The Pacific Issue

Maui is two mountains joined by a flat middle, which is why they call it the Valley Isle, and once you see that shape the whole trip arranges itself. The old, eroded West Maui Mountains rise to nearly 6,000 feet in the north-west; Haleakalā, the enormous shield volcano that makes up about three-quarters of the island, climbs to just over 10,000 feet in the east. The trade winds do the rest. The south and west coasts sit in the lee, dry and sunny and calm, with the warm swimmable water and almost every resort and rental condo on the island. The north and east face the weather: wetter, greener, bigger surf, and the rainforest the Road to Hāna runs through.

So the decision that shapes a Maui holiday is not the hotel but the coast. Kīhei is the everyday end of the sunny south, a strip of individually owned condos with public beach parks at the end of the street; Wailea, a few miles on, is the manicured resort end of the same weather. On the west side, Kāʻanapali is the classic resort beach with the snorkelling off Black Rock at its north end, and Kapalua, further up, is the quieter, greener version among bays and headlands. Any of the four makes an easy base with a car. Upcountry and Hāna are for the second visit.

August is not the cheapest month to do this. The summer school holidays fill the island from June through August, the way the winter holidays do from December to March, and the shoulder months of April and May, and September into early November, are when the water is warm, the crowds thinner and the rates lower. But the leeward beaches are swimmable in every month of the year, and the summer has its own case: long dry days on the sunny coasts, and the sights at the corners of the island reachable one at a time. The rule that saves the week is one big drive per day, never two.

Those two drives are the reason to leave the beach. The Haleakalā summit, near-freezing before dawn, needs a vehicle reservation through Recreation.gov for sunrise, released sixty days out and gone within minutes for the popular dates; after seven in the morning nobody asks for one. The Road to Hāna is about sixty-four miles of curves and one-lane bridges along the windward coast, and the drive, not the town at the end, is the point. West Maui deserves a word too. The 2023 wildfire destroyed most of Lahaina's old town and killed 102 people; the resort areas to its north did not burn, reopened that November and depend on visitors, while the town itself is still rebuilding behind fencing. Base in Kāʻanapali or Kapalua with a clear conscience, and treat the burn area with respect, not curiosity.

Vivienne Hartwell, Editor-in-Chief