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.
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.
