Hawai’i, the Big Island, like all the other islands in the 50th State of the US, has been formed by volcanic activity and is the youngest of all the islands. It sits over a hot spot in the Earth’s crust, resulting in two of the world’s most active volcanoes, Mauna Loa and Kilauea. Visiting Volcanoes gives you the opportunity to get up and close to a volcano and learn more about the science of volcanology and its role in the creation of these islands.
USA: Hawai’i – Maui
🌺 Maui, Molten Volcanoes and a Very Important Stop at Costco
Maui is shaped, rather neatly, like a figure of eight — the kind of geographical tidiness that makes you suspect someone planned it. At one end sits Haleakalā, a dormant shield volcano of genuinely epic proportions. Its summit reaches nearly 10,000 feet above sea level, and on a clear day you can see what feels like most of the Pacific from the top. At the other end of the island are the West Maui Mountains — older, more eroded, and considerably less dramatic, though still perfectly pleasant. Connecting the two is a long, flat valley, lush and green, which for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was the beating heart of Hawaii’s sugar industry.
Sugar cane arrived in Hawaii long before the Americans did — Polynesian settlers brought it with them around 1,000 AD — but it was the large commercial plantations of the 1800s that really transformed the islands. By the mid-twentieth century, sugar was one of the most significant contributors to the Hawaiian economy, and the valley between Maui’s two volcanic ends was prime growing territory. The industry has largely gone now — the last sugar mill on Maui closed in 2016 — leaving behind a flat, fertile landscape that still feels faintly agricultural, even if nobody’s quite sure what to do with it next.
But enough about geography and economic history. We had shopping to attend to.
Shortly after landing and collecting the car, our first port of call was Costco. Yes, Costco. We are aware of how that sounds. Some people fly to Maui and head straight for the beach. We headed for a warehouse the size of an aircraft hangar to buy bulk quantities of things we almost certainly didn’t need. In our defence, Karen had nearly needed resuscitation after our first supermarket shop in Honolulu a few days earlier. Hawaiian grocery prices operate on a different moral plane to the rest of the world — the islands import a staggering proportion of their food, which means every trip to the till feels like a mild financial assault. Costco, with its relentless commitment to enormous quantities at slightly less ruinous prices, was therefore not sad. It was strategy.
Suitably stocked, we made our way to Lahaina — a town on the northwest coast of Maui with a history considerably more colourful than its current role as a pleasant tourist destination might suggest. Through much of the nineteenth century, Lahaina was one of the most important whaling ports in the entire Pacific. At its peak in the 1840s, hundreds of whaling ships would anchor in the harbour each year, their crews descending on the town with the predictable enthusiasm of sailors who’d been at sea for months. It was rowdy, it was prosperous, and it smelled terrible. These days it’s considerably tidier, though the old Banyan Tree in the centre of town — planted in 1873 and now spreading across nearly an acre — remains one of the more astonishing things you’ll encounter anywhere in Hawaii.
We were staying in Pu’amana, a gated residential community sitting right on the oceanfront just south of Lahaina town. Our accommodation was a simple two-bedroom house — perfectly functional, entirely unpretentious. And here’s the thing about context. Put this house in, say, a suburb of Wolverhampton, and estate agents would be reaching for careful language. Here, with the Pacific Ocean crashing onto a narrow sandy beach literally a few yards from the front door, it felt like the most desirable property on earth. Location, as they say, is everything.
Every evening without fail, we took up our positions on that beach with something cold in hand and watched the sun go down over the water. The sunsets in Maui are, frankly, unfair. The kind that make you feel slightly guilty for the people back home dealing with a Tuesday in November. The grown-up members of the Hoblet party found this a perfectly sufficient end to the day. The younger contingent, rather less interested in the meditative pleasures of a Pacific sunset, spent the same hours hurling themselves at the ocean on boogie boards, riding the impressive rollers that came crashing in from across the water.
It suited everyone. Which, on a family holiday, is about as good as it gets.
A perfect 4-day Maui itinerary
🌊 Day One — Whales, Clouds, and a Volcano That Nearly Finished Me Off
We started as we meant to go on — early, slightly bewildered, and already in need of a sit-down.
- Whale watching — Humpback whales in the Auau Channel, November to May, migrating 3,000 miles from Alaska. Some up to 50 feet and 40 tonnes. Made my drive to Tesco feel a bit feeble.
- Haleakalā summit — A dormant volcano at 10,023 feet. The name means “house of the sun.” The crater is 7 miles wide, 2 miles deep, and looks like somewhere NASA tests rovers. We stood at the top gasping — altitude, awe, probably both.
🌺 Day Two — Roast Pig, Clifftop Roads, and Sand Between the Toes
Day Two was considerably more relaxing, which after the volcano felt richly deserved.
- Traditional Luau — Slow-roasted kalua pork, hula dancing, centuries of Polynesian history told through movement. Also poi, which has the texture of sweet wallpaper paste. An acquired taste. I have not acquired it.
- North Coast road trip — Along the base of the West Maui Mountains, past the old sugar plantation town of Paia, with clifftop Pacific views and the sort of scenery that makes you think you’re in a screensaver.
- Beach — We did absolutely nothing of any cultural significance whatsoever. It was magnificent.
🐠 Day Three — Snorkelling, Craters, and Making Friends With a Very Large Turtle
Day Three was spent mostly underwater, which sounds alarming but was one of the finest things any of us have ever done.
- Molokini snorkel cruise — A partially submerged volcanic crater three miles offshore, with visibility up to 150 feet. Parrotfish, triggerfish, the odd reef shark. We paddled overhead like overexcited Brits on a package holiday, which is essentially what we were.
- Sea turtles — The Hawaiian green sea turtle, or honu, has existed for 40 million years and is entirely unbothered by snorkellers. They glide past at a pace suggesting they have all the time in the world. We just floated there, watching, feeling unexpectedly moved.
🏔️ Day Four — Mountain Pools, Sugar Barons, and a Surprisingly Interesting Museum
We wrapped up with a day that managed to combine the spiritual and the historical in a way that was entirely accidental.
- Iao Valley State Monument — Lush, damp, and dominated by the 1,200-foot Iao Needle. Site of a famously brutal battle in 1790 that helped Kamehameha I unify the Hawaiian Islands. Today it’s peaceful and lovely. We bathed in a mountain stream pool — like a Scottish loch, but with better weather.
- Alexander and Baldwin Sugar Museum — The story of how two missionary sons built a sugar empire in the 1870s, the engineering feat that irrigated the central plains, and the waves of immigrant workers whose descendants still shape Maui today. Complicated history, handled honestly. We came out better informed and, frankly, pleasantly surprised.
Day One
🐋 Go Whale Watching
We had an early start for this one. We’d booked ourselves onto a whale-watching boat trip that departed Lahaina harbour at 7:30 in the morning, with a check-in time of 7:00 am. Now, I’m not at my best before nine o’clock and a coffee, so this required a certain level of commitment. But it turned out to be absolutely worth the effort — and I say that as someone who once described getting up early as “voluntary suffering.”
The reason we were all dragging ourselves out of bed at dawn came down to one very good reason: the North Pacific Humpback Whale. These remarkable animals made the long journey down from the cooler waters of Alaska each year — a one-way trip of roughly 3,000 miles, which puts my commute in perspective — to spend the warmer months in the sheltered seas around Hawaii. They arrived from around October and stayed through to May, using the time to give birth and feed before heading back north. The peak months for spotting them were January through to March, which is precisely when we were there. We felt rather smug about that.
Lahaina harbour itself had a bit of history to it. In the early-to-mid nineteenth century, this was one of the busiest whaling ports in the entire Pacific. At its height, in the 1840s and 1850s, hundreds of American and European whaling vessels would anchor here, their crews hunting the very same creatures we were now paying good money to admire from a safe distance. Times change, thankfully — for the whales at least. These days the harbour is home to a cheerful flotilla of tour boats, fishing charter vessels, and general tourist excursions. The whaling ships are gone, replaced by rather more benign activities.
Before we boarded, we had a few minutes to spare, which gave us the chance to take a proper look at something just beside the harbour that was, frankly, astonishing. Lahaina is home to what is arguably the most extraordinary Banyan Tree in the United States, and it sits in a small park right next to the waterfront. It was first planted in April 1873 — put in the ground to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Christian missionary activity in Lahaina, which began in earnest in 1823 when the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions sent its first representatives to Maui. The tree itself was imported from India and, at the time of planting, stood a modest eight feet tall. You’d have walked past it without a second glance.
