The Sands Of Hawai'i

Hawai'i taught me that there are so many different colors of sand.

I know. Profound.

I'm pretty sure we visited a salt-and-pepper sand beach at some point during our trip, but for some reason those tend to be course-grained sand, which I am not a fan of. Thus, I don't think we stayed long and no pictures were taken. Truthfully, a salt-and-pepper sand beach looks like white sand with dirt mixed into it. I know it's not, but it just looks dirty.

My favorite beach, Mauna Kea, has really fine, white sand. I love the way the white sand looks beneath the water. These are the most beautiful beaches, in my opinion.

My second favorite would be the golden sand beaches. Again, really fine sand that's nice to walk in. The beach we like best in Maui, Po'olenanlena Beach, has golden sand.


Apparently there is a green sand beach on the Big Island, created by the grinding down of lava rock and olivine, but a trip here requires the use of a 4wd vehicle, which we lacked.

Umm. Ours is the one on the right. And, although we did get it to this parking lot near Makalawena Beach after some pretty bumpy roads through a lava field, that is nothing compared to the road leading to the green sand beach.

(Makalawena was a white sand beach, by the way, but not quite as fine as Mauna Kea. Also, hiking 30 minutes on a lava path in the heat of the day to get there kind of takes a little away from the experience. Our travel guide says this long, hot hike dissuades visitors and we could have the beach practically to ourselves. So, we were a little disappointed to be met with quite a few others already on the beach when we got there.)

(Here's a picture of it. As you can see, it's also very pretty. Just a bugger to get to. And also, something's wrong with the saturation. I'm sure the camera was on some weird setting. The beach didn't look this yellow.)



(I don't know why I'm typing all this in parentheses. Apparently the whole story about the rental car and lava fields and the beach at the end of a long, hot hike is not a quick aside so much as a full-fledged rabbit trail I have just spent the last five minutes typing about.)

So, the final type of beach we experienced was the black sand beach. It looks like dirt from afar and then surprisingly feels like fine sand...only black. Hmm. Guess that's where they come up with the name "black sand".

Pololu Beach is the first black sand beach we walked on...after hiking down to it on a trail that started like this:


If you can't read it, those are all manner of signs warning of impending death and destruction should we take the hike or go to the beach.

OK. Not really. But almost.

Here's what the trail looks like:


I guess they aren't kidding about the "watch for falling rocks" warning.

So, we hiked down in flip-flops. Naturally.



We visited a second black sand beach, Punalu'u. The vistas surrounding it weren't nearly as breathtaking, but we did see some beached turtles.

And a lot of Asian tourists that pulled up in a tour bus. (Punalu'u was a bit more accessible than Pololu.)

That does it for my summary of "The Sands of Hawai'i". (I made that up just now and even though it's cheesy I'm leaving it because it's late, and I'm tired.)

P.S. Did you know there are only 14 letters in the Hawaiian language? I'll bet after all the names of these beaches you might be able to guess what the 14 letters are. I think that's why so many of the Hawaiian words have to be so long - they're only using 14 letters.