Sprawling along Maui's northern coast, Kapalua is a quick scenic drive up from Kaanapali on Route 30. Kapalua, like Kaanapali, has golf-courses and tennis courts to supplement carefully tended beachside resorts. Kapalua has the prerequisite palms and seascapes with a few smaller beaches—Kapalua Bay and D.T. Fleming Beach have both been ranked as two of America's best beaches—that offer more solitude than beaches further south.
Book any number of water-related activities at the resorts in Kapalua or practice your swing on the three golf courses. Join a clinic or take lessons if still more practice is called for.
A local dive company rents out gear, gives instruction and provides organized dives or snorkelling trips. Take a scooter dive or a kayak dive (this means you kayak to your dive site, not actually dive with a kayak) if ordinary scuba seems inadequate in this extraordinary place. For those just itching to saddle up and ride the Hawaiian range, a local ranch gives guided horseback excursions around Kapalua.
For an education in flora and fauna, the Maunalei Arboretum is open to visitors on tours, or join a group for a guided walk through a pineapple plantation. For all the sweating and steaming in this tropical paradise of palms you will get your very own Hawaiian pineapple, so wipe the perspiration from your brow and press on.
When this brush with nature leaves you feeling artistic or your tennis elbow niggles, pass an afternoon at the Kapalua Art School learning how to paint your impressions of sunlight on palm fronds and rainbows in whale spouts.
Kapalua is ten miles north of Lahaina and 33 miles from Kahului.
