Hawaii: Honaunau snorkeling & Lava beach (Day 7)

Our 7th day in Hawaii, we went to a second snorkeling spot on the Big Island. It was a recommendation from the owner of the coffee estate where we were staying. The name of the spot was Pu'uhonua O Honaunau, but it's also known as "City of Refuge" because it was a place where societal outcasts found solace.

This became my favorite spot to snorkel because there was probably 1/4 mile of bright coral at a depth of 10-50 feet, starting immediately at the shoreline. We snorkeled here 3 mornings in a row. Unfortunately the GoPro camera didn't capture the in-person brightness of the coral underwater. This video shows me cruising out to a spot where it dropped off very deep. If I'd kept traveling more to the left, there was no drop off and the coral and fish just kept going. As you can see, snorkeling here feels like you're flying over an underwater forest:

They even had what looked like a mess of cinder blocks from an old structure, but was actually an underwater message that spelled "aloha". You can see the "A" in the first picture below, and then the entire word "aloha" in the background of the second picture:

While at this location (which we just called "honaunau", pronounced "hoh-now-now"), I caught this sea turtle swimming up near the surface and then diving down to eat vegetation from the bottom. This was my favorite video that I shot for our entire time in Hawaii:

Later that day, we tried out some other beaches along the western coast of the Big Island. We tried Makalawena beach (which we now refer to as "the lava beach"). The road immediately off of the highway turned into this:

For 5-7 minutes of driving, there was about as much off-roading that you'd want to do in a rental car when you didn't buy full coverage. Once we reached the parking area, we walked 5 minutes to get to Mahailua Bay. We followed the trail below to get to another beach at Puu Alii Bay:

See that cluster of trees way off in the distance? Alisha had read online that the trees out at the end of this trail marked a secluded beach with clear water. It sounded like it was one of the better beaches on the island. The unfortunate thing was that we walked 20 minutes across this lava field and then found a "Private Property" sign posted where the trees started. We tried walking around an alternate path and peered to the beach area, but it didn't seem worth the rest of the walk, so we just came back. It was about 40 minutes of walking across "hot lava" (okay, mostly just warm) but it ended up with a fun story of failure. You can see the road and trail we took using google maps by clicking here.

We went up the highway a little bit to preview the beach where we'd spend our last day in Hawaii. Then we drove back, hit a rainstorm, and then had dinner at Bubba Gump's with the ocean crashing beside us.