Fast-forward to today, and the thing has gone completely mad. It now stands over sixty feet high, has twelve major trunks in addition to its enormous central core — because Banyan trees send down aerial roots that, over time, become new trunks, giving the whole thing an almost architectural quality — and it stretches across a two-hundred-foot area, shading roughly two-thirds of an acre of ground. Standing underneath it was a peculiar experience, like being inside a building that had been designed by someone with no interest in straight lines. In the heat of the Maui climate, that shade was genuinely welcome. We appreciated every square foot of it.
Then it was time to get on the boat.
🐋 Whale Watching off the Coast of Maui
After a bit of digging around online — which, let me tell you, is a rabbit hole and a half when you’re trying to sort out what’s worth doing and what’s just a tourist trap — we settled on booking our whale watching tour with the Pacific Whale Foundation. Founded back in 1980, the PWF is a proper non-profit marine conservation outfit based in Māʻalaea Harbour on Maui’s south coast, and they’ve been running these tours for decades. So at least if we were going to stand on a rocking boat squinting at the horizon, we’d be doing it for science.
One thing worth flagging if you’re planning ahead: book early. We’re talking well in advance, especially if you’re visiting during the peak season. Humpback whales make their annual migration from the cold feeding waters of Alaska down to the warm, sheltered channels around the Hawaiian Islands — particularly the Maui Nui basin between Maui, Lānaʻi, Molokaʻi and Kahoʻolawe — roughly from November through to May, with the peak of activity usually falling in January and February. That window lines up almost perfectly with the Christmas holidays, New Year, and the American school spring breaks, which tend to cluster in March. The boats fill up fast. We didn’t leave it too late, fortunately, though it was a closer-run thing than I’d like to admit.
Our captain for the day was Christine, who turned out to be exactly the sort of calm, knowledgeable person you want in charge when you’re standing on the prow of a boat trying not to look like you’ve never been on water before. She reassured us early on that there were plenty of whales about — at peak season, somewhere between 10,000 and 12,000 humpbacks make this stretch of the Pacific their winter home — so we sat back, loosened our grip on the railing, and settled in for what was billed as a two-hour tour of the waters around Maui.
It didn’t take long. Within what felt like minutes, the first spout appeared — that distinctive tall, bushy column of mist that a humpback exhales when it surfaces, rising several metres into the air before drifting off in the breeze. Christine steered us towards it with the sort of quiet efficiency that suggested she’d done this once or twice before, and suddenly there we were, bobbing about in the Pacific, watching an animal the size of a bus go about its day entirely unbothered by our presence. Honestly, after all the faff of getting there, it was rather wonderful.
For the next hour or so, we were treated to one of those genuinely jaw-dropping experiences that you suspect you’ll still be talking about when you’re boring your grandchildren rigid at Christmas.
Humpback whales — Megaptera novaeangliae, if you want to be tedious about it — are extraordinary animals. They’ve been cruising the world’s oceans for millions of years, and have been a protected species since the International Whaling Commission finally came to its senses and banned commercial hunting of them in 1966. Before that, they’d been hunted so relentlessly since the 18th century that their global population had collapsed from an estimated 125,000 down to around 5,000 by the mid-20th century. Happily, numbers have recovered considerably since the ban, and watching them that afternoon, it was difficult to imagine anyone ever thinking it was a good idea to go after one in a rowing boat with a pointy stick.
Whale after whale passed within 100 feet of us — sometimes closer. First you’d spot the dorsal fin breaking the surface, which is shorter and stubbier than you might expect, nothing like the dramatic sail of an orca. Then, as they drew nearer, the sheer scale of the things hit you. The females, which are — somewhat unusually for mammals — larger than the males, run to around 45 feet in length and tip the scales at somewhere between 40 and 45 tons. That’s roughly the weight of eight adult African elephants, which is a comparison that makes absolutely no practical difference whatsoever but is nonetheless rather satisfying to know.
We also caught sight of several calves, which, in the way that baby animals of all species manage, were simultaneously adorable and ridiculous. A newborn humpback comes into the world at around 14 feet long and weighing up to 2 tons — so not exactly a creature you’d be putting in a Moses basket. They’re born after an 11-month gestation and drink around 100 gallons of their mother’s milk every single day. Nature, as always, is completely over the top.
On several occasions, the whales paid us absolutely no attention whatsoever — which, frankly, seemed about right given the size differential — and cruised past doing what can only be described as a leisurely backstroke, their enormous 15-foot pectoral fins slapping the surface with cheerful, rhythmic splashes as they trundled along at around 5 mph. It was like watching a very large, very relaxed person doing lengths at the local baths, except considerably more magnificent and rather less likely to give you a verruca.
Every so often, one of them would make a decision and dive, and we’d get the proper money shot: the tail — the fluke, to use the correct term, which derives from the Old English word for the flatfish its shape resembles — rising clear of the water before sliding silently beneath the surface. It’s one of those images that photographs badly and looks extraordinary in person.
By rough count, we reckoned we saw somewhere in the region of 20 individual whales during that hour, which by any measure is a pretty decent afternoon out.
Inevitably, it came to an end far too quickly — these things always do when they’re actually good — and we turned back. But then, on the return leg, I was rewarded with something I hadn’t expected: a full breach. This is when a humpback — an animal weighing tens of tons — launches its entire body clean out of the water and crashes back down in an absolutely thunderous explosion of white water. Nobody is entirely certain why they do it. Communication, parasite removal, play, or possibly just because they can — nobody really knows, which I find rather wonderful. It was, without question, one of the most astonishing things I’ve ever witnessed.
Naturally, almost nobody else on the boat saw it. They’d collectively hit some sort of wildlife-experience saturation point and retreated below deck or were staring at their phones. Their loss, entirely. I, however, stood there grinning like a complete idiot, which I feel was the only appropriate response.
🌋 Drive to the Summit of Haleakalā
We got back to dry land at around half nine in the morning, which meant the whole day was still ahead of us — not something you can always say after a snorkelling trip. Rather than waste the opportunity, we rushed back to our holiday home, knocked together some packed lunches, piled into the car and headed off towards Haleakalā, the great volcano that dominates the island of Maui.
The name Haleakalā is Hawaiian for “House of the Sun,” which is rather poetic and considerably more imaginative than anything we’d come up with. The volcano is considered dormant rather than extinct — an important distinction, apparently — and its last eruption was somewhere around 1790. That’s a shade over 230 years ago, which sounds like a long time to most of us, but in geological terms is roughly the equivalent of ten minutes before lunch. Volcanologists, a presumably nervous profession at the best of times, are keeping a close eye on it.
In Hawaiian mythology, the great depression at the summit of Haleakalā was the home of the grandmother of the demigod Māui — not the island, but the actual demigod the island was named after. According to the legend, Māui’s grandmother helped him lasso the sun itself as it crossed the sky above the summit, forcing it to slow down and lengthen the hours of daylight. It’s a rather wonderful story, and considerably more entertaining than how the Saxons named most places in England. The depression itself — a massive, bowl-like feature at the top — is roughly 7 miles across, 2 miles wide, and nearly 2,600 feet deep. The surrounding walls are steep and dramatic, and the interior is largely barren and otherworldly, dotted with scattered volcanic cones rising from the floor like enormous red and rust-coloured ant hills. It is, by all accounts, one of the most remarkable natural sights in the Pacific. We wouldn’t know, because on the day we visited, the cloud cover was so thick we couldn’t see a blessed thing.
The road up to the summit runs for about 38 miles from the valley floor, climbing all the way to 10,023 feet above sea level. As we set off, the surroundings were lush and tropical — fields of sugar cane stretching away on either side, exotic plants everywhere, the sun blazing down and the temperature sitting at a very agreeable 83°F. It felt like a pleasant Sunday drive. By the time we reached the top, the landscape had transformed completely into something barren and almost lunar in appearance. It was raining, misty, and the temperature had dropped to 43°F. We’d left the tropics and arrived somewhere considerably less welcoming in the space of a single car journey. Marvellous.
