Hawaii: 2 days in Maui
As part of my 10-day cruise to Hawaii back in October, we stopped at the Maui port for 2 days. This means that we still returned back onto our cruise ship to sleep, but we spent most of our day out in Maui aside from that. Of course, we didn’t have to get off and could have stayed on the ship the whole time we were at Maui too, but we were dying to get off after spending 5 days at sea lol.
Related: Read about everything we did and ate during our cruise on Royal Caribbean Quantum of the Seas.
To get off the cruise, we actually had to take a tether boat because they don’t actually allow cruise ships to dock onto the port (or maybe or ship is too big? Not sure). Tether boats are these yellow emergency boats attached to the cruise, so you basically get off the ship onto a smaller and more rocky boat and have to ride 15 minutes before you are actually on shore. My friends who have gotten sea sick on the cruise had to survive those last 15 minutes before they were re-united with land. The tether boat wait was around 20-40 minutes and the last tether boat back is around 9 or 10pm, so if you miss that you will need to find somewhere else to sleep in Maui.
Side note: the morning we docked in Maui, we actually had to wait 2-3 hours before we could get on our earliest tether boat. This is because we had to line up to pass immigration as our cruise originally departed from Vancouver. If you have a special pass or membership, you may get to skip this line/process.
Things to do
Here’s everything we did in our 2 days in Maui. We did rent a 7-person van for both days, which costed around $80 USD per person per day.
Kaanapali Beach
Because we had a slow start to our first day in Maui due to lining up to pass immigration, we decided to just chill and hang out in Maui. We actually spent most of our day at Kaanapali beach because it was kind of nearby the area. What did we do, you ask? We literally just played with waves lol.
For a lot of us, it was our first time in Hawaii. We found this random beach to be so beautiful! The water was warm, the soft was sand, and it was so fun just swimming and playing in the water. The waves were pretty strong even though we didn’t swim very far. For example, I was caught in one wave and my bottom bikini pants were stripped off my body lol. My friends also lost their sunglasses so be careful!
With some towels or chairs, you can definitely spend half the day just relaxing on the beach. We had some snacks and drinks too and hosed ourselves off before changing in the car.
Road to Hana
The road to Hana is a 64.4-mile-long stretch on the highway. It basically is a long scenic drive with lots of different stops along the way. If you want to fully complete the road to Hana, it can take 5 hours just one way! We couldn’t complete it as you end up totally on the other side of the island, so we only did around halfway and turned back. The road is very narrow and windy, but beautiful views of the coast.
Twin falls
Twin Falls was one of our first stops on the road to Hana. There are supposed to be 2 waterfalls (one should be on the left), but there wasn’t one so in our photo you can only see the one on the right. This area had a little pond where you could swim near/under the waterfall. You can also climb up and jump down as well since the area by the waterfalls have a much deeper hole. The water was really cold though, it reminded me of the jumping holes in North Vancouver.
There is 1 food truck here where you can buy some snacks and beverages, but they sold out quickly. Washrooms are outhouses and they smelled terrible.
Keโanae Peninsula
This was our last stop before we turned around. This is more like a lookout/scenic point because you can’t swim here as the waves are too rough. But it’s very beautiful and interesting to see the black formations that we haven’t spotted in other places yet.
Where to eat
Fish Market Maui
We looked up poke in Maui, and this was one of the places that popped up. We actually had to wait around 30-40 minutes for them to get their poke supply. We purchased 2 or 3lbs of tuna poke and it costed us over $100 USD. Spoiler alert: this was way too much poke and it’s quite expensive, but we ate it throughout the day.
Fish Market Maui is more like a local fish shop. There isn’t really a place for you to sit down and eat, so it’s more of a takeout place. I liked eating the poke with the chips though!
ABC store
Also like the tourists we are, we stopped by a local ABC store in search for the basic so spam musubi, which is kind of like a giant “sushi” using spam meat. They are usually a couple of dollars and have different seasonings or toppings (like eggs). Personally I think having it once is enough for me as I don’t find it extraordinary, but it makes for a nice small snack.
Meanwhile, my boyfriend ate 1 a day almost lol.
Maui island coffee
This was a coffee shop really close to the port, so we stopped here on the morning to get some Hawaiin coffee. The iced coffee was quite sweet and tasty. It was quite pricey though, at almost $5-6 USD.
Monkeypod Kitchen
Monkeypod Kitchen is a farm-to-table restaurant and bar located inside an outdoor shopping mall. We came here for dinner on night 1 because luckily they don’t take reservations so we were able to get in as a table of 6 after a 40 minute wait. Please read my full review of everything we tried here.
Nuka
Nuka is where we ate dinner on our second night in Maui. It was close to the Keโanae Peninsula, which is where we stopped our road to hana tour. It is a Japanese and sushi restaurant, and quite expensive if you are going to order alot of sushi but the quality of the fish is fresh. Read my full review of Nuka here.
Foodieland
Foodieland sounds like a place I should permanently live in, but it’s actually a giant chain of supermarkets. We actually asked the ABC store worker where her favourite poke place is, and she suggested Foodieland! So we went in and it’s a big supermarket where you can buy your groceries, but they also have a section for hot foods (like karaage bowls) and a whole section for fresh poke!
There are so many different ones to choose from that I was already instantly loving Foodieland more than the Fish Market we went to on day 1. For a bowl of rice and 2 scoops of poke, it can cost around $10-13 USD. This is enough to share with 2 people!
For our 2 flavours, we chose the shoyu tuna because they said it is the most popular among locals. We also chose a spicy mayo salmon poke for our second flavour. Both tasted good with the rice and it was a good deal!
Final thoughts
We had a lot of fun exploring Maui for 2 days. Granted, we didn’t really do much because we spent most of our first day just at a beach playing with waves lol. But I liked that we didn’t have a set itinerary because I also feel like there’s not that much to do in Maui. Even if we had 5 hours to complete the road to Hana, I’m not sure if we actually wanted to do that since the drive can be quite tedious and there are long in-between spots where you are just sitting in a car all day.
I highly recommend renting a car because it’s hard to get around Maui without one. It feels quite rural and simple island life. Most of the attractions are beaches, waterfalls, a garden, etc.
Again, we chose to stay more on one side of the island because we had to make it to the last tether boat before 10pm at night, so we didn’t really get to see the entire island of Maui.
Sincerely, Loewe