Maui

Top things to do in Maui

1. 01

   Haleakala summit - sunrise above the cloud layer

   scenic nature wildlife 👍 Popular

   The dormant volcano that makes up most of the island rises past ten thousand feet, and a paved road switchbacks the whole way to the rim in about two hours from the coast. The top is a cinder-cone desert in reds and ochres, usually looking down on an unbroken cloud floor with the Big Island's peaks pushing through it, in air close to freezing at dawn. Sunrise entry runs on a timed reservation released a short window ahead and goes almost instantly; sunset needs no booking and is far less contested.

2. 02

   The Road to Hana - the cliff road down the windward coast

   scenic nature wildlife 👍 Popular

   A couple of hours of tight curves, dozens of one-lane bridges and a rainforest that drips on you the whole way, running from the north shore around to the far eastern end of the island. Waterfalls, roadside banana bread stands and black sand coves are the excuses to stop, but the driving is the attraction and also the cost: it is slow, unkind to back-seat passengers, and best started early to stay ahead of the convoy.

3. 03

   Molokini Crater - snorkelling inside a sunken cinder cone

   diving nature wildlife 👍 Popular

   A thin crescent of volcanic rim standing out of the channel off the south coast, its drowned half sheltering water that is usually glassy and clear a long way down. Boats leave Maalaea and Kihei before dawn to get there first; the inside wall is the easy snorkel over reef fish, the outer wall a proper drop into blue with the odd shark on it. Afternoons blow out.

4. 04

   Pipiwai Trail and Waimoku Falls - banyan, bamboo and a headwall

   hiking nature wildlife ⭐ Highly recommended

   The best walk on the island, in the Kipahulu section of the national park beyond Hana. It climbs past a broad falls and a banyan the size of a house, then onto a boardwalk through a bamboo forest where the stems knock together overhead, and finishes under a thin waterfall dropping hundreds of feet off a mossy cliff. Muddy in the way that everything on this coast is, and worth it.

5. 05

   Hookipa Beach Park - the windsurfing reef and the turtle beach

   windsports surfing nature wildlife ⭐ Highly recommended

   The trades funnel onto this reef most afternoons and have done so long enough to make it the world's reference point for wave windsurfing, with a clifftop car park that works as a grandstand over the sailors and the surfers below. In the mornings, before the wind fills in, green turtles haul out on the sand at the eastern end in numbers that look staged.

6. 06

   Iao Valley State Monument - the green needle behind Wailuku

   nature wildlife history scenic

   A short drive inland from the county town into a rain-fed cleft in the West Maui mountains, where a basalt pinnacle clothed in growth rises straight out of the stream valley. The walk is ten minutes of paved path and a lot of steps. It is also the ground where Kamehameha's army broke Maui's independence in 1790, and the interpretation on site does not let that slide past as scenery.

7. 07

   Waianapanapa State Park - black sand and sea caves

   scenic nature wildlife

   Sand ground down from lava into black grit, a blowhole, freshwater caves behind the beach and a stretch of the old coastal King's Highway running along the cliff on lava blocks. It sits just short of Hana and takes booked entry slots for non-residents, which has thinned the crush at the car park considerably.

8. 08

   Makena Big Beach - the wide undeveloped strand

   nature wildlife scenic

   The broadest undeveloped beach on the island, a long arc of coarse gold sand under a cinder cone at the end of the south coast road, with almost no shade and a shorebreak that dumps hard straight onto the sand. Watch the flags and treat the waves seriously; over the rocky headland at the northern end is the small clothing-optional cove.

9. 09

   Kapalua Bay and Napili Bay - the sheltered snorkelling coves

   diving nature wildlife

   Two horseshoe coves at the top of the west coast, protected by rocky points at both ends, holding the calmest easy snorkelling on the island and sand you can walk straight in from. A coastal path links the headlands between the resorts above. Napili is the lower-key of the pair; Kapalua is the one with the manicured lawns behind it.

