Waianapanapa

The last stop on the twisting, 52-mile Hana Highway on Maui’s eastern coast before reaching the town of Hana is Waianapanapa State Park. This beach, one of Maui’s finest, offers spectacular, nearly 360-degree panoramic views of the rugged shoreline with sea arches, craggy cliffs, and dramatic black lava outcroppings. The gleaming black sand beach — called Paiola Beach — is rarely crowded, though visitors do stop and snap photos here before heading into Hana, their final destination. There are easy walks along the coastline, including stops at a nearby blowhole, freshwater pools, and ocean caves. One of these walks — a well-marked loop trail from the beach overlook — takes you to two anchialine pools. (Anchialine, in Greek, means “near the sea.”) These are typically small pools that form in limestone or volcanic rock and often have their own unique ecosystems populated by tiny species of crustaceans, fish, and eels. More than half of the world’s known anchialine pools are found in the Hawaiian Islands, and you can visit one right here.