(content by A.M.)
I will be completely honest with you, I went to Maui expecting beautiful beaches and a nice tan. What I did not expect was to come home feeling like the island had quietly rearranged something in me. Maui does that. Hawaii’s second-largest island has this remarkable ability to look exactly like the postcards and still somehow exceed every expectation you arrived with. From the moment you descend through the clouds on approach and catch your first glimpse of the coastline below, green mountains dropping into turquoise bays, surf breaking along a jagged black shoreline, you know you are somewhere genuinely special. I have traveled a fair bit, and Maui still stopped me in my tracks.
What surprised me most about Maui was just how much variety the island packs into 727 square miles. I had pictured one long stretch of beach with a string of resorts along it. The reality is completely different. Within a few days of exploring, we had driven through bamboo forests so dense the light turned green, stood at the rim of a volcano crater at 10,000 feet above sea level, wandered through a funky little surf town full of art galleries and organic cafés, and eaten some of the best food of our trip at a farm sitting in the middle of a pasture with views stretching all the way to the ocean. Maui is not just a beach destination. It is a destination that happens to also have incredible beaches.
The ocean, though, that is where Maui truly floored us. And I cannot stress enough how much it matters who takes you out there. We booked a snorkeling tour with Pride of Maui, a family-owned and operated tour company that has been running trips on Hawaiian waters for over 40 years, and it turned out to be the single best decision we made on the entire trip. They run excursions to two extraordinary locations: Molokini Crater and Turtle Town. Molokini is a partially submerged volcanic caldera, one of only three in the entire world that are accessible to snorkelers, and the visibility when we dropped in was simply unreal. I am talking over 100 feet of clear water, with more than 250 species of tropical fish darting around below us in every direction. I kept surfacing to say “did you just see that?” to my travel companion, who was too mesmerized to respond. If you are planning a trip to Maui and only have time for one organized activity, make it this one.
After Molokini, the boat took us to Turtle Town along Maui’s southern coastline, and that is where things got really special. Hawaiian green sea turtles, known locally as honu, are a protected species and can grow to enormous sizes, and there they were, moving slowly through the water around us like they had absolutely nowhere to be and nothing to prove. One of them passed so close I could have reached out and touched it, though of course you are not supposed to. There is something deeply moving about an encounter like that, out in the open ocean with a creature that has been swimming these waters for decades. I am not sure I will ever forget it.
The Road to Hāna was next on our list, and I had been told to expect something extraordinary. I had also been told not to rush it, which turned out to be the most important advice anyone gave us. The 64-mile highway along Maui’s northeastern coast winds through jungle, past waterfalls, over one-lane bridges, and through little communities that feel like time has moved a bit more slowly there. We left at 6:30 in the morning to beat the traffic, stopped constantly, hiked down to a waterfall about halfway through, and ate banana bread from a roadside stand that people apparently drive the entire road just to visit. I completely understand why. By the time we reached Hāna town itself, we were a little sunburned, a little tired, and absolutely content. It’s one of those drives you talk about for years afterward.
We also made it up to Haleakalā, the dormant volcano that dominates the eastern part of the island, and I want to be upfront with you: the drive to the summit in the dark at 4:30 in the morning is genuinely challenging. But watching the sunrise from 10,023 feet above sea level, with the crater spreading out below you in shades of rust and grey and the clouds sitting far below your feet, is one of those experiences that makes everything else feel very small and very manageable. The landscape up there is unlike anything I have ever seen, NASA has apparently used it to simulate the surface of Mars, which I completely believe. On the way back down we stopped in the Upcountry region, a lovely elevated agricultural area full of farms, lavender fields, and a little cowboy town called Makawao that has the most charming mix of old ranch buildings and contemporary art galleries. We had lunch there and it was outstanding.
A few practical things if you are planning your own Maui trip: you will absolutely need a rental car, the island is too spread out to manage without one, and most of the best experiences require wheels. Book it well ahead of time, especially in summer and over the holidays, as they sell out. For Haleakalā sunrise, you need to reserve a spot through the National Park Service website; they limit the number of vehicles at the summit for sunrise and they fill up fast. For snorkeling tours out to Molokini and Turtle Town, check availability at prideofmaui.com and book as early as you can, morning departures tend to fill quickly. And if you are visiting between December and April, keep your eyes on the water at all times, because humpback whale season in Maui is something else entirely. Tens of thousands of North Pacific humpbacks migrate to the Maui Channel every year to breed and give birth, and sightings from shore and from boat are remarkably common.
Maui is one of those places I left already thinking about going back to, which is not something I say very often. It has a quality that is difficult to pin down, something in the combination of the landscape and the ocean and the culture and the pace of it all, that makes you feel genuinely glad to be alive and out in the world. If it has been on your list, stop waiting. It is every bit as good as you have heard, and then some.
