Beach
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A small Wailea cove with reef on the point, used by every South Maui dive school, sharing one modest car park with Mokapu.
Ulua is a short scoop of sand between two lava points in the middle of Wailea, and it is the beach South Maui teaches people to snorkel and dive at. The reason is the point between Ulua and Mokapu, the cove immediately north: a finger of lava with reef along both sides in five to twenty-five feet of water, close enough to shore that you are over fish within thirty seconds of putting your face down, and sheltered enough that on a normal morning the entry is a walk rather than a scramble.
Local dive shops have used it for open-water certifications for decades. On any given morning you will see a line of students in the shallows learning to clear a mask, and the beach's second, smaller population of people who have come to swim being politely patient about it. If you want to see what the bottom of South Maui actually looks like without paying for a boat, this is the cheapest way.
The fish list is the standard Hawaiian reef set and is better than the neighbouring beaches: butterflyfish, several wrasses, uhu chewing at the coral, goatfish, the occasional octopus if you are patient, and honu grazing on the rocks. Eagle rays turn up. Visibility on a flat morning is good; by early afternoon the trade winds have arrived, the surface is textured and the sand is in suspension.
The constraint is parking. Ulua shares one small car park with Mokapu, off Ulua Beach Road, and it fills by mid-morning almost every day between December and April. There is a workaround and it is worth knowing before you circle the lot for twenty minutes: park in the south lot at Keawakapu, off Kilohana Drive, and walk five minutes south along the sand through Mokapu. The beaches connect.
Restrooms and outdoor showers sit at the access. There is no lifeguard and no food.
From Kahului Airport take the Mokulele Highway and the Piʻilani Highway (Route 31) south through Kīhei, exit towards Wailea, and join Wailea Alanui Drive. Ulua Beach Road turns makai off it and ends at the shared Ulua/Mokapu public car park. Allow 35 to 45 minutes from the airport, ten from central Kīhei.
The lot is free and small, and between December and April it is commonly full by mid-morning. The reliable alternative is the Keawakapu south lot off Kilohana Drive, five minutes' walk north-then-south along the sand through Mokapu.
The paved Wailea Beach Path runs past the top of the beach, linking Mokapu, Ulua, Wailea and Polo, so one parking space can serve the whole coast on foot.
Rideshare works in Wailea in daylight and thins after dark. The Maui Bus serves the Wailea corridor on a limited schedule.
Enter off the sand at the northern end of Ulua, towards the rocks, and swim out along the point with the lava on your right. The reef steps down from about five feet close in to twenty or twenty-five feet out towards the tip.
Gear: the entry is sand, so reef shoes are optional. A float or a bright cap is sensible given how many divers and students are in the water here.
Ulua and Mokapu share a single small public car park off Ulua Beach Road, reached from Wailea Alanui Drive. It is free. It holds a modest number of cars — think dozens, not hundreds — and it has to serve two beaches, several dive classes and everyone using the north end of the Wailea Beach Path.
Between December and April it is full by mid-morning, sometimes by eight.
The workaround: park in the Keawakapu south lot off Kilohana Drive, which is larger and is almost always the last one to fill, then walk south along the sand for about five minutes through Mokapu. You arrive at the same point from the other side, and you can start your snorkel from Mokapu rather than Ulua and avoid the dive students entirely.
Other options are the free public lots at Wailea Beach and Polo Beach further south, both connected by the paved beach path — but those fill early too, and they are further from the reef.
Do not park in resort structures or on kerbs that are signed against it. Wailea enforces.
Restrooms and outdoor showers are at the Ulua access. There is no concession, no rental hut and no lifeguard tower.
Ulua is the standard South Maui shore dive and the standard training site. If you are getting certified on Maui, there is a good chance your open-water dives will happen here, because the entry is forgiving, the depth builds gradually and the reef starts close to shore.
For certified divers doing it independently, the usual profile is out along the point, down the wall to around twenty-five or thirty feet, and back along the shallower shelf. It is a site for fish behaviour and small things — cleaner wrasse stations, octopus, moray eels in the rock, the occasional white-tip asleep under a ledge — rather than dramatic topography.
Two practical cautions. The first is traffic: on a weekday morning there may be three separate classes in the water, and a group of eight students with new buoyancy control is not something you want to surface into. The second is the same wind clock as everywhere on this coast — dive early, and be out before the afternoon chop makes the exit unpleasant.
Night diving happens here too and the site changes character completely after dark. Do it with a shop that knows the entry rather than improvising.
The Wailea shoreline is four connected coves, linked north to south by the paved Wailea Beach Path: Mokapu, Ulua, Wailea and Polo. They are close enough to walk between in minutes and different enough to be worth choosing between.
If you want one morning to cover it: park at Keawakapu's south lot, snorkel Ulua's point, walk the beach path south to Polo and back. That is two or three hours, costs nothing and gives you the whole coast.
Ulua is also where the honest answer to "is Wailea good for snorkelling?" lives. The resort beaches themselves are not. This little cove is.
Operators run these trips past Ulua, or stop there as part of a longer route. We list what the booking data supports — not everything that mentions the name.
Booking through these earns us a commission from Viator. You pay the same, and payment did not decide what is listed.
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It is the best shore snorkelling in Wailea and one of the better spots on the south shore. The reef runs along the lava point between Ulua and Mokapu in five to twenty-five feet of water, starting close enough to the sand that you are over fish within a minute. Enter at the northern end of the beach and follow the rock out, staying inside the tip. Go before ten, because South Maui's trade winds arrive around midday and take the visibility with them.
In the small free public car park off Ulua Beach Road, which Ulua shares with Mokapu Beach. It holds only dozens of cars and is regularly full by mid-morning from December through April. The workaround is to park in the Keawakapu south lot off Kilohana Drive, which is bigger, and walk about five minutes south along the sand through Mokapu. The paved Wailea Beach Path also links the whole coast on foot.
Yes, and it is the standard South Maui shore dive and training site. The entry is sandy and forgiving, depth builds gradually along the point to around twenty-five or thirty feet, and the reef starts close in, which is why local dive shops run open-water certifications here. Expect company: on a weekday morning there may be several classes in the water. Dive early, both for conditions and to get ahead of the students, and be out before the afternoon chop.
No. None of the Wailea beaches — Mokapu, Ulua, Wailea or Polo — has a county lifeguard tower. Conditions are usually gentle, with a sandy entry and small surf, but there is nobody watching the water and no flag system. The nearest staffed towers on the south shore are at the Kamaʻole Beach Parks in Kīhei to the north and at Mākena State Park to the south. Snorkel with someone, and stay inside the point.
They are two small coves either side of the same lava point, sharing one car park. Ulua is the busier of the two and has the dive schools; Mokapu, immediately north, is quieter and gives you the other face of the same reef, often with turtles grazing on it. If Ulua's sand is crowded with students, walk over to Mokapu and swim the point from that side. Both connect to the Wailea Beach Path above the sand.
