We spent our fourth day, mainly on the beach. On the east side of the Big Island, because of all the volcanic activity, there are not too many traditional white sandy beaches. Instead the beaches are often black sand. We went to two black sand beaches this day.

We started by driving along the Red Road. A beautiful 10 mile scenic drive across the southeast coast of the island. At the end of the Red Road, we found the first black sand beach near Kalapana after a short (~1/2 mi) hike across a recent hardened lava field. This beach was pretty quiet and would have been a nice place to relax for a while. Marion was sleeping in the car, though, so we continued on.

On the way back, we stopped at an unmarked beach along the way called Kahena. Since Marion had just woken up, we decided to bring down our towels and soak up some sun. After we climbed down the rocks to get to this beach, we stumbled into a very interesting local scene, complete with a massive drum circle, a bonfire, and several people taning without lines. This last feature made us think twice before taking out our camera, so we did not get any pictures there. If you're curious what the beach looks like, I did a quick Google search and found a travel blog that posted a few pictures of the beach.

breakfast on the lanai behind our bungalow

hike across the lava flow to get to the Kalapana black sand beach

black sand beach

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