Cruise ship day, so we decided to get out of town…
This is not what you want to see parked in the bay.
After five days in Hawaii, we FINALLY put on bathing suits and went to the beach! (I know, I know ..) We (“I”) decided to try Manini’owali Beach in Kua Bay, just north of Kona, because it was listed as one of the top 5 beaches on Big Island, described as having Caribbean-like sands and big surf that can get “rough”. Now, I like me a rough surf. In fact, a friend and I spent about an hour body-surfing onto the beach in Maui until we were so tired we could barely stand up. However, the surf at Manini’owali was something else entirely. My friend Chrystal once wrote a blog post describing how at a beach she once got caught in a strong surf near shore and had to be helped out of it by a stranger who noticed she was having trouble standing up. Well, I totally get it. The waves coming in were so strong that they could easily knock you over if you were off-balance, and the beach floor was so uneven that it was hard to be up and balanced again before another wave was roaring in. I tried to follow the example of the beach experts and dive under the waves but the pull of the surf was still really strong. I stayed in the water long enough to get tired from a) being a bit scared and b) fighting the waves. Jeff declined to swim at all, so after we sat around in the sun and I read a bit of my book, I suggested a change of beaches.
Post Swim Selfie
Our first attempt was Hapuna beach, which hit the top 5 list at Number 1. We headed further north up the cost straight into a bunch of rain, so we u-turned and decided to wing it. We ended up at Kukio Beach, which is accessed through the Four Seasons Resort entrance (you get directed down a side road to a spot with free parking AND a bathroom!) Kukio Beach is not a fabulous swimming beach, because it’s littered with lava outcroppings and the sand is very grainy and rough enough to cut your foot (as I found out). However, the beach is COVERED in green sea turtles who have crawled up out of the ocean to have a nap.
There were so many!!
It’s also turns out to be a great spot for snorkeling because tons of little tropical fish like to dart around the lava rocks. We didn’t actually have snorkeling gear, but Jeff had a pair of 2X magnifying swim goggles which we shared in order to goggle at the fish. Among the other perks – the lava flows break the waves so it’s not terrifying to drift around in the water, the beach is not busy at all, and we saw a whale frolicking out in the ocean.
If you look closely, you can see Jeff “swimming”
We added two more entries to our animal species list:
- Green Sea Turtle
- Humpback Whale
We also saw another mongoose, which was excellent because this time we knew what it was. It’s entirely possible that they are the Hawaiian version of a rat.
Sea turtles…..sigh. I have to add that my Hawaiian wave incident involved having my bottoms fill with sand in a near disasterous manner…