Beach reviews across Oahu, Maui, Kauai, and the Big Island
18 beaches reviewed in Hawaii
Easy AccessThe Kauai east-shore family beach on Hawaiian Home Lands, where locals walk from the homestead community to a half-mile bay protected by an offshore reef. Calm at the east end, dangerous at the river mouth, and quiet on most weekday mornings.
Easy Access
Easy AccessThe West Maui beach most travel articles still call Airport Beach, named for the small Kaanapali airstrip that closed in 1986. Free parking, a reef off the sand, sea turtles in the lagoon, and underwater humpback whale song from December through March. Easier than Kaanapali next door.
ModerateHidden behind Ka'uiki Head on Maui's remote Hana coast, Kaihalulu is a striking red sand beach formed from crumbling volcanic cinder. Reaching it means navigating a narrow, eroding trail that keeps most visitors away.
ModerateThe Kauai North Shore bay where the Kalihiwai River meets the ocean. A crescent of gold sand backed by ironwood trees, a calm summer swim, an expert winter surf break, a kayakable river running inland, and almost no facilities. The North Shore's quietest accessible beach.
ModerateA mile of soft North Shore sand with a shorebreak that has killed people who never intended to swim, and a calm summer version that looks like a different beach entirely.
ModerateThe Kauai beach where Highway 56 runs out, the Na Pali coast begins, and the reef-protected lagoon turns into a swimming pool in summer. The reservation is real, the construction in 2026 is bigger than most guides admit, and the snorkeling window is narrower than it looks.
Easy AccessThe Big Island county park most surfers call Pine Trees, with multiple peaks along a lava-and-sand coastline north of Kona. Surf, tide pools, and camping in one gated park with restrooms, BBQ pavilions, and a 5:30am-9pm gate. Kona's most accessible local surf beach.
Easy AccessThe reddish-sand beach two minutes south of Hana on Maui's east shore, with cone-shaped Alau Island offshore and the Ka Iwi o Pele cinder hill behind. Photograph it. Picnic on it. Do not swim in it.
ModerateThe Kauai north-east shore half-moon bay where Gilligan's Island was filmed in 1963 and almost nobody has been since. Treacherous currents in the centre, calm at the ends, no lifeguard, no facilities, and limited parking on a residential road. Quiet on purpose.
ModerateThe West Maui snorkel beach at Mile Marker 14, with 450 acres of fringing coral reef, reliable Hawaiian green sea turtle sightings, occasional manta rays, and a tide-dependent entry that the rental-car blogs rarely warn about clearly.
ModerateThe South Maui white-sand beach hidden behind a kiawe-tree screen between Wailea Beach and Polo Beach. Locally called White Rock for the lava rocks that frame it. Calm morning swim, decent snorkel on the rock points, no parking lot, no facilities, no lifeguard.
ModerateThe Princeville beach 191 steps below the bluff that fronts the resort everyone now calls 1 Hotel Hanalei Bay. Reef-protected swim in summer, dangerous in winter, no lifeguard, no facilities, no roadside parking. The view across to Hanalei is the reason to make the climb.
Easy AccessThe Kauai west-shore family beach named for the active Hawaiian salt-making ponds beside it. A reef-protected crescent that swims like a pool, lifeguards on duty, and one of the few beaches in the state where Hawaiian sea salt is still harvested by hand.
Easy AccessThe Kauai south-shore beach with the 40-foot cliff Harrison Ford jumped off in Six Days Seven Nights. The cliff is the photo, not the activity. The real reason to come is the Maha'ulepu Heritage Trail that starts behind the sand.
ModerateThe Kauai snorkel beach where most visitors arrive with a map that is wrong, a reservation they did not need, and a parking plan that stopped working in 2022. Get those three things right and it is still one of the most unusual reef systems in Hawaii.
Easy AccessHawaii's most famous beach is a narrow strip of partly imported sand backed by a wall of high-rise hotels and fronted by warm, gentle Pacific waves perfect for beginner surfers. Iconic, crowded, expensive, and still somehow worth seeing at least once.
Easy AccessThe Kauai west-shore beach where Captain Cook first stepped foot on the Hawaiian Islands in 1778. Black sand from the red-dirt river runoff, a historic state pier, plantation cottages behind the dunes, and a swim that almost nobody does because the water is genuinely too murky to enjoy.