We love Molokai, and without a doubt, Aloha Ho'okipa is the most simpatico property we've stayed at. Is it deluxe? Well, it doesn't have marble countertops or a jetted tub, but if that's what you're after you may be looking at the wrong island entirely. It has machetes and maps, tide tables and well-thumbed cookbooks, and honesty and integrity in every board and beam. Aloha Ho'okipa is exactly the kind of comfortable and homey place that, in another, much more chilled-out life, you'd live yourself.

In the morning, you'll pad down to the beach with a mug of coffee to catch the sunrise and see what's washed ashore overnight. Watch the cats investigate the crab burrows and wonder who catches whom. After breakfast, put the kayak in and paddle out to the reef, or strap on masks and fins from the laundry room collection and snorkel about. Spend an idle afternoon on the covered lanai, some hapa haole music playing quietly in the background, looking out at Maui and watching for sea turtles to swim past. Maybe hack open a freshly-fallen coconut and drink the water straight from the shell (or over ice with a few fingers of dark rum and a dash or two of bitters, if that's your thing). And when night's fallen, the poke's all eaten and the dishes put away, crank open all the louvers in the Ocean bedroom, climb into that high, queen-sized captain's bed, and fall asleep to the sound of the crashing surf and the wind in the palm fronds.

"Slow Down, this is Molokai!"