Facing West: My Favorite Maui Sunsets

Ho’okipa Beach Park is just one location on Maui for stunning sunsets. ©Laurel Kallenbach

AUGUST 2023 WILDFIRE UPDATE: My heart goes out to the people of Maui who are impacted by the fires. Donations can be made to the Maui Strong Fund.

As the sun starts to dip toward the horizon on the island of Maui, you can sense the excitement in the air.

Tourists as well as locals plan their day around where they’ll be during the sunset with almost cultish passion. My husband and I worked most of our evening meals around sunset—it’s that exciting and awe-inspiring.

Although there are probably hundreds of spots for sunset watching on the Hawaiian Islands, here are three different locales on Maui where we enjoyed breathtaking color and dramatic cloud formations as daytime morphed into nighttime.

This is definitely island life at its best, and one of the prime reasons to travel to beaches and islands.

The Fiery Blaze

We spent four nights on west-facing Keawakapu Beach at the Hale Hui Kai beach condos, and every evening, a fire dancer arrived and twirled his lit batons as onlookers ooh-ed and ahh-ed. Upstaging him were the brilliant bands of clouds on fire as they were reflected in the water.

A fire dancer added even more local color to sunset at Keawakapu Beach, Maui ©Laurel Kallenbach

Maui’s Keawakapu Beach offers breathtaking sunsets 365 days a year.

You can’t beat Maui’s Keawakapu Beach, in south Kihei,  for sunsets. ©Laurel Kallenbach

The Serene Sunset

On calm Napili Bay, stand-up paddlers tended to float along as the sky lit with stunning pinks and oranges. Most of the nights we stayed at the Napili Kai Beach Resort, we marveled at the splendid sunsets from our private balcony.

A standup paddler takes advantage of the calm waters of Napili Bay on Maui. ©Laurel Kallenbach

The Big Wow

Our friend Sandy drove us to Ho’okipa Beach Park (near the cute town of Paia) just as the sun began to slip into the west. It was our last sunset: two hours later we were boarding the plane to fly home. With a cliff, dramatic lava rocks, and huge waves filled with expert surfers, Ho’okipa Beach Park was the perfect place to cap off our trip to Hawaii.

Sun rays explode through the clouds of Iao Valley. We watched this stunning sunset from Ho’okipa Beach Park on Maui. ©Laurel Kallenbach

Here, bright rays streamed through Iao Valley with biblical illumination. Then we walked down the hill to be closer to the water’s crash on the lava rocks, where we watched the sky turn pink, salmon, cantaloupe, and turquoise. The wind whipped; we could feel ocean spray on our faces. And always the light changed and grew more intense. The Ho’okipa sunset was quite a dramatic sendoff, and it sealed our resolved to visit Maui again soon.

—Laurel Kallenbach, freelance writer and editor

Originally published May 2014