On the way up we passed a steady stream of cyclists freewheeling their way down in the opposite direction. There are commercial cycling tours that take groups up to around 6,500 feet by van — which is the sensible part — and then send them down on bikes, which is the exciting part. On this particular morning, with the weather doing its worst for the first 3,000 feet of descent, the cyclists had a somewhat damp and chilly experience. We felt vaguely sorry for them from the warmth of the car, in the way you feel sorry for people on the wrong end of a weather forecast while you sit indoors. The road itself was long and winding, with switchback after switchback as it climbed through the clouds, and with visibility reduced to not very much at all, there wasn’t a great deal to look at out of the windows.
When we eventually reached the summit we did what any sensible person would do in those conditions — we made a dash for the visitors’ centre. It turned out to be a very good decision, because by extraordinary good luck a professor from the University of Hawaii happened to be there that day, and he gave us a genuinely fascinating impromptu talk on the geology of Maui and the Hawaiian island chain. The Hawaiian Islands were formed by what geologists call a “hotspot” — a fixed plume of magma rising from deep within the Earth’s mantle, over which the Pacific Plate has been slowly drifting north-westward for tens of millions of years. Each island in the chain represents a former hotspot eruption, with the Big Island of Hawaii sitting over the hotspot today and Maui being, geologically speaking, its slightly older sibling. It was the sort of explanation that made you feel briefly clever by association, which is the best you can hope for on a cold and rainy mountaintop.
Happily, the weather did clear briefly while we were there, and we seized on this like the British tourists we are — cameras out, hats flapping in the wind, trying to look as though we weren’t freezing. We got a few decent photographs before the clouds closed in again. It was far too cold to linger, so we got back in the car, navigated our way back down the long winding road, and descended gradually from the misty, rain-soaked summit back towards the warm and balmy air at sea level. The kind of day, really, that could only happen on a volcanic island in the middle of the Pacific — and not entirely unlike a bank holiday weekend in the Lake District.
Day Two
🌺 Breakfast at the Luau — Old Lahaina, Maui
We were up with the larks again, which at our age is either admirable or a sign that something has gone wrong. We had booked ourselves in for the breakfast luau at the Old Lahaina Luau — widely regarded as the finest and most traditionally authentic luau on the Hawaiian Islands, which naturally meant we were all rather excited, even if “excited” in my case largely involved wondering whether there’d be coffee.
For those who don’t know — and I certainly didn’t before we arrived — a luau is essentially a Hawaiian feast, with roots going back centuries in Polynesian culture. The word itself originally referred to the taro leaf, a staple of the traditional Hawaiian diet, though over time it came to describe the whole celebration. These gatherings have been a cornerstone of Hawaiian social and cultural life since long before Western contact in the late 18th century, when Captain James Cook sailed into Hawaiian waters in 1778 and, frankly, made things a lot more complicated for everyone. By the 19th century, after years of Western influence had pushed traditional practices underground, King Kamehameha II lifted a long-standing set of religious restrictions in 1819, and the luau as a social feast gradually became more open and widespread. Today it’s both a living cultural tradition and, admittedly, a major tourism event — though the Old Lahaina Luau, which has been operating on the waterfront of Lahaina town since 1986, has a genuine reputation for doing it properly.
Now, the food. We had been quietly bracing ourselves. Traditional luau fare typically includes things like kalua pig — slow-cooked in an underground oven called an imu, which takes the better part of a day — along with poi, a thick, gluey paste made from pounded taro root that has been a Hawaiian staple for over a thousand years, and poke, which is raw tuna dressed with soy, sesame and seaweed. All of it perfectly authentic. None of it, if we’re honest, an easy sell to our children at half past eight in the morning. Or, to be entirely truthful, to me.
As it turned out, the breakfast spread was rather more familiar territory — scrambled eggs, bacon, pastries, tropical fruit, that sort of thing. Whether this constitutes authentic Hawaiian cuisine is, shall we say, debatable. We’re fairly confident that the ancient Polynesians weren’t knocking out eggs Benedict. But it was delicious, it was abundant, and it was a buffet — which, as any British family on holiday knows, is essentially a legal obligation to pile your plate higher than is strictly sensible. We duly obliged. Several times.
Towards the end of the meal, while we were still recovering from our own poor decisions at the buffet table, the entertainment began. A small group of performers took to the stage and treated us to traditional Hawaiian music and hula dancing. The hula, for context, is far more than just a dance — it’s a form of storytelling that dates back to ancient Hawaii, used to pass down oral history, legends, and cultural knowledge through generations. Different styles exist: the older, more sacred kahiko style, performed to chanting and percussion, and the more graceful auana style that emerged after Western contact. What we saw drew from both traditions.
We were given a brief explanation of the stories behind each piece before the dancing began, which was enormously helpful. Without it, I’d have been watching with the polite, baffled expression of someone trying to follow a foreign film without subtitles. As it was, we understood something of what we were seeing — which made it, genuinely, rather moving.
Lahaina itself added a certain weight to the occasion. This small town on Maui’s western coast was once the capital of the Kingdom of Hawaii and a major hub of the Pacific whaling trade in the 1800s. It has a rich, sometimes turbulent history. Sitting there in the warm morning air, watching these dancers carry their ancestors’ stories forward, it felt like more than just a tourist attraction. It was, in its quiet way, something worth getting out of bed for.
We had done our research on Maui’s luau scene, and let me tell you, there was no shortage of options — all promising “authentic Hawaiian culture” while quietly seating 250 strangers elbow-to-elbow at long trestle tables. The Old Lahaina Luau, which had been running in one form or another since 1986 on the historic waterfront of Lahaina — a town that served as the capital of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi from 1820 to 1845 — was widely regarded as the best of the big evening shows. But the evening format was essentially a dinner cabaret, and the idea of sharing our cultural awakening with nearly 250 other tourists while clutching a mai tai didn’t exactly scream “intimate experience.”
So we opted instead for the breakfast luau — a rather more civilised affair with only around 80 guests, far more interactive, and crucially, one where you might actually remember what you’d learned. After breakfast was cleared away, we were divided into three groups and rotated through a series of “stations,” each dedicated to a different aspect of traditional Hawaiian island culture. Educational tourism. Very grown-up. We were absolutely going to take this seriously.
The first station focused on traditional music and hula dancing, which is where things got interesting rather quickly.
We were introduced to the fundamentals of hula — arguably the most recognisable art form in all of Polynesia and one with roots stretching back centuries before European contact. Hula is not, as many assume, simply a pleasant bit of swaying to ukulele music. It is a sophisticated narrative tradition, a form of oral history passed down through generations in a culture that had no written language until the early 19th century. Every movement — hands, feet, hips, body — tells a specific part of a story. The swaying of hands like ocean waves, the stamping of feet on earth, the tilt of the head — all of it carries meaning. It is, in effect, a living library.
The dancers themselves, however, looked absolutely miserable. We exchanged glances. Were they bored? Had they drawn the short straw that morning? We felt a bit sorry for them, honestly — imagine having to do this three times a day for a roomful of tourists eating scrambled eggs. It was only later that we learned — somewhat embarrassingly — that a serious, composed expression is entirely traditional and expected during formal hula performance. The dancers weren’t bored at all. They were doing it correctly. We, meanwhile, had been silently pitying highly skilled artists for doing their jobs properly. Typical.
What made it genuinely moving was when the contemporary hula came out later. The shift was immediate — faces lit up, the energy changed, and you could see the joy in it. Modern hula, which developed particularly through the Hawaiian cultural renaissance of the 1970s, allows for more expressive performance styles. The contrast told you everything about the discipline behind the traditional form.
After the dancing demonstration, we were shown the instruments. Hawaiian percussion has an elegance born of necessity — early Hawaiians used what the islands provided. There were pahu, the large sharkskin-headed drums that arrived with Polynesian voyagers over a thousand years ago, used in the most sacred ceremonies. There were the smaller hand drums, ipu (hollow gourds), and perhaps most charmingly, ordinary smooth stones called ʻiliʻili, held between the fingers and clicked together in a manner not entirely unlike Spanish castanets. Simple, effective, and rather satisfying to look at — though we weren’t asked to have a go with those, which was probably wise.
Now fully equipped with all the knowledge required to perform hula at a professional level — or so we told ourselves — it was our turn.
