4 days in Maui

Maui is all you ever imagined about Hawaii – lush rainforests, volcanic landscapes, and gorgeous beaches. In just four days, I tried to soak in as much of its beauty and culture as possible. It’s a busy 4 days but it’s totally worth coming here even if it’s for a short time. Check out this 4 days itinerary in Maui to make the most of your trip!

My trip to Maui happened in May 2023, shortly before the devastating Maui wildfires. Lahaina and other parts of Maui were severely impacted by wildfires in August 2023. While some areas are rebuilding, many local families and small businesses are still recovering from unimaginable loss. If you’re planning a visit to Maui, I encourage you to travel with empathy and respect, supporting locally owned shops and restaurants, and giving space to the communities. If you’d like to support, consider donating to the Maui Strong Fund, which supports the rebuilding efforts.

Itinerary

Day 1 – Arrival and visit to Lahaina

After we landed, we went to our hotel in Wailea to drop our suitcases before heading to Lahaina to explore. By the time we finished our check-in and bought some things in the supermarket, it was already mid-afternoon. We drove north, stopping on the way at the Papawai Scenic Lookout, from where you can see the islands of Lana’i and Kaho’olawe. It’s a pretty spot that gives you the taste of Hawaii.

We then continued until the town of Lahaina, a touristy spot full of small shops and restaurants. For lunch, we stopped at Down the Hatch, a busy restaurant with seats outside and a pleasant artificial river that had some fish, which children loved. I had the crab and lobster grilled cheese, which was excellent! We walked along the Front street, enjoying the activity of the town.

Day 2 – Haleakalā National Park

If there is only one thing you can do in Maui, visit Haleakalā. It’s not the most comfortable to do – you’ll have to reserve your spots with enough time, wake up very early, drive at night up to the mountain, and wait in the cold until the sun rises. However, it’s absolutely worth seeing.

After waking up at 3 am, we drove to the top of the mountain, parking in the designated spot. We wrapped up ourselves in several very-needed blankets and warmed the hands with some warm drinks. I set up the tripod for photos and after that it was just a waiting game. Due to the geography of this place, you have good chances of seeing the sun come out of the clouds, and that’s what we saw. It’s a slow and spectacular show, seeing how the sun appears through the clouds and how the illuminatino changes.

Once the sun is up, the landscape is very different. Now, you still see the clouds, but you can also visualize the crater right in front of you. There are several hikes you can do, one of them going down an eroded path, which goes around the different cinder cones. We walked from the Visitor Center towards the Wilderness area, not going too deep into the hike, as I had just recovered from covid shortly before coming to Maui, and was out of breath with little activity.

After taking the car back, we stopped at the Kalahaku overlook to have lunch and enjoy the beautiful crater views. We then drove to the Leleiwi Overlook, which had a brief hike to an observation platform. However, because of the thick clouds, once we reached the end point, we could not see anything from there.

Maluaka beach

We spent the rest of the day at the Maluaka beach, around 1:15 h away from the National Park. Beaches in Hawaii are always public, so there has to be access to them. Maualaka beach was one of those where you felt like you were getting into the hotel’s grounds when entering the beach, but nonetheless it’s public. There is also access to all the services you needed at a beach. We tried snorkeling, but because the winds take up during the afternoon, the waters were not very clear, and it was also cold for me. However, the beach was a great place to see the sunset.

Day 3 – Diving & Snorkeling day

I did my diving certification with the objective of diving in Hawaii, more concretely in the Molokini crater. Totally worth it. Snorkeling in Hawaii is already beautiful, but diving there was something else. We took a boat in Wailuku with the company Maui Diamond Sea Sports. After a short ride, we approached the Molokini crater, which is famous for its half-moon shape that you cannot really see well from the boat. We were absolute diving novices when we did this tour, with only the minimum required dives to get the certification. The company employees were really helpful, and we stuck to the dive master during our exploration.

The waters at the Molokini crater were amazingly clear, and we could see the bottom from the ship. Once in the water, you can see plenty of fish species swimming totally unbothered by your presence. As a novice, my tank run out of air pretty fast, so my dive was a bit shorter than that of experienced people or those carrying nitrox. We came up and spent that time chilling in the boat. We had booked a second dive as well, which was at a different location. It was also nice, but less interesting than the crater, as the corals were quite far apart from each other.

Some general thoughts about diving

My main compain (and this is a general one for all warm places) is that, because the water is supposed to be warm, there’s only the thinnest neoprene suits available. Look, I wear a light jacket until 25-27ºC, I’m not going to comfortably spend 30 min in “warm” water unless it’s at spa temperature. I had this discussion with my divemaster in Curaçao, who mentioned that these suits account better for men’s temperature sensations. So if any diving agency in warm waters is reading this, please buy some full suits for the ladies!

Also, if you’re going to dive, remember to account for the decompression time before taking a flight. A minimum period of 12 h (single dive) or 18 h (multi-dive) has to be accounted for before you fly, and that’s the reason we had the dive on our third day here.

Ahihi Bay

Since we didn’t have enough of water (and also, because this is the thing to do in Hawaii), we drove to the Ahihi-Kinay Marine Preserve for some more snorkeling. This Bay was a bit more challenging to enter than a regular beach, as the coast is pretty rocky. You can find a few maps along the beach highlighting the safe areas to enter, and once if the water you can freely swimm along the beach to see the beautiful (and noisy) corals. This was my favorite snorkeling experience in the island. There were so many different species of fishes! I would be more descriptive if I knew how to differentiate them, but my knowledge limits itself to their colors: there were yellow and there were different types of blue tropical fishes.

