The outside world arrived from the south. In 1786 the French navigator La Pérouse became the first European known to set foot on Maui, stepping ashore at Keoneʻōʻio — the lava bay just below Wailea that still carries his name. Across the ʻAlalakeiki channel lay Kahoʻolawe, and behind it the dry Honuaʻula coast watched the first foreign sails pass. For a while little changed: the fishing shore stayed a fishing shore, and the goddess’s water kept running to the same reef.
Wailea sits on the sunny, dry side of Maui, in the old land district of Honuaʻula — “red earth” — that runs from the high slopes of Haleakalā down to the sea. Hawaiians here lived mostly mauka, upslope, where they grew sweet potato and dryland taro in the cooler ground, and came makai, down to the coast, to fish. The ahupuaʻa, the wedge-shaped land divisions, stitched mountain to reef so that one community held forest, field, and fishing ground together — a whole working coast, not just a beach.
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.
