Mahai’lua Beach at Kekaha Kai State Park

You have to really want to visit Mahai’lua Beach to drive down the road to get there. To say the road is unimproved is to put it mildly. In fact, there is a sign about halfway down the road that warns you are entering an unimproved road, just in case you didn’t know. However, the road to the unimproved road is also unimproved, so it makes you wonder how much worse can it get.

Wasn’t bad in my Subaru SUV, but some of the people who care about their suspension (or maybe their kidneys) had turned around and headed back to the highway. It’s about a 15-minute drive, averaging somewhere between 5 and 10 miles per hour. But who is in a hurry? This is Hawaii! You’ll get to Mahai’lua Beach. Eventually.

Mahai’lua Beach is long and wide, with beautiful sand. This is not the most beautiful beach in the Kekaha Kai State Park. There is another beach, but it is a longer walk. From the parking lot, it is about a 1/2 mile walk to the beach, through a gate to a path.

Beyond that beach, you need to navigate another 1/2 mile over lava beds and lava rock to reach the most beautiful beach, known as Makalawena Beach. Best white sand beach in West Hawaii. But we did not reach that beach since it was already mid afternoon, and the walk in hot sun over lava did not appeal to my husband. But we will go there another day.

Waves were high and surf was up the day we were at Makai’lui Beach. We could watch the surfers way off in the distance patiently wait for the best waves. On occasion, there were sets of waves rolling on top of each other. I almost jumped in the water with all of my clothes on but then I realized after the beach, we had to stop at Wal-Mart to exchange a propane tank.

The sun must have made me dizzy because as I stood in line at Wal-Mart to pay for an exchange, I could have sworn the clerk kept talking about cocaine to the guy in front of me. I was thinking, hey, can’t she see I’m standing right here? She shouldn’t be discussing a cocaine transaction in the middle of the store.

When I shared this interaction with my husband, he began to parody JJ Cale’s song, Cocaine: if you want to grill meat, you’ve got to take her out, propane.

This is the same Hawaiian monk seal that we spotted in the small lagoon during our tour a few years ago of the Kona Natural Energy Laboratory. We have only two Hawaiian monk seals on the Big Island, and we found both of them this week at Mahai’lua Beach.

Fortunately, there are volunteers who put up signs and rope off the areas to keep tourists and beachgoers away from the Hawaiian monk seals. The monk seals are an endangered species and endemic to the islands, meaning they are found no place else in the world.

It is also possible to hike about 7 miles south to reach Kua Bay, another popular yet secluded location for a beach. At least Kua Bay is a place you can drive on a paved surface to reach.