After chilling in that part of the beach, we walked to the Ahihi Cove. There’s no designated parking next to the cove, so the best is to leave the car in the preserve parking and just walk along the street for around 5 min. The cove was really beautiful, but snorkeling there was worse in my opinion. The entrance in the water was much more rocky and slippery, which was annoying with the waves. Once you were further from the coast, the views were much nicer and you could see many of the yellow fish. Nonetheless, the diversity of fishes was lower in this cove compared to the beach of the Marine Preserve.

Secret Cove Beach

Given the amount of people, not so much of a secret, this beach is nonetheless really beautiful. It’s quite a small sandy beach, surrounded by houses with many palm trees planted, and some beautifully placed rocks, this beach was perfect for photography. Beware, that if you’re here for the sunset, and you like seeing the sun going down, here the sun may set behind the houses. Absolutely worth a visit. Beware that the parking is street parking and thus pretty limited.

Day 4 – Road to Hana

We started our drive from Wailea at around 6:30 to briefly stop in the supermarket in Paia, as we wanted to buy some food for the day. It’s good to start the road to Hana early enough, so you still get some parking spots at the most popular attractions, although eventually you’ll run into issues due to high traffic. We came in the early morning and left the road when it was getting dark. A full day is a great amount of time to spend on the road, and you’ll get to see most of the key points. The only thing we missed doing was the Wai’anapanapa State Park, a famous black sand beach, since the tickets were sold out when we checked.

Ke’anae

Our first stop was the Ke’anae Peninsula, a gorgeous place where you can see a lava beach with the sea water dramatically breaking in. We just parked our car next to the coast and enjoyed the strength of the ocean. The weather wasn’t especially sunny, and the winds were picking up, so the waves were intense. There were some touristic facilities, but they were still closed when we arrived.

Puaa Kaa State Park

This very small park has a parking lot, some picknic tables and nice views of waterfalls. It’s quite a short stop, just walking around for a bit to see the falls and then you can drive again.

Kaihalulu Red Sand Beach

Before coming here, I had read that the path to the beach was very dangerous and that some people even died here. That made me really reconsider whether I should go at all. However, I wouldn’t qualify this hike as especially dangerous – at least not based on the Swiss standard of hikes. There’s a couple of unpleasant drops, be careful with those.

Finding the entrance to the hiking trail was a bit of a challenge. You need to drive down the Uakea Road until reaching the Community Center. Finding parking wasn’t easy since there’s only street parking, so we ended up parking a bit further inside the village. Then, once you’re back to the Uakea Road, you have to go towards the end of it and you’ll see a path on your left through green grass – that is the trailhead. The hike itself was quite short, less than a km both ways.

The highlight of this beach is it’s red color, which offers a nice contrast to the other white and black sand beaches in the island. If you’re going to the Big Island in Hawaii, you can even see a green sand beach, so there’s plenty of variety of beach colors in these islands. The beach itself is quite small, but it’s nice to walk around. When we arrived it was relatively crowded, which I imagine is quite common.

Venus Pool

Seeing some people stopped at the side of the road and heading somewhere, we decided to do that too. We found our way by following some other people going there, and got to see a beautiful pond. Later, we learned that the pond is not very safe for swimming, as there can be currents and flash floods, but nonetheless there was plenty of people jumping in the water from the cliffs. A short hike away, there was also a black sand beach, which was not accessible as it was located down a cliff.

Wailua Falls

If you google the Wailua falls, you’ll get two different images – that’s because there’s two different places with this name, one in Maui and the other in Kauai. The image below corresponds to the one you see in Maui. It’s a brief stop from the highway, and you can approach the waterfall if you park the car in a nearby parking. Some people were jumping in the pool below the fall too.

Pipiwai Trail

Our last stop was the Pipiway Trail, a 6.3 km hike that leads to the Waimoku Falls, with a viewpoint to the Makahiku Falls. The way to the falls and back took us around 2:30 h to do, and we were not walking fast. The hike starts at a very well-developed area, with a large parking, a visitor center, and a bathroom facility. There’s also some pools that you can see if you walk around.

The hike itself is very nicely indicated and easy to follow. From the trail you can have a view from the top of the Makahiku Falls, although the dense vegetation doesn’t let you see the whole dimensions of the falls. When you continue, you’ll also find a cool Banyan tree on the way, an ideal photospot. Another highlight of the trail is the pretty large bamboo forest. Once you pass the bamboo forest, you’re almost at the end of the trail, where you can see the Waimoku Falls, an impressive 120 m waterfall.

Personal highlights in Maui

The trip to Maui was my first time in Hawaii and I certainly enjoyed it. My favourite activities were:

• Sunrise at Haleakala. I absolutely loved it, it’s a magical view to see the sun raise from the clouds.
• Secret Cove Beach. It’s a gorgeous beach
• Diving in the Molokini crater. The clear waters, the abundance of fish species, the interesting geography of the crater – all this made the experience unforgettable.

How is driving on the Hana Road?

The road is narrow, has plenty of curves, and it’s really crowded. Locals drive much faster, so it’s polite to let them pass. There’s also plenty of unidirectional bridges, where the rule is to let pass around 5 cars before switching the directions. Since there’s so much traffic, parkings are often full, so my recommendation is to go early, and to visit the destinations that you skipped because of lack of parking on the way back.

How safe it is?

While we got the recommendation of not leaving anything in the cars, I didn’t see any break-ins or rests of thereof anywhere around the island. It’s certainly far from what you’ll see in cities such as San Francisco. However, if our hotel mentioned it, that means it happens, so keep an eye on that. While I wasn’t traveling alonge – which can bias the perception – all the places mentioned here felt safe. As always, keep your usual precautions at night or in natural places.

Want to visit similar destinations?

Check out these articles about Kauai and the Big Island in Hawaii, the Caribbean island of Curaçao, or Costa Rica for additional inspiration!