We were split into three smaller groups and taught a short sequence of moves. And here is where I must be completely honest with you: it was surprisingly, humblingly difficult. Hula requires you to coordinate your hands, your feet, your hips, and your facial expression simultaneously while remembering what the movement is supposed to mean. This is, it turns out, not a natural skill for a group of largely middle-aged visitors from various parts of the English-speaking world. After about five minutes of instruction — during which the teachers were admirably patient and entirely straight-faced — we were brought back together for a grand unified performance.
Never, in all my years, have I witnessed 25 more magnificently uncoordinated people attempt to embarrass themselves simultaneously in a public place. Arms going the wrong direction. Feet doing something entirely unrelated to what had been requested. Hips operating on an independent schedule. The ancient art of hula, developed and refined over more than a thousand years of Pacific culture, reduced in approximately seven minutes to something resembling a slow-motion queue for a bus.
Fortunately, nobody else was watching. The other groups were off embarrassing themselves at their own stations. Small mercies.
Our next stop took us back in time — quite a long way back, as it happens. We were about to get a proper introduction to the history and culture of the people of Hawaii, and very enlightening it turned out to be.
The story of Hawaii really begins not with Americans or missionaries or ukuleles, but with the extraordinary Polynesian navigators who first made their way here from islands scattered across the vast Pacific. The best current thinking places the first settlers arriving sometime between A.D. 300 and 600, having crossed thousands of miles of open ocean in double-hulled canoes with nothing more than the stars, ocean currents and wind patterns to guide them. Quite remarkable when you consider that most of us struggle to park a car.
These early settlers came primarily from the Marquesas Islands, a remote archipelago about 2,400 miles to the southeast of Hawaii, with a later wave of migration from Tahiti arriving around A.D. 1000–1300. They didn’t just turn up empty-handed either — they brought with them an entire way of life, carefully packing plants, animals and a sophisticated social structure for the journey.
We were shown a detailed schematic of how a traditional Hawaiian settlement was laid out, and it was rather cleverly done. Villages were built around the streams and rivers that tumbled down from the volcanic mountains to the sea — the Ko’olau and Wai’anae ranges on Oahu, for example, create exactly the sort of fertile valleys these communities needed. The fresh water was everything. Around these waterways, the Hawaiians cultivated their crops in a system of terraced fields called lo’i, growing taro (kalo in Hawaiian), sweet potato (‘uala) and other plants they had brought with them from across the Pacific.
For the men, agriculture was apparently a major occupation, and it must have been jolly hard work given the tools available. We had a chance to actually handle some of these implements, as they had examples to pass around — stone adzes, wooden digging sticks and basalt pounders, all of which looked thoroughly exhausting to use. The Hawaiians had no metal whatsoever until Westerners arrived in 1778, so everything was fashioned from volcanic stone, bone, shell or wood. You do rather get a new appreciation for a modern garden fork after holding one of these.
The women’s work was no less demanding. They were responsible for preparing food and for producing kapa cloth — a remarkably sophisticated material made by harvesting the inner bark of the wauke plant (paper mulberry), soaking it and then repeatedly bashing it flat with a grooved wooden beater called an i’e kuku. This process, which apparently involved a great deal of rhythmic thumping, eventually produced sheets of cloth that could be decorated with natural dyes. Labour-intensive doesn’t quite cover it.
On the livestock front, the Polynesians had introduced pigs (pua’a) to the islands, and these became absolutely central to Hawaiian life — not just as food, but in religious ceremony and as a marker of social status. Chiefs were often measured by the size of their pig herds, which is not a sentence you hear very often these days. Chickens and dogs also made the crossing, though the dogs were, perhaps uncomfortably, also eaten on occasion.
The other major source of protein was fish, and the Hawaiians were spectacularly good at catching it. We got a live demonstration of the traditional weighted cast net — a circular net thrown with considerable skill that spreads open in the air before sinking around a school of fish. The demonstrator made it look effortless, which it very clearly isn’t. Hawaiians also used spears, hooks made from bone and shell, and built elaborate stone fish ponds (loko i’a) along the coastline — some of the most sophisticated aquaculture systems in the ancient world.
The finale was, of course, the tasting session. We were offered poi — a thick, purplish paste made from cooked and pounded taro root — and some beautifully fresh raw yellowfin tuna (ahi). Poi has a flavour somewhere between plain yoghurt and wallpaper paste, though I mean that rather more kindly than it sounds. It was actually very good, with a slightly sour, earthy quality that grew on you. The tuna was excellent by any measure — silky, clean and sweet.
The children, predictably, wanted none of it.
The final station of the evening introduced us to the art of Hawaiian warfare, and if Jack’s reaction was anything to go by, they’d saved the best for last. This was the weapons section, and he was practically levitating with excitement before we’d even got close.
Laid out before us was an impressive collection of spears, clubs, and edged weapons of all shapes and sizes. Some were straightforward wooden affairs — functional, no-nonsense tools designed with one purpose in mind. Others were rather more elaborate, with stones and shark’s teeth lashed into them to do considerably more damage, and some were decorated with feathers, because apparently even ancient Hawaiian warriors appreciated a bit of presentation. The combination of deadly intent and aesthetic flair felt very Hawaiian, it has to be said.
The weapons on display reflected the sophistication of ancient Hawaiian martial culture, which was no small thing. Hawaiian warriors, known as koa, occupied one of the highest ranks in the old kapu system — the rigid set of sacred laws that governed every aspect of life in the islands before King Kamehameha the Great unified the archipelago under a single rule in 1810. Before that unification, the Hawaiian islands had spent centuries in a state of near-constant inter-island and inter-chiefdom warfare, which goes some way to explaining why they got rather good at it. The pahoa (dagger), ihe (short spear), and pololu (long spear) were all standard kit for a serious warrior, and several of these were demonstrated for us by members of the Old Lahaina Luau cast — a group of performers who clearly knew their stuff and weren’t just making it up as they went along, unlike some of us who would come later.
Jack, to his enormous delight, was actually allowed to handle some of the weapons himself. The look on his face was something between Christmas morning and winning the lottery. The rest of us stood back and let him get on with it, partly out of generosity and partly out of basic self-preservation.
The demonstrations were accompanied by a proper talk on the life of the Hawaiian warrior — their training from childhood, their role in society, the great chiefs they served, and some of the legendary battles that shaped the islands’ history. Kamehameha himself, who went on to become Hawaiʻi’s first king, was said to be a formidable warrior of extraordinary physical strength. One famous story has him lifting the Naha Stone, a great basalt slab estimated to weigh somewhere around 2.5 tonnes, as a young man — which either confirms his legendary status or suggests the stone was somewhat smaller than advertised. Either way, nobody was rushing to argue with him.
Then came the moment we’d all been quietly both anticipating and dreading in equal measure: spear throwing. At a tree target. A perfectly stationary tree target that wasn’t moving, wasn’t fighting back, and frankly deserved whatever was coming to it.
The children, naturally, were up there before the invitation had even finished leaving the instructor’s mouth. There is something deeply humbling about watching a nine-year-old hurl a spear with considerably more conviction than you’re likely to manage. The adults, displaying the sort of caution that comes with age and the awareness that we’d look ridiculous, had to be gently coaxed into having a go. We duly obliged, and the results were, shall we say, not encouraging.
Had our survival genuinely depended on hunting down breakfast by these traditional methods, we would have returned to camp empty-handed, very hungry, and in a thoroughly terrible mood. Ancient Hawaiian warriors, I suspect, would have been quite appalled. On the other hand, they’d never had to deal with jet lag, so I think we deserved a little credit just for showing up.
Three hours, it turned out, goes remarkably quickly when you’re being fed, entertained, and educated about one of the most fascinating cultures the Pacific has ever produced. Before we knew it, the evening was winding down, and we were saying our goodbyes to the wonderfully warm staff and to the people we’d spent the evening with — strangers at the start, friends by the end.
We sat, we ate, we laughed, and we left feeling that we’d actually touched something real — which, at our age and with our level of natural cynicism, is saying quite a lot.
For anyone visiting Maui and wanting a proper glimpse into the world of the original inhabitants of these islands, we couldn’t recommend the Old Lahaina Lū’au more highly. Do go, if you get the chance. You won’t regret it.
🚗 A Road Trip Along Maui’s North Coast
The tummies were full, we were freshly invigorated by our brush with Hawaiian culture, and the sky had gone a reassuring shade of grey. Perfect driving weather, frankly. None of that squinting-into-the-sun nonsense.
