13. August 2022

Day 71: Big Island - Kealakekua Bay & Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau Park

Kealakekua Bay

We got up early to beat the crowd and enjoy a swim in the Kealakekua Bay. Sometimes there are even dolphins that are resting from the night, but we weren’t lucky in that regard. But let’s start at the beginning.

Our 06:00 got us out of bed, then Breakfast and we were on our way ~07:15. It was around a 30 minutes drive and we were lucky with the parking, but it was limited and not too much later and it would have been full.

The trail to Kealakekua Bay isn’t the standard “walk to the beach/bay” it’s a steep hike down (and later back up), it started in some high grass.

A bit later on, it was really overgrown, which was good from a shade point of view, but not to pleasant to walk through.

It started then to open up and we got some pretty views. But the trail also became steeper and the loose ground was sometimes a bit “slippery”.

The Bay itself is just stunning and when we arrived at 08:30 it was pretty empty. So we didn’t wait long and jumped in and explored the underwater life.

Only tricky part was to get out of the water, it was slippery and to get in we just jumped from an old wall… But we managed that :)

We relaxed a bit, ate second breakfast and then started the climb up. As we left, it started to get really crowded and the bigger tour boats arrived.

So it was definitely worth it to get up early and enjoy the Bay without the crowds.

Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau

Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau (aka the park with the hardest name) is a heritage park which provides more information about the past of the Hawaii natives. There were 2 self guided tours through the NPS app which were well made and provided some interesting history.

First we did the Royal Ancestor tour and then the 1871 trail, which was even before then part of a large network of trails, but got expanded to the “two horse standard”. This means that there is always enough space for two horses to cross on the trail.

It was a beautiful stretch along the coast which we followed and we saw nobody except a group of 4. Which surprised us a bit, but it felt overall that Big Island is a bit less touristic compared with Maui.

And on

It was close to 14:00 and we decided to eat something healthy and quick (Burger King 😂) and then go back to the Banyan Tree Sanctuary. There I went for a run, for which it wasn’t easy to find a suitable route. But I stitched two “One Lane Roads” in the neighborhood together and only had a really short stretch along the highway. Nicole did some Yoga. We did a short swim and she captured the sunset.