Kaihalulu Beach

Kaihalulu is a small cove just outside Hāna, on the eastern side of Maui, below the Kaʻuiki Head cinder cone. The sand is red — a deep rust colour from iron-rich cinder eroding out of the cone above — and it is one of a very small number of red beaches anywhere.

The colour is genuine and the situation is complicated. The cove sits below a crumbling cinder cone, and the path to it crosses steep, loose ground above a drop. It has been closed at various times, the land ownership includes private and culturally significant parcels, and the county has advised against the walk more than once. People go anyway, and people are injured doing it.

The cove itself is enclosed by a partly submerged lava wall that shelters it from the open ocean, so the water inside is calmer than the coast around and the red sand against it produces the colour contrast the beach is known for. Outside the wall the water is rough. There is no shade and no facilities of any kind, and the cove has a long-standing informal reputation as clothing-optional.

Nothing is built. Hāna itself is a small town at the end of a famously slow road, and that road — the Hāna Highway, with its several hundred curves and dozens of one-lane bridges — is the practical constraint on visiting anything here.

The path in crosses loose ground above a drop, the county has advised against it more than once, and the land includes private and culturally significant parcels. The sand is genuinely red and there are perhaps a dozen such beaches on earth. Weigh those two facts honestly; Hāmoa and Waiʻānapanapa are minutes away and ask nothing of you. The Hāna road itself takes two to three hours from central Maui, several hundred curves and dozens of one-lane bridges, and is the journey people come for as much as the destination.