Most visitors to Maui make the pilgrimage along the south coast — the famous Hana Highway, a 64-mile stretch of road that has been winding its way around the eastern and southern flanks of the island since it was properly surfaced in the 1920s. Roughly 1,500 switchbacks, 54 one-lane bridges, and roughly a thousand tour coaches. We decided, with the casual confidence of people who hadn’t fully thought it through, to go the other way.
The road north out of Lahaina — a former whaling port and the old capital of the Kingdom of Hawaii until 1845 — initially felt rather pleasant. The area immediately north of the town sits in the rain shadow of the West Maui Mountains, a volcanic range that tops out at nearly 5,800 feet, and the result is a string of sheltered, sun-kissed beaches lined with resort complexes of the sort that make you briefly wonder whether you’re still in Hawaii or have somehow ended up in Florida. We drove past the Kaanapali resort area, developed in the early 1960s as one of America’s first planned resort destinations, and continued north along the Honoapiilani Highway.
The further we pushed on, the more the scenery changed its tune. The beach hotels dropped away and the coastline became something else entirely — raw, dramatic, cliff-lined, and clearly not particularly bothered about impressing tourists. The trade winds, which blow in reliably from the northeast for most of the year, were hurling themselves at the shoreline with considerable enthusiasm, and the rain — warm, persistent, and soaking — was doing its tropical best to green up every available surface. The vegetation responded accordingly: dense, lush, the sort of undergrowth that looks like it could swallow a medium-sized car without much trouble. Offshore to the northwest, the island of Molokai sat on the horizon, brooding and largely inaccessible — which, given the road we were currently on, felt somehow appropriate.
We pulled over briefly at Nakalele Point, home to a blowhole that can shoot seawater 100 feet into the air when conditions are right (they weren’t, particularly) and a collection of small stone cairns stacked up by passing visitors. These little towers of balanced rock are, as far as anyone can tell, a thoroughly modern tradition — a sort of instagrammable tribute to the fact that humans cannot pass a pile of stones without interfering with it. There’s no real ancient Hawaiian significance here, whatever the internet might suggest. The lighthouse nearby, though, is the real deal — a proper navigational aid warning mariners off one of the most unforgiving stretches of coastline on the island. Standing on that exposed headland, getting properly hammered by the Trade Winds, we were definitely getting our cobwebs blown out. All of them. Possibly some memories too.
And then the road narrowed.
I mean it really narrowed. What had been a perfectly respectable paved highway quietly contracted to the width of approximately one and a half cars, with no central markings, no roadside barriers, and drops of several hundred feet on one side. Karen, who has always maintained a healthy scepticism about roads that appear to be daring you to use them, went noticeably quiet. Helpfully, there were regular signs reading “narrow roadway” — just in case the absence of tarmac on either side hadn’t conveyed the message.
This section of the north coast road — locally sometimes called the “back road to Hana” — is technically open to the public but rental car companies have been known to void insurance policies for using it, which tells you something. It is steep, hairpin-heavy, and spectacular in the way that things are spectacular when they are also mildly terrifying. What made it more surreal was the cyclists. Actual cyclists, on road bikes, powering up and around these switchbacks as though this were a perfectly normal thing to do. We were overtaken — multiple times — by the same group of them. Overtaken. By people on bicycles. I found this both impressive and personally embarrassing.
The most genuinely exciting moments came when traffic appeared from the opposite direction. There were occasional passing spots, but “occasional” is doing a lot of work in that sentence, and “passing spot” is generous for what amounted to a slightly wider patch of road. The locals navigated all of this with the relaxed confidence of people who do it every Tuesday. We managed it with the tight smiles of people who were very glad they’d had a decent breakfast.
Eventually — and it felt earned — we spotted a roadside stall advertising what it described, without apparent irony, as the world’s best banana bread. Now, this is Maui, where banana bread roadside stalls are something of a local institution, particularly along the Hana Highway corridor, and the competition for this particular crown is genuinely fierce. We filed the information away and used it as motivation to push on a little further, which is either good forward planning or the act of people who were too tightly wound to stop safely. A mile or two further along, we found a pull-off wide enough to park without incident, with a view down a green valley to the sea that was, objectively, quite exceptional. We ate the banana bread there. It was very good. World’s best? Probably not. But then, how would you know.
From there it was a mile or so back to a proper road, at which point we all quietly exhaled. We took the Hana Highway — the easy, sensible, well-behaved version — the short distance out of Kahului to the north shore beach town of Paia, which sits at the edge of a stretch of coast famous for its enormous surf and its windswept, end-of-the-world atmosphere. It seemed like exactly the right place to sit down, look at the sea, and reflect on the fact that we were still, technically, alive.
🏖️ Chillout on a Beach
Right then. After all that driving around on the Road to Hana, we felt we’d earned a proper sit-down somewhere nice. So we pointed ourselves at Paia Beach on Maui’s north shore — and it did not disappoint. Well, mostly.
Paia itself is a funny little place. It started life as a sugar plantation town back in the 1800s, churning out cane for the Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Company, and for a long time it was a fairly grim, workmanlike sort of spot. By the 1970s the hippies had moved in — as they tend to do when rents drop and the vibes are good — and it gradually transformed into the bohemian, slightly scruffy, thoroughly charming town it is today. These days it’s also the self-proclaimed windsurfing capital of the world, which will become relevant in a moment.
The water at Paia was absolutely stunning — that particular shade of blue-turquoise you only seem to get in the Pacific, the kind that makes you feel vaguely cheated that the English Channel exists at all. The surf was running high when we visited, which was both brilliant and slightly terrifying in equal measure. We spent a couple of very enjoyable hours being hurled about by the crashing waves like a pair of elderly socks in a tumble dryer, and it was tremendous fun. Highly recommend it, assuming you don’t mind the occasional undignified mouthful of seawater.
Now. The wind.
Paia sits right on the northern shore of Maui, which means it cops the full force of the trade winds funnelling down through the Maui isthmus — a geographical quirk that explains both the world-class windsurfing and the fact that, on a breezy day, the beach essentially becomes a sandblasting facility operating free of charge. The wind was blowing so ferociously that it was picking up the coarse volcanic sand and driving it horizontally into every exposed patch of skin. It’s the sort of sensation that makes you feel like you’re being exfoliated by someone who really, deeply hates you. Standing on the beach was genuinely unpleasant. Getting back in the water was the only sensible option — and frankly, given what was happening to our legs, we were delighted to have one
Day Three
🤿 Take a Snorkel Trip to Molokini
We booked ourselves onto the Lahaina Princess for a snorkelling trip out to Molokini, and a very fine morning it turned out to be. The Princess operates out of Lahaina Harbour — a narrow, rather cramped little port on Maui’s west coast that has been the island’s main gateway since the whaling days of the early 1800s, when hundreds of ships would crowd in here every season. These days it’s rather more civilised, mostly catering to tourist boats like ours, but it still has that slightly chaotic energy of a working harbour.
Our captain for the day was Darrell, assisted by two crewmates, Emily and Gabe. We cast off and began the hour-long journey out to Molokini, a crescent-shaped volcanic crater sitting about three miles off Maui’s south coast. The crater is the eroded rim of an ancient volcanic cone — the kind of geological accident that, had it occurred anywhere else on earth, nobody would visit. Here, because it’s Hawaii, it’s a Marine Life Conservation District and one of the most popular dive and snorkel spots in the entire Pacific.
Captain Darrell, it became clear fairly quickly, had done this trip rather a lot. He had assembled a well-practised repertoire of nautical humour, honed over years of daily sailings. Our favourite moment came during the safety drill, delivered with the deadpan timing of a man who has said it approximately ten thousand times: “Should the boat lose buoyancy during our trip, snorkels and masks will drop down from overhead.” We appreciated it enormously. You have to admire a man who still makes himself laugh at his own material.
We had, in our infinite wisdom, not had time for breakfast before leaving. This was our fault entirely. Fortunately, the boat provided muffins and a fruit selection, which we fell upon with some desperation. It was perfectly pleasant, though it was not, it must be said, anywhere close to the magnificent spread we’d consumed the previous evening at a traditional Hawaiian luau. The luau — a feast with roots going back centuries in Polynesian culture — had featured a whole roasted pig, poi, lomi salmon, haupia coconut pudding, and enough food to sustain a small island community for a week. The muffins were fine, though. Fine.
