Little Beach Maui

Little Beach, Makena, Maui

Little Beach, Maui is located just North of Big Beach (Makena Beach) in South Maui. The best way to get there is by entering the first entrance at Big Beach and, once on the sand, walking to your right. You'll see a cliff with red-black rock at the end of the beach that has a path etched into it. You'll half-climb to the top and then walk down to the beach.

Little Beach is by far one of the most beautiful beaches in the Hawaiian Islands. The narrow entry provides enough seclusion and discretion for it to become a nudist beach. Is it legal to be naked on Little beach? No, this is one of those laws that really isn't enforced. During the week, the beach is 95% filled with nude sunbathers. Some people choose to wear clothes, and they're mostly tourists. The Northern end of the beach is known as the gay part of the beach. If you wander over there, you'll quickly see that it's saturated with gay men. The rest of the beach is ambiguously mixed with people of varying sexual preferences, different ages, genders, and physical appearance. The water here is perfect. The white sand makes the water a bright turquoise shade of blue. Most people are low-key at Little Beach. You'll find that the most excitement you'll encounter will be a nude game of Frisbee, some naked body surfing, and nudists walking back and forth along the water line to even out their tans. Actually, the most excitement can be found on Sunday nights.


Sunday Nights at Little Beach

Every Sunday night at Little Beach a large group of people gather to enjoy a very unique tradition. As the sun goes down, everyone cheers for the sunset in hopes for a green flash of light as a finale. After and during this, a drum circle feverishly livens the air with a rootsy rhythm. The percentage of nude to clothed is more even with around 70% nude to 30% clothed on Sunday nights due to all the curious visitors. Once the sun has gone down, all kinds of fire dancers come out of the woodwork. You'll find old naked ladies twirling burning spears as well as small children taking turns with flaming hula hoops. On occasion, you'll find some extra creative dancers with exotic fire contraptions. One gentleman wears a flaming steel bra as well as a blazing rope penis. Wild? You really have to see it to believe it. Some of the dancers are mediocre and a bit too sexually provocative. Others are well-trained and brilliant to watch as they masterfully twirl chains with flaming balls in a controlled and visually stunning manner. Photographs and video footage taken of these performers are not encouraged, but also not forbidden. Many of the dancers, nude or not, enjoy the extra attention. Setting your camera to a lower shutter speed with the flash off can result in some powerful images, as you can see from the Little Beach pictures on this page. All of the Sunday Night festivities end rather early these days around 9pm. At this time, the dancing and drumming ceases and dozens of people take turns scurrying back over the cliff with the aid of a few helpful flashlights.


Surfing Little Beach Maui

You'll see in this Little Beach photo, the naked guy paddling up the face gives a whole new meaning to backside surfing. Though it doesn't break very often, Little Beach waves can be fun with the right South or West swell. The wave breaks over shallow reef on the left side of the beach. Waves can break all up and down the beach, but the best surf spot is the left-hander off of the rocks to the left. Surfing at Little Beach is not without its frustrating points. Dodging naked people in the lineup is difficult and distracting. On some days, the amounts of nudists are so many, that you can't even take off on a wave without running over a couple bodies. If you like to surf naked, this is the place to go. If you choose to, please use a softer, cold-water wax. We'd hate to see you lose more than your clothes when surfing Little Beach, Maui.

Little Beach photos taken by Natalie Brown Photography.