Maui Travel Guide

Maui Vacation Guide

Visitor Info & Top Things to Do on Maui

Essential Tips for the Ultimate Maui Vacation Experience

Maui has been a favorite tourist destination for decades because it represents the quintessential tropical getaway. With its beautiful coastal views, eclectic volcanoes, wildlife sanctuaries nearby, and a wide majority of the island left wild and free from rampant development, there are countless things to do in Maui that will leave you authentically charmed!

Maui has a lot going for it, especially for such a small island. It combines some of the best food, shopping, and entertainment choices from several of the other Hawaiian islands while emphasizing outdoor fun rather than a late-night party scene, like Oahu, which makes plenty of regular visitors happy.

Maui has several small towns, especially along the coast, giving much of the island a small but not rural vibe. Maui is not as large or varied in terrain as the Big Island or as weathered and verdant as Kauai. Still, its 10,000+ foot volcano Haleakala, combined with the incredible coastline views along the Road to Hana, and unique places like the 'Iao Valley and Wai'anapanapa Black Sand Beach make Maui a unique and special place to visit all on its own

Maui Nui (Credit: Wikipedia)

Geologic History of 'Maui Nui'

Maui Nui or 'Greater Maui' is the geologic name given to a prehistoric Hawaiian Island built from seven shield volcanoes. Nui means "great/large" in the Hawaiian language.

A little over a million years ago, the island was significantly large than the island we think of as Maui today. They didn't separate until around 200,000 years ago, partially due to sea levels rising due to glacial melting. Once encompassing the islands of modern-day Maui, Moloka'i, Lana'i, Kaho'olawe the ancient shield volcanoes slowly settled into the Pacific Ocean seafloor by subsidence, and the volcanoes were additionally weathered by erosion to slowly separate into the distinctly different islands as they appear today.

At their largest, the islands of Maui Nui were a combined 5,600 square miles in size (14,600 sq km) - giving them a land area over 40% larger than the Big Island today.

On the corresponding graphic, 'Ma' is an abbreviation for mega-anna, millions of years ago. The light and dark shading show the extent of land during low and high sea stands of glacial cycles.