It was, as seems to be largely the point of Hawaii, a gorgeous sunny day. Maui sits at roughly 20 degrees north latitude, meaning it enjoys warm, stable weather for most of the year, with temperatures typically hovering around the mid-to-upper twenties Celsius. We were getting used to this rather quickly and already dreading the return to Britain.
Then something happened that stopped everyone in their tracks. We came upon two adult humpback whales and a calf — suddenly, without warning, just there, enormous and unhurried, passing within about fifty feet of the boat. The humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae, since you ask) migrates from Alaska to the warm Hawaiian waters every winter to breed and calve, and the waters around Maui are one of the most important humpback nurseries on the planet. The Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary, established in 1992, covers over 1,400 square miles of ocean specifically to protect them.
Under sanctuary regulations, vessels must cut their engines when within a hundred feet of the whales. Captain Darrell dutifully did exactly that, and we simply drifted, watching. Nobody complained. Nobody spoke very much at all. The calf surfaced alongside its mother with a sort of casual magnificence that made you feel, momentarily, like quite a small and rather insignificant creature. Which, frankly, you are.
Once the whales had moved on at their own unhurried pace, we powered back up to full speed and pressed on. By now we had cleared the shelter of the West Maui Mountains — a dramatic ridge of eroded volcanic peaks rising to nearly 5,800 feet, which normally acts as a windbreak along the western coast. Out in the open channel, the trade winds, which blow steadily from the northeast across the Pacific for much of the year, had full run of things. The swell picked up, the bow began throwing spray, and those of us on the upper deck received a gentle, cooling mist of Pacific Ocean for our trouble.
As we were dressed for swimming, this was entirely acceptable. In fact, with the sun bearing down from a cloudless sky, the wind and spray were rather welcome. We pushed on towards Molokini, slightly damp, thoroughly content, and feeling, if we’re honest, extremely smug about not being at work.
We arrived at Molokini to find about a dozen other vessels already moored up, all there for exactly the same reason as us. The crater’s inner lagoon is one of the most visited snorkel sites in Hawaii — on a busy day it can look rather like a floating car park — but the water clarity is genuinely exceptional, with visibility sometimes exceeding 150 feet. Gabe dived down to secure the boat to an underwater mooring, which is the environmentally sensible arrangement. Dropping anchors onto coral reefs is frowned upon these days, and quite right too.
Then it was masks, snorkels and fins on, and into the Pacific.
The water temperature around Molokini sits at roughly 24 to 26 degrees Celsius in winter — comfortable, but noticeably cooler than the bathwater warmth of the Florida Keys or the Caribbean. No wetsuit required, but no lingering around either. The easiest method of entry was to jump off the stern, so that is precisely what we did. From there it was about fifty yards to the inner rim of the crater, where the swell broke gently against the rocky shoreline. This is where the reef is at its most developed and the fish most concentrated, and the combination of the crater’s sheltered aspect and the conservation protections in place since the sanctuary was established mean the marine life here has been largely left to get on with things undisturbed.
We had a pleasant poke around. There were interesting fish — various species of wrasse, triggerfish, the inevitable clouds of smaller reef fish going about their business — and the visibility was, as advertised, superb. If we’re being straight with you, though, and at the risk of sounding like terrible snobs about it, the coral itself was not quite as impressive as reefs we have visited elsewhere. The Great Barrier Reef this is not. If you have previously snorkelled in the Red Sea, or around the Maldives, or even parts of the Caribbean, you may find yourself nodding along politely rather than gasping in wonder.
The undisputed highlight was a large moray eel — a proper one, around five feet long — that glided past us with the unhurried confidence of something that knows it is at the top of the local food chain. Moray eels spend the overwhelming majority of their time wedged inside crevices and caves, with just their heads protruding, waiting for something edible to swim within range. Seeing one out in open water, swimming freely, is genuinely unusual. We felt appropriately privileged.
Back on board, Emily had been busy producing a barbecue lunch, which was ready and waiting. The Lahaina Princess got underway again, heading back north. As we cleared the shelter of the crater and crossed back into open water, the trade winds resumed their earlier performance with considerable enthusiasm. The spray, which had been a pleasant misting on the outward leg, graduated on the return journey to something considerably more thorough. We arrived back in the lee of the West Maui Mountains somewhat wetter than planned, though by this point we had largely stopped caring.
The water settled as we reached the sheltered western coast, and Captain Darrell brought us round past Lahaina Harbour to moor up about a mile or so further north. This second stop had a specific purpose: sea turtles.
With more room available on the calmer water, the crew deployed what they called a water trampoline — a ten-foot inflatable contraption that, within approximately thirty seconds, had attracted every child on the boat like iron filings to a magnet. This left the parents free to slip quietly into the water and go looking for the real attraction.
The Hawaiian green turtle (Chelonia mydas) is a remarkable animal. Adults can weigh up to 250 pounds and carry a carapace of around two and a half feet in length, which means spotting one is not especially difficult — they are not, by any definition, subtle creatures. The Hawaiian population is considered a distinct subgroup and is listed as endangered, though numbers have improved considerably since hunting was banned and nesting beaches came under protection in the latter half of the twentieth century. They are long-lived animals; individuals can reach sixty years or more, which means some of the turtles we were looking at may well have been swimming these same waters since before we were born. A slightly humbling thought.
The turtles were, happily, not playing hard to get. Within a short time we had counted seven or eight of them, none more than a hundred feet from the boat, drifting and grazing on the seabed with complete indifference to the snorkellers paddling around them and the children bouncing noisily on the inflatable above. They are not easily ruffled, Hawaiian green turtles. There is a lesson there, probably.
After five hours of sun, saltwater and rather more spray than originally anticipated, it was time to head back to Lahaina. We disembarked from the Lahaina Princess relaxed, thoroughly satisfied, and, if we’re being honest, slightly more sunburnt than was entirely wise. A very fine day out indeed.
Day Four
🏔️ Iao State Park
It was our last full day in Hawaii, and rather than spend it lying about feeling sorry for ourselves, we decided to make the most of it. We headed out to Iao State Park, tucked into the West Maui Mountains, a lush, dramatically green valley just a short drive from the port town of Kahului — which, if you’ve ever flown into Maui, is the slightly unglamorous but entirely functional gateway to everything worth seeing on the island.
The Iao Valley sits at roughly 750 metres above sea level and the weather up there does what mountain weather does — whatever it likes. It rains frequently, sometimes heavily, and the valley is so narrow and steep that clouds basically park themselves there and stay for the afternoon. We were lucky. The sun was out, the skies were mostly clear, and for once our holiday wasn’t being rained on.
The name itself is rather wonderful. Ancient Hawaiians called this place ‘Iao, meaning “Supreme Light,” in honour of the god ‘Io, who was the supreme deity in the traditional Hawaiian religious order — a bit like Zeus, but with considerably better scenery. People made the journey to this valley specifically to pay tribute to ‘Io, which tells you something about how significant the place was spiritually. At the centre of it all stood a natural rock pillar rising out of the ‘Iao Stream, now known as the ‘Iao Needle — a moss-covered basalt spire that climbs about 370 metres above the valley floor and was once used as a natural altar. It is genuinely impressive, and one of those things that photographs simply don’t do justice to.
The valley wasn’t just a religious site, though. It was one of the most important political centres in ancient Hawaii. Hawaiian chiefs were buried in secret locations along the steep valley walls for hundreds of years — their remains hidden deliberately so that enemies couldn’t desecrate them, which was apparently a real concern. The most significant battle in Maui’s history, the Battle of Kepaniwai, was fought here in 1790, when King Kamehameha I — the man who would eventually unify all the Hawaiian islands under a single ruler — invaded Maui with a fleet of war canoes and a couple of Western cannons he’d rather conveniently acquired. The slaughter was so great that the ‘Iao Stream was reportedly dammed with the bodies of warriors. The name Kepaniwai translates as “damming of the waters,” which doesn’t leave much to the imagination. Not exactly the kind of history they put on the postcards, but important nonetheless.
From the car park there’s a steep set of stairs that climbs up to a proper vantage point where you get a clear, unobstructed view of the Iao Needle. It’s worth every wheeze. We made the ascent — and yes, the legs were feeling it by the top — and stood there staring at this extraordinary green spire rising out of the valley. Quite something.
