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Travel: Upcountry and North Shore Maui

A variety of cultures, lifestyles and philosophies have come to rest at the base of the Haleakala volcano
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It was my second trip to Maui and I'd never done the Haleakala volcano. So given a clear morning - the 3,000-metre summit is usually encased in cloud - a friend and I drove the zigzag road up to a landscape that the U.S. National Parks website rightly describes as "deeply sculpted, richly colored - and intensely evocative."

From an outlook building - one of two at the summit - you peer into a vast depression filled with cylindrical cinder cones in shades of brown and grey. Carefully placed walking trails appear from a distance like meandering lines etched in charcoal.

Hikers can access the 10,000-hectare Haleakala wilderness area that includes this alpine desert, but also the volcano's lower slopes, described as "cloud-forests dripping with red and green native ferns." In fact, you can walk all the way down the volcano to the east coast of Maui. And if you overnight on the volcano, you can tent in a wilderness campground or sleep in a cabin (with permits, and for modest fees - www.nps.gov/hale ).

A Calgarian - we picked him up on our return from the summit - had camped for three nights in the crater. He'd seen few people and had had a great time. In other words, there's more to Maui than the (albeit wonderful) resorts and beaches of its West Coast.

We based ourselves at the Paia Inn in the town of the same name. Paia was founded in the late 1800s to house labourers who worked Maui's pineapple and sugar-cane fields. Abandoned after the Second World War, it was revived by hippies in the 1970s, and by wind-surfers in the '80s. Today Paia is a funky, free-spirited place.

The Paia Inn, a one-time rooming house, opened last year as a 12-room "beachfront boutique hotel." It includes elegantly minimalist suites and, across a leafy back lane, a cottage smack on Paia Bay Beach. We stayed in the latter, right on the water. But I caution that the surf on this north coast of Maui is powerful; an average swimmer, I didn't dare go into these thundering waves.

Continental breakfast in the inn's courtyard is fruit-and-nut-filled scones and coffee from nearby Anthony's Coffee House. Then exit through the inn's hand-carved doors and you're in hipster-ville. Its two intersecting streets (one traffic light) are lined with chic beachwear outlets and arts and crafts shops. At the town's Buddhist temple we ran into a gentle soul named "Po," who keeps the mechanism that runs the rotating stupa in good working order.

Another morning our breakfast at the Moana Café was coconut and macadamia-nut pancakes. The Flatbread Company is known for its Mopsy Kalua Pork flatbread. Said manager Jenna Haugaard: "It starts with our mango barbeque sauce. We add whole milk mozzarella, Surfing Goat chevre, organic red onions, local organic pineapple and our slow-roasted organic pulled pork." It's topped with Parmesan and organic herbs.

We drove east to Ho'okipa Beach, the main wind-surfing and boarding territory, then onto the narrow roads and single-lane bridges of rural Haiku. Here you'll spot the Hawaiian state flag flying upside down, a sign of opposition to the islands' absorption into the United States in 1959, and an indication you're in Upcountry.

The epicentre of this northern slope of the Haleakala is the town of Makawao, both a ranching hub and a few blocks of ultra-chic shops. Echoes of cowboys, called paniolo, who tied their horses to still-standing hitching posts, are found in businesses like Aloha Cowboy, where embroidered Brazilian jeans run to $300, and you can order a pair of Lucchese cowboy boots, handmade in Texas.

Interesting was the widespread presence around Makawao of wildly barking caged dogs used to hunt wild boar and deer on these wooded highlands.

From Makawao, the Haleakala Highway takes you to the crater, or south to the 150-year-old Ulupalakua ranch and Tedeschi winery (tasters welcome) at the island's extremity. Then just keep going, to the end of the highway and eastward around the coast. Here aged eucalyptus trees segue into lava-strewn terrain as the road twists and undulates through a black stone desert that continues on down into the ocean.

Back on Maui's north coast sits the town of Wailuku, beyond which rise the West Maui Mountains and Iao State Park. At the entrance to the park sprawls the Kepaniwai Park and Heritage Gardens, featuring replica houses and temples of Maui's principal ethnic groups. At the Hawaii Nature Center you can join a walk into the rainforest. And just up the road you find access into several miles of wilderness trails and streams, providing views of the 2,250-foot pinnacle known as the Iao Needle.

Still in Wailuku, Maui foodie Bonnie Friedman, host of Tour Da Food Maui, introduced me to "local" snacks and dishes consumed in Maui in copious quantities.

I started with Portuguese-inspired guava-cream donuts, then moved on to spam musabi - a slab of the tinned meat, still a Hawaiian favourite, grilled and stuck on a block of rice and wrapped in seaweed. "For a Hawaiian construction worker this is breakfast," she said as we continued our rounds of local markets.

What followed was a "mini-cone sushi" box that included Korean chicken and a "teriyaki hot dog." And while I spurned the Hawaiian "lunch plate" - an incredible heap of carbohydrates - I downed a huge cone of pineapple-flavoured "shave ice."

We took our Calgarian, fresh off Haleakala, to a Wailuku take-away called Ichiban Okazuya. Here my Japanese "bento box" - assembled before my eyes, and more than I could eat - set me back $7.50. Our hitch-hiker, presumably famished from eating out of a backpack for three or more days, polished off his $10 version.