The above discussion is limited to what I became aware of in the course of researching and enjoying two weeks in Maui. The book singles out Molokini as "one of the best snorkel and scuba sites in the entire state," which seems accurate enough for scuba, but doesn't take into account that snorkelers aren't likely to dive fifty or eighty feet to see the shelves on the sides of the crater, which are the site's chief attraction. Doughty presents what he claims is complete list of thirty-plus boats and rafts that offer snorkel or whale-watching trips, but for unknown reasons leaves out Captain Steve's trips, which have long been among the more popular and highly recommended options in Maui. The problems with "Maui Revealed" are not limited to safety issues. The book goes on to belittle visitors Doughty met who told him the road Hana, "makes us nervous," Never mind the numerous hair-pin turns onto bridges that are one-lane wide for two-way traffic,
We spent parts of two days here, enjoying some of the heaviest surf we saw in Maui from the safety of the beach - while lounging in afternoon shade that the book says is non-existent here. A third of a page is devoted to Slaughterhouse Beach, for instance, and the book discusses in some detail the best places to snorkel here, but there is no mention that this beach, beautiful as it is, is rarely safe for swimming or snorkeling, at least not during winter months, or that some of the recommended snorkel spots characteristically in places where the shore breaks are often most extreme. These mention the best snorkel spots off of a number of the beaches, but the Doughty rarely if ever calls attention to specific areas that are more subject than others to dangerous shore-breaks or currents. The book includes a page on beach safety, widely separated from the the discussions of individual beaches that are scattered throughout different sections of the book. Doughty mentions that when his niece bicycled down the mountain she ended up in a hospital with a head injury that took her a year to recover from, but his final response to this is that the bicycle company in question never gave her a T-shirt that was supposed to be part of the package they purchased, apparently because she never got to.the finish line where these were distributed.Ī similar type of disregard informs the attempted joke, if that's what it is, that the fine for boats violating a whale's "personal space" is "obscene" - never mind the reasons for keeping boats from approaching within a hundred yards of whales, which he doesn't bother to say anything about.
Doughty writes admiringly about a sixty-foot jump into one of these pools, with a photo of someone in mid-jump to show just how much fun this can be.Īnother example is his discussion of the ban on commercial bicycle trips from the summit of Haleakala to sea level (never mind the numbers of cyclists killed or crippled in accidents involving cars on this steep winding mountain road, traveled mostly by drivers in rental cars seeing it for the first time). Examples include the ban on diving into Ohe'o Gulch and other fresh-water pools above and/or below waterfalls (never mind the numbers of broken necks, or the drownings caused by whirlpools created by the force of waterfalls, or the at-times heavy debris that waterfalls often dislodge and toss into these pools. The author, Andrew Doughty, tells us that "officials at the national park live to ban things," and proceeds to ignore or downplay any number of dangers, and to treat safety regulations and recommendations as bureaucratic encumbrances that savvy travelers can circumvent. Conversely, important information, often involving basic safety, is left out, minimized, or belittled, apparently in the author's attempt to sell the book by trying to sound hip.
But as I repeatedly found, if the information in question is not found elsewhere it's most often because it's false and misleading. A major selling point of this book is its claim that it includes information and suggestions not found elsewhere.