Coming back down, we followed the path to the stream. Along the creek there are several natural pool areas fed by cool mountain spring water. We found one that was easy to get into, which felt like a genuine stroke of luck, except that when we arrived it was already occupied — by what appeared to be an entire school party of teenagers from Washington State. Fair enough. However, as any parent or teacher will know, the enthusiasm of modern teenagers for standing about in cold mountain water lasts approximately four minutes before the phones come out and the complaints begin. True to form, they didn’t linger. Within a few minutes they’d shuffled off, and we had the pool entirely to ourselves.
It was, genuinely, one of the nicest moments of the whole trip. After months of swimming in salt water or the kind of heavily chlorinated hotel pool water that turns your eyes pink and your hair green, soaking in clean, clear, ice-cold freshwater felt extraordinary. Restorative, even. A little bit chilly — all right, more than a little bit — but absolutely worth it. A perfect way to end our last full day in Hawaii.
🏛️ The Alexander & Baldwin Sugar Museum
We had a bit of time to kill before heading to the airport, which is always a slightly dangerous situation — it either means a very long sit in departures nursing an overpriced coffee, or, if you’re lucky, you stumble across something genuinely worth seeing. This time, we were lucky.
Sitting right on the route to Kahului Airport, almost as if it had been placed there specifically to ambush departing tourists, is the Alexander & Baldwin Sugar Museum. We pulled in, half-expecting the sort of regional museum experience that involves a bored volunteer, some laminated signs, and a gift shop selling fudge. We were pleasantly wrong.
The museum tells the story of two men — Samuel T. Alexander and Henry Perrine Baldwin — who founded the Alexander & Baldwin company back in the 1870s, and in doing so, rather quietly changed the entire shape of Hawaiian society. The sugar industry they helped build grew to become the dominant economic force across the Hawaiian Islands for the better part of a century, and nowhere more so than here on Maui, which was home to what became the largest sugar production operation in the whole of Hawaii.
The scale of it, when you start to understand it, is genuinely staggering. At its peak, the sugar industry required so many workers that Hawaii simply couldn’t supply them locally. So the plantation owners looked outward — and people came. From China, from Japan, from Portugal, from Puerto Rico, from Korea, from the Philippines, and yes, even from Russia. Wave after wave of immigrant workers arrived throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, all drawn by the promise of work and wages, however modest those wages turned out to be in practice.
What’s fascinating — and what the museum handles rather well — is the social consequence of all this. All those different cultures arriving, settling, intermarrying, and gradually blending together created the extraordinary, gloriously mixed-up population that Hawaii has today. The famously warm and inclusive spirit of modern Hawaiian culture didn’t just happen by accident. It was, in large part, forged in the sugar cane fields by people who had no choice but to get along. Which is either a lovely story about humanity, or a rather uncomfortable one about economic exploitation, depending on your mood. Possibly both.
The museum itself is small — compact, let’s say, rather than cramped — but it packs a remarkable amount in. There are exhibits, photographs, documents and artefacts that span the full arc of the industry’s history, from the earliest plantation days right through to the later 20th century. The photographs alone are worth the visit; faces staring out from another era, a reminder that behind all the economics and the industry statistics were actual human beings with actual lives.
We particularly enjoyed the interactive exhibits explaining the mechanics of sugar production — how the cane is planted, cut, crushed, processed and refined. It’s one of those things that sounds slightly tedious when you describe it, but turns out to be genuinely interesting when someone takes the trouble to explain it properly. And they did. Quite how they turn an enormous grass into those little white sachets you absent-mindedly tear open with your coffee, I had never really considered before. Now I have, and I feel marginally more informed as a result.
If you’re passing through Maui — and particularly if you’re heading to the airport with an hour to spare — the Alexander & Baldwin Sugar Museum is very much worth a stop. Small, yes. Modest, certainly. But perfectly formed, and rather more thought-provoking than you might expect from a museum about sugar.
Planning a visit to Maui, Hawai’i
📍 Location
Maui is the second-largest island in the Hawaiian archipelago, situated in the central Pacific Ocean, approximately 3,860 kilometres from the US mainland. The island covers around 1,883 square kilometres and is characterised by two volcanic mountain masses connected by a low, flat isthmus known as the Central Valley. The western side is dominated by the West Maui Mountains, while the eastern side rises dramatically to Haleakalā, a dormant shield volcano reaching 3,055 metres above sea level.
The island is divided into several distinct regions: West Maui (including Lahaina and Kāʻanapali), Central Maui (Kahului and Wailuku), South Maui (Kīhei and Wailea), Upcountry Maui (the cooler, rural slopes of Haleakalā), East Maui (the Road to Hāna and Hāna town), and the North Shore (Paʻia and Haʻikū).
✈️ Getting There
The main point of entry to Maui is Kahului Airport (OGG), located on the north coast of the island in the Central Maui region. It is the primary commercial airport serving the island and handles the vast majority of inter-island and mainland flights. A smaller airport, Kapalua Airport (JHM), serves West Maui and handles commuter and charter flights.
There are no direct international flights to Maui. Travellers arriving from outside the United States typically connect through a US mainland hub — most commonly Los Angeles (LAX), San Francisco (SFO), or Seattle (SEA) — before taking a connecting flight to Kahului. Domestic travellers flying from the US mainland can reach Kahului directly, with flight times ranging from around five hours from the east coast to approximately five hours from the west coast.
Visitors travelling under the US Visa Waiver Programme must obtain valid ESTA authorisation before travelling. Those requiring a visa should apply well in advance of their trip.
🚗 Getting Around
The primary and most practical way to get around Maui is by hire car (rental car). Public transport on the island is limited, and many of the most popular attractions — including Haleakalā National Park, the Road to Hāna, and the more remote beaches — are not accessible without your own vehicle. Hire cars are widely available at Kahului Airport from all major rental companies.
Driving Essentials
Driving in Maui follows standard US road rules — traffic drives on the right-hand side of the road. Speed limits are posted in miles per hour. Seat belts are compulsory for all occupants, and the use of a mobile phone whilst driving without a hands-free device is illegal.
Petrol (gasoline) prices in Hawaiʻi are among the highest in the United States, so factor this into your budget. Filling up in Central Maui — around Kahului or Wailuku — tends to be cheaper than in resort areas such as Wailea or Kāʻanapali.
Key Roads and Routes
The Hāna Highway (Route 360) is one of the most celebrated scenic drives in the world, winding along the northeastern coastline through rainforest, past waterfalls, and over some 620 bridges and curves. It requires concentration and patience — the road is narrow, and sections are single lane. Allow a full day for the journey to Hāna and back.
The road to the summit of Haleakalā is long and steep. Temperatures at the summit can be significantly lower than at sea level, sometimes near freezing, so bring warm layers regardless of how warm it is at the coast. The road is generally well maintained but can be affected by fog and rain.
The Piʻilani Highway (Route 31) runs along the south coast and connects South Maui to East Maui. The western portion is smooth and well travelled, but the eastern stretch beyond Kaupō becomes extremely rough and is unpaved in sections. Some hire car agreements specifically exclude this road — check your rental terms before attempting it.
Parking in popular areas can be very limited. Arriving early is advisable at busy spots such as Paʻia, trailheads, and state parks.
🏖️ Things to See and Do
Haleakalā National Park
Haleakalā, meaning “House of the Sun,” is perhaps Maui’s most iconic natural attraction. The summit area offers otherworldly volcanic landscapes, rare native wildlife, and sweeping views above the clouds. The Kīpahulu coastal district of the same national park, accessible via the Hāna Highway, features the ʻOheʻo Gulch (also referred to as the Seven Sacred Pools) and the Pīpīwai Trail, which leads through a bamboo forest to Waimoku Falls.
The Road to Hāna
The journey itself is the attraction. Highlights along the route include Waiʻānapanapa State Park with its dramatic black sand beach, Puaʻa Kaʻa State Wayside with its twin waterfalls, and the Garden of Eden Arboretum. The small town of Hāna at the end of the road has a remote, unspoilt atmosphere quite unlike the resort areas of the island.
West Maui
The Kāʻanapali and Kapalua areas are home to some of Maui’s most celebrated beaches, including Kāʻanapali Beach and Kapalua Bay. Lahaina, historically one of the most significant towns in Hawaiʻi and formerly a major whaling hub, suffered catastrophic damage in the August 2023 wildfires. Much of the historic town centre no longer exists, and visitors should approach the area with sensitivity and respect for the community still recovering from the disaster.
