What’s with the goddess of canoe-builders? Wailea’s name is, quite literally, her water — wai o Lea, the water of Lea, the goddess Hawaiian canoe-makers prayed to before they felled a koa tree and shaped its trunk into a hull. She is remembered too as a guardian of the hula, and one tradition says she turned this stretch of shore into a forest so lovely she would fly above it just to admire the birds. So when you stand on the warm leeward sand here, you are standing in a place named for the patron of master craftsmen — not a resort slogan, but an old prayer carried in three syllables.
Then, for a few years, the quiet coast became a drill ground. During the Second World War the Marines trained along this shore for the island campaigns of the Pacific, and they gave Ulua Beach a grim nickname: “Little Tarawa,” after the atoll where they would make one of the war’s bloodiest amphibious landings. Men who rehearsed in this gentle surf carried its lessons to the far side of the ocean. Today the beach is back to umbrellas and snorkels, the name remembered mostly by those who go looking for it.
Why People Visit Wailea, Hawaiʻi
Wailea offers a seamless beach-and-path experience: swimming, snorkeling, strolling, and light shopping between coves. It is sunny, refined, and family friendly, with year-round appeal in its beaches, walkways, and public access. Natural beauty and easy comfort sit side by side, and a deep Hawaiian past — the goddess Lea, the fishing shore of Kahamanini, the Marines’ “Little Tarawa” — runs quietly beneath the polish.
