Big Beach is located south of Wailea at Makena State Park. There are a couple different parking lots, although they seem to fill up very fast. So get there early if you want a good spot. We ended up circling around the lot until someone left and a spot opened up. But of course being on vacation we were in no hurry, and it was certainly worth the wait for a beach like this.
Big Beach was one of our favorite beaches to photograph. During both of our trips to Maui it was certainly not a place for swimming. There were no lifeguards, even though it is one of the biggest and busiest beaches on Maui. Not sure what the story there is. And there are no full facilities here either, only porta potties.
But as you can see, Big Beach is quite a sight. This photo was fairly early in the morning, just as the crowds were starting to pick up.
The photo above is looking to the south from the trail over Pu’u Ola’i. This is the trail to get to Little Beach, but makes for a great spot to take photos of Big Beach as well. I also saw a few turtles swimming and got the photo below just before they disappeared around the corner towards Little Beach. The kid who was snorkeling looked quite surprised to come face to face with a turtle:
The photo below is looking to the North towards Pu’u Ola’i.
It was a great beach to enjoy the sun, sand, and scenery. And also to people watch and walk in the surf. My brother tried swimming in 2008, and had some troubles making it back to shore. While they were there a girl got thrown into the ground while swimming, and apparently ended up with a broken hip. So as I mentioned before I do not recommend swimming here at all. The snorkeler in the photo above was doing fine out in the water, but the problems start at the shore when getting in our out of the water, where the waves crash hard.
I found a great site for checking out the ocean conditions around Maui, and the other islands as well. It has aerial photos, beach descriptions, hazard ratings, and of course surf conditions.
But like I mentioned before, Big Beach was a great place for people watching, enjoying the sun, and watching the waves…
In 2008 above, and 2009 below.
I also found a pretty good website for Makena State Park.
Thanks for reading. Please leave a comment if you like what you saw.