10. 10

    Honolua Bay - marine reserve reef and a winter point break

    surfing diving

    A protected bay at the island's northwest corner, reached down a muddy trail through jungle to a boulder shore. On a flat summer day the snorkelling over its reef is the best on Maui; in winter the same bay throws a long right-hand point break that is the most respected wave on the island and no place to be learning.

11. 11

    Humpback whales in the Auau Channel - the winter nursery

    nature wildlife

    Humpbacks run down from Alaska to calve in the shallow, sheltered water between Maui, Lanai, Molokai and Kahoolawe, and through the winter and early spring they are everywhere. You do not strictly need a boat - the coast road pull-outs and the resort beach paths deliver breaches all day - but a trip out of Maalaea puts you among them, and the naturalist boats drop a hydrophone so you hear the singing.

12. 12

    Kahakuloa and the northwest coast road - the one-lane cliff run

    scenic off beaten path

    Past Kapalua the highway narrows to a single lane of blind corners on an unguarded cliff and works its way around the top of the West Maui mountains, past a blowhole, an olivine-green tidal shelf and a tiny valley village under a green loaf of a headland. Some hire agreements grumble about the stretch. It is paved, it is genuinely narrow, and it is one of the great drives.

13. 13

    Makawao - the paniolo town upcountry

    culture arts history food

    A crossroads of wooden false-front buildings on the volcano's western flank, now galleries and a bakery famous for its cream puffs, but still the centre of a Hawaiian ranching culture that got going in the 1830s with vaqueros brought over from Mexico, well before the mainland cowboy myth existed. The rodeo here is a real one.

14. 14

    Kula and the upcountry farms - the cool middle band

    food scenic

    Between roughly two and four thousand feet the volcano turns into farmland: sweet onions, protea, coffee and eucalyptus, with a lavender farm terraced down a hillside above the whole isthmus and a goat dairy making cheese further along. Jumpers weather, ten degrees off the coast and a completely different island.

15. 15

    MauiWine at Ulupalakua - tasting on the old Rose Ranch

    food scenic

    The dry southern shoulder of the volcano, where a working cattle ranch keeps a small vineyard and pours in a stone cottage built for a visiting Hawaiian king in the 1870s. The pineapple wine is better than it sounds. The drive out along the upcountry highway, with the isthmus and both coasts laid out below, is half the reason to go.

16. 16

    Maui Ocean Center - the Hawaiian-species aquarium at Maalaea

    nature wildlife culture arts

    A mid-sized aquarium at the harbour built entirely around what lives in these waters, with a walk-through shark tunnel, a hall of living coral it grows itself and a humpback gallery. The best thing to do on the island in bad weather, and genuinely useful for learning reef fish before you get in the water rather than after.

17. 17

    Paia - the sugar town the windsurfers took over

    food culture arts

    A two-street grid of plantation-era timber buildings at the head of the Hana road, emptied when the mill wound down and refilled from the 1980s by surfers and sailors. Board shops, a fish shack with a permanent queue, health food and a general refusal to smarten up. It is where the north shore eats before and after the water.

18. 18

    La Perouse Bay - the youngest lava on the island

    off beaten path nature wildlife hiking

    The end of the south coast road, where the volcano's most recent flow runs black and jagged straight into the sea a few centuries after it cooled. There is a rough trail across the clinker on the old King's Highway alignment, spinner dolphins resting in the bay most mornings, and absolutely no shade, so it is a first-light or not-at-all walk.

19. 19

    Kanaha Beach Park - the kitesurfing flats behind the airport

    windsports

    Flat water inside the reef and a steady cross-shore trade wind make this the island's kite beach and its beginner windsurfing one, with a marked kite zone at the western end, rigging lawns under the ironwood trees and schools working the shallows all afternoon. Planes land over the top of it.

20. 20

    Sliding Sands Trail - walking down into the crater

    hiking nature wildlife

    The trail off the summit rim drops through red and black cinder onto the crater floor, past silversword, a spiky silver plant that grows nowhere else on earth and flowers once before dying. Going down is effortless and the climb back out at that altitude is not, so most people turn around at the first cone rather than commit to the full crossing to the far rim.

Getting to & around Maui

Know before you go