When American Factors (Amfac), the owners of the Pioneer Sugar Mill, decided in 1957 to transform the oceanfront cane fields of KA'ANAPALI into a luxury tourist resort, they established a pattern that has been repeated throughout Hawaii ever since. There had never been a town at Ka'anapali, just a small plantation wharf served by a short railroad from the sugar mill at Lahaina. What Ka'anapali did have, however, was a superb white-sand beach – far better than anything at Lahaina – backed by a tract of land that was ripe for development and more than twice the size of Waikiki.
Ka'anapali's first hotel opened in 1963 and has been followed by half a dozen similar giants, whose four thousand rooms now welcome half a million visitors each year. It took a good twenty years before the resort began to feel at all lived in, however, and there's still nothing else here apart from the central, anodyne Whaler's Village mall. Ka'anapali is a pretty enough place, with its two rolling golf courses and sunset views of the island of Lanai filling the western horizon, but it's only worth staying here if you know you're happy with the same bland lifestyle you could find at a hundred tropical resorts around the world.
As for Ka'anapali Beach, it's divided into two separate long strands by the forbidding, 300-foot cinder cone of Pu'u Keka'a, known as the Black Rock. The sand shelves away abruptly from both sections, so swimmers soon find themselves in deep water, but bathing is usually safe outside periods of high winter surf. The rugged lava coastline around the Black Rock itself is one of the best snorkeling spots on Maui.
Nonguests of Ka'anapali's hotels are free to use the main beach, but there are also a couple of public beach parks just around the headland to the south. Both Hanaka'o'o and Wahikuli are right alongside Hwy-30; swimming is generally safer at Wahikuli, but the facilities and general ambience are more appealing at Hanaka'o'o.
Ka'anapali's first hotel opened in 1963 and has been followed by half a dozen similar giants, whose four thousand rooms now welcome half a million visitors each year. It took a good twenty years before the resort began to feel at all lived in, however, and there's still nothing else here apart from the central, anodyne Whaler's Village mall. Ka'anapali is a pretty enough place, with its two rolling golf courses and sunset views of the island of Lanai filling the western horizon, but it's only worth staying here if you know you're happy with the same bland lifestyle you could find at a hundred tropical resorts around the world.
As for Ka'anapali Beach, it's divided into two separate long strands by the forbidding, 300-foot cinder cone of Pu'u Keka'a, known as the Black Rock. The sand shelves away abruptly from both sections, so swimmers soon find themselves in deep water, but bathing is usually safe outside periods of high winter surf. The rugged lava coastline around the Black Rock itself is one of the best snorkeling spots on Maui.
Nonguests of Ka'anapali's hotels are free to use the main beach, but there are also a couple of public beach parks just around the headland to the south. Both Hanaka'o'o and Wahikuli are right alongside Hwy-30; swimming is generally safer at Wahikuli, but the facilities and general ambience are more appealing at Hanaka'o'o.
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