From black sand to white sand.
Kahalu’u State Park is, to me, the heartbeat of this island. It’s a black sand beach with a lava corridor into the ocean. Locals and tourists arrive here to swim, snorkel, picnic, and talk story. There’s a beat-up pavilion with a tin roof that’s been patched a hundred times, a lifeguard tower, and some randomly spaced hibachis. The star of the show here is a big, shallow lagoon, filled with all kinds of saltwater creatures. Next week the whole lagoon is closed for coral spawning.
On our way out of the Kahalu’u lagoon we see tons of fish, including the ever present armada of bright yellow tang.
Just beyond the lagoon exit is a portal to another world - a vent where cool fresh water from the lava tubes spills into the salty sea. The effect challenges our senses with mixing water temps and a blurry halo cline where fresh meets salt.
Kekau thrilled us with his free diving underwater passage through a tunnel just outside Magics. He picked up a few shells on his way through.
Our plan is to swim around the lagoon, then swim out to sea a bit, along the shore, then to Magic Sands - a white sand beach, about a mile away. It takes a bit of car shuffling, but we’ve done this many times and the logistics are nailed down. As we swim along the shore, the coral is in fantastic shape. We could hear, then see, a pod of Hawaiian spinner dolphins, and they passed us by just offshore. Some of us practiced freediving in about 25 feet of water before we carefully exited the Pacific at Magics. I say carefully because the surf is really powerful here, and the waves seem to come out of nowhere, so we don’t turn our backs on Mother Ocean.
After the swim, we sit on a lava rock wall and drink seltzer, one of my favorite pastimes here.
After some solid naps and delicious lunch back at our Poly-Scandi house, Waialea Bay looked pretty choppy, so Kekau suggested a trip to Mau'umae Beach, a 10-minute drive north of here, adjacent to Kamehameha’s famous temple. There’s a ½ mile or so hike to the beach, which keeps it uncrowded. In the foothills above the trail, part of the Ala Kahaka’i system, you can see the stone walls that formed parts of the ancient complex here,
The second Amanda to help us keep our bodies feeling good this week arrived, this one being our massage therapist. She and her friend Daniel plied their magic on the group, and afterward we enjoyed blackberry smash cocktails that Clare started and I finished in the shaker.
Chicken curry for dinner, over which Heather and I talked about SwimVacation’s origins, as well as our recent foray into trying to figure out marketing in the post-print ad, post- traditional google search world. Our guests had lots of good thoughts about this, and it feels so great to know they support us and our little company. Bread pudding and ice cream for dessert. Sleeping winds blow in the trees.
Hopper
