Titillating fodder for debate, it beckons, baffles, or bothers, depending on who you ask. Welcome to Little Beach.īaring it all on Hawaiʻi’s beaches is mildly controversial. Oh, one small detail: Many of these people are nude.
Further away, a pair of 20-somethings hula-hoop at the water’s edge, their peals of laughter infectious. Onlookers murmur in delight as her body transforms into a living, curving canvas. Nearby, a bearded gentleman armed with an assortment of paints applies deft strokes of color to a woman’s shoulders. A drum circle studded with a tambourinist and a couple of loose-limbed men wielding maracas supplies a heady tempo to a crowd eager to groove. Out in the water, bodysurfers glide onto incoming swells, while on the sand, people sing and dance, mingle and lounge. Below, in a secluded cove, a halcyon scene unfolds: Throngs of people cavort in the glittering haze of late afternoon. Heading north beyond an outcropping of lava on Maui’s Mākena Beach, intrepid beachgoers follow a well-trodden path to a craggy, windswept bluff. On Maui’s south shore, beachgoers revel in a community where conservative mores are needed as much as clothes are: not at all.