Upcountry Maui
The cooler, green slopes of Haleakalā are home to Kula, Makawao, and a thriving farming community. This area offers lavender farms, flower farms, paniolo (Hawaiian cowboy) culture, local art galleries, and a feel quite distinct from the coastal resort areas.
North Shore
Paʻia is a charming, laid-back town on Maui’s north shore and a hub for windsurfing and kitesurfing, with nearby Hoʻokipa Beach Park renowned as one of the world’s premier windsurfing spots. The North Shore has a more bohemian character than the resort regions and is worth a visit for its independent shops, cafés, and local atmosphere.
South Maui
Kīhei and Wailea offer some of the island’s calmest and most accessible beaches, with warm, sheltered waters well suited to swimming and snorkelling. Wailea in particular is home to several of Maui’s most upscale resorts and the Shops at Wailea.
Snorkelling and Marine Life
Maui’s waters are exceptionally rich in marine life. Molokini Crater, a partially submerged volcanic crater off the south coast, is one of Hawaiʻi’s most popular snorkelling and diving sites. Turtle Town, near Mākena, offers reliable sightings of Hawaiian green sea turtles. Humpback whales migrate to the warm waters surrounding Maui between roughly November and May, and whale-watching is a highlight of a visit during those months.
🌺 Culture and Customs
Aloha Spirit
Hawaiʻi has a deeply rooted cultural identity shaped by Native Hawaiian traditions, as well as the diverse communities that have made the islands their home. The concept of aloha extends far beyond a greeting — it represents a way of living that encompasses love, respect, compassion, and harmony. Visitors are warmly welcomed and are expected to reciprocate that spirit through considerate, respectful behaviour.
Respect for Native Hawaiian Culture
Native Hawaiian culture, language, history, and traditions deserve genuine respect. Sacred sites, heiau (temples), and cultural landmarks should be treated with reverence. Do not climb on, deface, or remove items from any cultural or historical site. Many natural areas also hold deep spiritual significance to Native Hawaiians.
Land and Nature
The concept of mālama ʻāina — caring for the land — is central to Hawaiian culture. Visitors are expected to leave natural areas exactly as they find them. Taking rocks, sand, coral, or any natural material from beaches, parks, or the ocean is both culturally disrespectful and, in many cases, illegal. The popular belief that taking lava rocks brings bad luck reflects a deeper cultural message about respecting the land and leaving it undisturbed.
Language
The Hawaiian language is an official language of the State of Hawaiʻi alongside English. Locals appreciate visitors making the effort to pronounce place names and words correctly. The ʻokina (ʻ) represents a glottal stop and is a genuine letter in the Hawaiian alphabet; the macron (kahakō) over vowels indicates a lengthened sound. Hawaiʻi itself, for example, is pronounced “Hah-vai-ee” rather than “Huh-why-ee.”
⚠️ Things to Be Aware Of
Ocean Safety
The ocean around Maui can be deceptively dangerous. Wave conditions, currents, and shore breaks change rapidly and vary greatly between beaches. Always heed posted warning signs and coloured flag systems at beaches. If in doubt, do not enter the water. Never turn your back on the ocean. Rip currents, large shore breaks, and unexpected wave surges account for many visitor injuries and fatalities each year. Some beaches that appear calm can have powerful and unpredictable surf.
Sun and Heat
The tropical sun in Hawaiʻi is intense, even on overcast days and at higher elevations. Sunburn can occur quickly and severely. Use high-factor, reef-safe sunscreen — conventional sunscreens containing oxybenzone and octinoxate are banned in Hawaiʻi due to their harmful effects on coral reefs. Wear protective clothing, stay hydrated, and avoid prolonged sun exposure during the midday hours.
Wildlife
Hawaiian monk seals and green sea turtles are both federally and state protected species. It is illegal to approach, touch, or disturb either animal. Maintain a distance of at least 15 metres from monk seals and give turtles ample space in the water and on land. Humpback whales are similarly protected — vessels and swimmers must maintain safe distances. Feeding any wildlife is discouraged and in many cases prohibited.
Hiking Safety
Maui’s trails range from gentle coastal walks to demanding summit hikes. Conditions can change rapidly, particularly in rainforest and summit environments. Flash flooding is a genuine risk in narrow valleys and along streams — never cross a flooded stream. Always carry sufficient water, as dehydration is a common cause of hiking emergencies. Mobile phone signal is unreliable in many remote areas, so inform someone of your plans before heading out on longer trails.
Lahaina and the 2023 Wildfires
The August 2023 wildfires caused devastating loss of life and destruction in Lahaina. The community continues to grieve and rebuild. Visitors should be sensitive to this when in the area — it is not appropriate to visit simply to view the destruction. Where possible, support local businesses in the region as part of the wider recovery effort.
Local Laws and Regulations
Smoking is banned in most public places in Hawaiʻi, including beaches, parks, and within a set distance of doorways and public entrances. Jaywalking is technically illegal, though enforcement varies. The legal drinking age is 21. Open containers of alcohol in public places are prohibited. Cannabis possession for personal use by adults aged 21 and over was legalised in Hawaiʻi in 2024, but smoking cannabis in public remains illegal.
Reservations are now required in advance for entry to certain popular sites, including Haleakalā National Park for sunrise viewing and Waiʻānapanapa State Park. Check requirements and book ahead to avoid disappointment.
Respect for Residents
Maui has experienced significant tensions around overtourism in recent years. The island’s infrastructure — roads, water, housing, and public services — is under considerable pressure. Residents ask that visitors be mindful of their impact, drive considerately on narrow roads, avoid trespassing on private land in pursuit of waterfalls or viewpoints, and treat the island as a home rather than a theme park.
Best time to visit Maui, Hawai’i
The best times to visit Maui are April through May and September through November. The spring and fall shoulder seasons provide the pleasant weather Hawaii vacationers seek without the high rates and heavy crowds that accompany the summer and winter.
🌺 Overall Best Time to Visit
For most visitors, late April to early June represents Maui at its most rewarding. The last humpback whales are still visible in April, the school holiday crowds have dispersed, accommodation rates soften, and the weather is warm, settled, and reliably beautiful. Snorkelling conditions are outstanding, hiking trails are in excellent shape, and the island feels genuinely unhurried. Those with flexibility would also do well to consider September and October, when Maui is at its quietest and most affordable without any meaningful compromise on sunshine or sea conditions. Whatever the season, Maui’s extraordinary natural beauty — from the summit of Haleakalā to the coral gardens of Molokini — ensures a remarkable visit at any time of year.
Where to stay on Maui
1. Upscale: Napili Sunset Beach Front Resort
Napili Sunset Beach Front Resort sits directly on Napili Bay, one of Maui’s most sheltered and swimmable stretches of coastline on the island’s northwest shore. It’s a small, independently owned property — just 42 units — which means it operates more like a collection of holiday apartments than a large resort. Accommodation ranges from studio rooms to one- and two-bedroom suites, most with full kitchens and private lanais. There’s no spa, no sprawling pool complex, and no nightly entertainment, which suits guests who prefer a quieter base. Two pools, a barbecue area, and direct beach access cover the essentials. The bay itself is calm enough for snorkelling and is a reliable spot for watching spinner dolphins and, in season, humpback whales. Rates are reasonable by Maui standards, particularly given the beachfront location. It’s a practical, unfussy choice for those wanting to spend time actually on the water rather than around it.
2. Mid-Range: Aston at Papakea Resort
3. Budget: Howzit Hostels
Howzit Hostels is a budget-friendly accommodation option on Maui, Hawaii, popular with backpackers, solo travellers and anyone looking to keep costs down without sacrificing a decent place to stay. Located in the town of Wailuku, it sits a reasonable distance from some of the island’s key attractions, making it a practical base for exploring the area. The hostel offers dormitory-style rooms as well as private options, catering to different preferences and group sizes. Communal spaces encourage the kind of casual socialising that hostel culture is known for, and the relaxed, local atmosphere reflects the laid-back spirit of the island. It is not a luxury experience — nor does it aim to be — but for travellers prioritising adventure and authenticity over comfort and amenities, Howzit Hostels delivers a solid, no-frills stay in one of the Pacific’s most visited destinations.
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