between the chief of Maui and his rival on the Big Island. The latter's forces were able to establish strongholds elsewhere on Maui, but Kauiki Hill repeatedly held off all attackers, postponing the complete conquest of the island.

Because of Hana's isolation - it wasn't linked by road to the rest of Maui until 1926, and the road wasn't paved until 1964 - it has remained a stronghold of Hawaiian tradition. Almost half the town's 1,900 residents are native Hawaiians. There remains a strong sense of ohana, or extended family, and residents commonly engage in hanai, the practice of temporarily adopting one another's children. Nearly everyone in town still fishes, hunts and raises taro to supplement their incomes.

As we pulled into town, we were greeted by the white faces of wandering Hereford cattle, the descendants of the herd shipped to Hana by wealthy San Franciscan Paul Fagan in 1943.

Fagan turned to ranching when Hana's sugar industry lost its sparkle, and for a while his hired cowboys performed a cattle drive unique to Hawaii: They drove the herd into the surf, where it swam out to waiting barges.

Three years later, Fagan opened a six-room hotel for his well-to-do friends, the Kauiki Inn (now expanded and renamed the Hotel Hana-Maui.), the first Hawaiian resort built outside Oahu.

At the time, mainland tourists' familiarity with the islands was pretty much limited to Waikiki and Pearl Harbor, so Fagan needed to find a way to put his isolated hotel on the map. He soon came up with one: professional baseball. Among Fagan's many holdings was the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League. He constructed a gem of a little ballpark in the center of Hana, brought his team over for spring training, invited along a boatload of San Francisco sportswriters and sat back as they churned out feature after feature about ``heavenly Hana.''

The Seals are long gone, both from Hana and from baseball, but their short stay left a lasting impression here.

``Me and all the kids in town, we'd line the field to watch them hit the ball all the way out of the park into the cane fields,'' recalls Harry Hasegawa from behind the counter at his nearby general store. ``The athletes were so big. I'd never seen anything like them. I wondered if they had to bend over to get through the door.''

If there's any gossip worth repeating in Hana, you're likely to hear it at the Hasegawa General Store. Opened by Harry's grandparents in 1910, the ramshackle shop is the town's focal point and unofficial meeting hall. (The original Hasegawa General Store store burned to the ground in 1990, and the current shop is housed in the tin-roofed Old Hana Theater.)

The bulletin board outside carries everything from birth announcements to missing-pig notices. Inside, the store's bulging shelves stock a variety of goods that would put Wal-Mart to shame. From Fruit Loops to cane knives, rental videos to fan belts, computer disks to baby food, surfboard wax to paint brushes - if you can't find it, you're probably looking in the wrong aisle.

You can even buy cassettes and sheet music for Paul Weston's 1961 minor hit, ``The Hasegawa General Store,'' (`You'll find a baseball bat and a piano hat, sunburn creams and the latest magazines, muumuus and mangoes and ukuleles, too.'')

I wanted to have a look at Kauiki Hill, which has played such a big role in the island's history. Some historians believe Kamehameha, later to become king of all the Hawaiian Islands, boarded Capt. James Cook's ship after his lookouts sighted it from the top of the hill.

From the pier I followed a rough trail around the hill, jumping over washouts and grabbing branches for handholds, until I came to a plaque marking the shallow cave where Queen Kaahumanu, Kamehameha's favorite wife, was born. It was a humble beginning for one of the most powerful and important women in Hawaiian history. In her later years, she converted to Christianity and overthrew the ancient kapu, or taboo system of the islands, a move that ended the power of the high priests and brought Hawaii into the modern era.

The next morning we were on the road early again, heading beyond Hana to Oheo Gulch, which is more popularly - and incorrectly - known as the Seven Sacred Pools. Local rangers and other officials have been waging a long and largely ineffective campaign to banish the name from the tourist lexicon.

The problem is that there are not seven pools - depending on who's counting, there's anywhere from 20 to 24 - and there's no evidence Hawaiian priests or anyone else have ever considered them sacred.

Blame it on Josephine Roback Medeiros. According to Alberta de Jetley, editor of the Hana News, Medeiros was a part-Hawaiian social director and storyteller at what is now the Hotel Hana-Maui. In the late 1940s, she would greet newly arriving guests, stringing flower leis as she ``talked story.''

One of her favorites concerned the pools along the Oheo stream. According to Medeiros, seven of the pools represented the seven virtues in life: wisdom, fortitude, temperance, justice, faith, hope and love. If you started at the lowest pool, at the ocean's edge, and bathed in each one on the way upstream, you would be welcomed into heaven.

Great story, say the rangers at the Hana District of Haleakala National Park - except it's not true. The pools, though, are undeniably gorgeous, straight out of Fantasy Island.

We drove on. In a couple miles the road began to grow rough. Soon, we knew, the pavement would end altogether and travel beyond would void our rental car agreement. It's possible to continue around the flanks of Haleakala on the dirt road and eventually end up, after a tour of ``upcountry Maui,'' in Wailea. That's a drive, we decided, for another day - and another vehicle.

Instead, we turned down a muddy road to Palapala Hoomau Congregational Church, a beautiful 130-year-old wooden chapel on a blustery bluff overlooking the Pacific. Not far from the church is a rocky little cemetery, and in one corner of that, surrounded by a chain marked with U.S. flags, is the final resting place of aviator Charles Lindbergh.

The slopes of the volcano Haleakala receive 365 inches of rain a year, and a good number of them were spattering our windshield as we drove back to Hana. It was hardly beach weather, but we couldn't pass by without having a look at Hamoa Beach, declared the finest in the world by none other than James Michener.

It is, Michener once wrote, ``a beach so perfectly formed that I wonder at its comparative obscurity.''

I gazed out to the surf and listened to the rain, hearing a faint echo of how things once must have been in this most Hawaiian of places.

On Location

To get to Hana, you can drive the winding, 52-mile road from Paia, or you can splurge and fly. Aloha Island Air flies several times a day to Hana from Kahului, Honolulu and Molokai. Flights from Kahului, on Maui, are about $45 each way; Honolulu and Molokai cost more. Information: [phone].

CAPTION(S):

4 Photos, Box

Photo: (1--Color) A trek along the winding road to Hana leads to Hawaii's past.

(2--Color) The beauty of Hana's misnamed Seve Sacred Pools - there are far more than seven - captivates tourists.

Hawaii Vistors and Convention Bureau

(3) Hereford cattle, descendants of a herd shipped to Maui by a wealthy businessman in 1943, abound in Hana.

Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau

(4--Color) No caption (Hawaiian Islands)

Box: On Location (See text)