Ka'anapali beach is known for beautiful white sand, friendly swimming and great snorkeling up by black rock. Our friends, Russ and Karen, had given us a great travel guide with many of their favorite places and activities. This was one of them and we were not disappointed!! (Thanks Karen!!)
We set up on the beach with our towels and just soaked in the beautiful sun! After a short time, we decided to splurge and rent a cabana for the day--again, spendy, but hey, we're in Hawaii!! The cabana was perfect for a comfortable crash in the sun with the option of pulling the back up to provide shade once we'd had enough beautiful, glorious, warming sun for a bit.
So much fun!
Part human, part frog.
The Big Guy Lowe is in the background as we look back on Ka'anapali beach. The spray of water is coming from a turtle that had surfaced right by us!
We followed him for a while as he, or she for all I know, casually meandered back towards the ocean floor. It was exciting and peaceful all at the same time as we observed how graceful they were swimming. A little later in the day we swam with four more turtles. Not a bad way to begin our snorkeling experience! Just amazing!
After a full day of snorkeling, we headed to explore Whaler's Village, also known as the barefoot mall. The nick name makes sense as the outdoor mall is located just up from the beach. We had dinner at Leilani's and quickly fell in love with virgin mago-collatas! We made a habit of ordering one as often as we could from that night on!
There were many other beaches we visited in West Maui. Others that made the top of our list are as follows: *Honolua Bay*
To get to the bay you have to hike down a trail through lush, jungle-like foilage. The Big Guy Lowe and I kept saying we felt like we were on the show "Lost".
Gratefully, no smoke monsters were spotted, but we couldn't help but make those noises. We're a couple of goof-balls when we're together...but that was probably already obvious. Oh well!
The beach here is definitely not a sun-tanning beach. Rocks are everywhere. But people don't come here to get a tan. In the summer it's to snorkel and in the winter it's to surf.
Beautiful corals
and fish.
Tons of them!
*Mokule'ia Bay* (also known as slaughterhouse bay)
To get to this bay, you have to walk down stairs and over rocks before getting to the secluded white sand beach. This is a view from the road above--you can't even see that a sandy beach exists. That might explain why there weren't many people enjoying it with us.
More turtles,
and fish.
*Napili beach*
No pictures but perfect for swimming.
*Mile marker 14 (-ish)*
I'm sure there's a name for this beach, but we just pulled off the road when we thought we saw an area that might be good to snorkel. How awesome is that?!
All beaches are free to use, if you can find public access to them. Nice.
So fun!!
And guess what we saw here? Yep, more fish. It might sound redundant on paper, but I don't think we ever got borded of seeing those beautiful fish!
In addition to West Maui, we also headed down to South Maui around Wailea for a day and had a great time too. During our next trip to Maui we will most likely try to stay in this area so we can explore more!! We were pretty impressed with the locals at Big Beach--you could sure tell the locals from the visitors by the way boards were handled in the waves. Made for great entertainment!! We did choose to stay away from Little Beach after it was explained that "clothing was optional". How about that for a shocker?!
Snorkeling in Maui was all we hoped it would be. Now that The big Guy Lowe and I have had such wonderful adventures together, we're excited to head back to the islands with our snorkeling boys!! August seems so far away, but I think we can stand it...YAHOO!!
1 comment:
What a great trip. We need to plan one together, now. Really, no more just talking, let's get doing. And dinner too, we can't forget to schedule a dinner.
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