The Green Sand Beach

Hawaii is famous for its beaches.  The standard white sand beach.  The black sand beaches.  And it has a green sand beach.  The green sand is olivine crystals, washed out of the lava over time.  The beach sand is a combination of white sand (from shells) and black sand (from lava), and the green olivine crystals, so although it looks “sort of” green, it’s really just maybe a green tint.


But it is still very rare to have enough olivine to make a difference, so we decided to go see it.   

The beach is near South Point, the southernmost point of the Big Island, and of the United States.  To get there requires a fair amount of driving.  Along the way, you can see a set of wind turbines being used to generate power for Hawaii.

Because South Point is really windy!

And the roads don’t take you to the green sand beach, just close.  Then it is a hike from the end of the road parking lot.  We got there about 12:30, and set off on our hike.


I tried to use my Apple Watch to measure the walk. It said it was 2.62 miles.  Some of that is the difficulty of knowing where to walk.  There is no well-defined trail.  Rather there are a bunch of 4WD pickups that will drive people from the parking lot to the beach and these have worn a variety of tire trails all over.  It is not clear which are the “active” ones and which are old ones, or which are the shortest. So it is just a long hike.


But if you keep the ocean on one side, and just keep hiking


And hiking


Eventually (after about an hour and a half), you find a big outcropping with a cove and a beach.


Not that it is just walking.  The ocean is to your right, and if you look at just the right times, you might be able to see some whales.  Remember from our first boat ride in Honolulu, you don’t really see the whales, just the water that spouts up from their blow holes.


And if you are watching for whales while walking, you are not looking at where your feet are going, which is not a wise thing to do, especially on this walk, since there are lava rocks, clay dirt, truck trails, and such.

Once you get to the beach, you have to climb down the rock wall.  And it is a fairly small beach.


But it is a beach.  So Linda wanted to go into the water.


And she did.


If you look carefully, you can see her in the water here, on her way out, while seeing the entire beach and cove.


Not very many people actually went in the water.

But then it was time to hike back out.  The first problem was climbing up out of the cove to the ground level above.


And then it is another hour and a half hike back to the parking lot.  It was so long, the moon came up!


Followed by the two hour drive back to Keaau, our part of Hawaii.



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