My husband and I went to Hawaii for our honeymoon and the first island we hit was Maui. I highly recommend renting a car while you are there. It’s a great way to see the island. We chose to stay at the Hyatt Regency in Lahaina on Ka’anapali Beach. It was a 40 minute drive from the airport.

The hotel is gorgeous. It has an open air lobby with lush foliage all around.

The pool area was very well maintained and groomed.

The rooms were spacious and clean. My only complaint was that the beach was just so so at this resort.

It wasn’t very large, however, the Hyatt Regency is surrounded by other resorts. They are all connected by a beach walk. You could bar hop to different hotels and also frolic on their stretch of beach. Below is a great picture of the resort area. In between the resorts is Whaler’s Village which has lots of shops and restaurants. You can’t miss it if you walk along the path.

Courtesy of kaanapalifresh.com

Here is a view from our hotel room:

Also, if you are a sushi lover, check out the restaurant at the Hyatt. It was the best sushi I’ve ever had!

At the very end of the beach walk sits the Sheraton. It is known as Black Rock Beach. It is a great place to snorkel. We didn’t see any turtles but more on that in my Kona post.

On our second day in Maui, we did what all tourists do which is the Road to Hana. It is a 68 mile road that leads to the little town of Hana. According to Wikipedia:

It takes about 2.5 hours to drive when no stops are made as the highway is very winding and narrow and passes over 59 bridges, 46 of which are only one lane wide.There are approximately 620 curves along Route 360 from just east of Kahului to Hāna. Many of the concrete and steel bridges date back to 1910 and all but one are still in use.

In a nutshell, it was a huge waste of time!! Ok, ok, that was a little harsh but if you want my advice, DON’T DO IT!!!! Sit on the beach and have a pina colada! Yes, there are some nice spots along the way as depicted below….

Bamboo Forest

But you drive on terribly narrow roads, constantly avoiding head-on collisions all for what…to get to a dinky looking downtown. It’s so small I can’t even physically find a google image of it!

To avoid the hellish drive back, which many recommend going the way you just came, we took a “back road” to get to the hotel. Let me just say, if the rental car place saw the kind of road we were on they would have made us pay for the car!!

On the third day of our stay in Maui, we set off to find the best snorkel spots on the island. Here is a link to some of the best spots to snorkel: Map

We also attended a traditional Lu’au at our hotel. I wasn’t that into it. I know I should have been but eh, it was fine. I would save my money and do something else.

Personally, if we ever visited Hawaii again, I would skip Maui altogether. It’s very touristy (which I suppose is the point) but I wasn’t in awe of the island like I was with Kauai and the Big Island. Check out the posts for those islands to learn more.