Beach #67, much more interesting than it sounds (Hawaii)

Hope you didn’t think that my story about the Big Island, Hawaii, ended at the beach next to Kona airport 😉 The island is indeed big and very diverse. Even this beach at Kona side of the island looked totally different from Makalawena. It’s a cozy cove with yellow sand surrounded by black rocks and trees.

It’s called after the electric pole #67 by Old Puako Road where you’d have to stop to get to the beach. I doubt you could find a label that would wholly reflect the atmosphere of this spot in any case, so never mind the numeric name of the beach.

Upon arrival, I first had a short walk, enjoying the views from the rocks.

Meanwhile, my friend Tod started snorkeling already.

He saw a turtle pass by next to him, and although I’d seen a few sea turtles before, I was looking forward to seeing them here, in shallow and clear waters.

Coming down to water, I noticed a pretty stunning example of fossilized life –

– white snail shells encrusted into black lava. Crabs were on contrary black… and alive! 🙂

Even more life could be seen under water. I couldn’t identify this kind of fish,

but just as I reached Tod, we saw the fish that we both were eager to find –

humuhumunukunukuāpuaʻa, or reef triggerfish in simple English – the state fish of Hawaii (the concept of state fishes was totally new to me btw).

After that, we saw pretty big shoals of yellow tangs and many other fishes,

including pufferfish

and moray eel.

Besides snorkeling and sunbathing,

this place seemed good for climbing trees, because the trees had a lot of horizontal branches. However, I managed to fall from a tree and even hit another branch on the way to the ground, maybe exactly because it seemed so easy to climb trees there and it made me less cautious. Luckily, I wasn’t hurt seriously and after a pause I was back on the trees again.

This time I made sure to have at least 3 points of support

or even held myself with all fours.

Later in the afternoon, several quails came by;

they seemed to be totally accustomed to humans. In case you forget your beach snack, you may be lucky to find their eggs (quail eggs don’t have salmonella and are even safe to eat raw), but we didn’t see any.

While sunbathing before our departure, I was going though the guidebook and picking locations for our next adventures at Puna side of the island. Stay tuned!