We arrived back in Kailua Kona Monday evening. It’s a nice town, and clearly the real nerve center of the island. If Hilo is the business end of things, and the Kohola Coast, where all of the best beaches and ritziest resorts are, then Kailua is sort of the center of actual life. Along its seawall is Ali’i drive, which is bookended on one side by our hotel, the King Kam, and on the other, the Royal Kona hotel. The thing to do as a tourist in Kona Town (see how I keep switching up what I call it? I’m just like a local now.) is to basically walk up and down Ali’i drive in the evenings, patronizing it’s same 20 shops and choosing which bar/restaurant at which to have a preprandials (a cool word referring to before-dinner drinks I learned from the Jesuits) and pupus (a cool word because it sounds like “poopoos,” which is funny by any measure), and which to have actual dinner. There are many slight variations on a theme among these places, and the theme is: vaguely Polynesian seafood place serving mai tais, Kona brewing company beers, and grilled fresh caught ono, mahi mahi, and ahi tuna (delicious, mercury-riddled) at exorbitant rates. It’s really hard to go that right or wrong with any of these places. Since we were there for 7 nights, we became acquainted with most of them. On the Monday at issue here, I think maybe we ate Huggo’s on the Rocks? Nice beach vibe, good grilled ono, tasty mai tai…you know what?, I won’t belabor the thing you get the picture.
On the way back we made a few of our customary fruitless stops at the boutiques.
Now, from here on out, our days consisted of the following: wake up very early for some reason, hit the beach, come back and shower, go out for pupus and preprandials, then dinner, mull about at a few stores we’d already been in, then head back to the hotel for an early evening. I hope I’m not coming across as being bored by this schedule, because frankly, it rules.
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| One of these places. Kona Canoe Club? |
On Tuesday morning, we were up and out by 7:00am because we wanted to get to Mauna Kea beach, and parking at this public beach is severely curtailed by the private resort which exploits the beach for its own gain and chokes off parking so as not to subject its clientele to the presence of the hoi polloi. We did manage to get a spot, thanks to our very early arrival, and the beach didn’t disappoint. A long white crescent of sand with manageable surf and a mostly sandy bottom? Can do. There’s also the resort’s chichi Hau Tree beach bar right on the sand. We went there. What it lacked in true, ramshackle beach bar charm it made up for in price. But the mai tai was on point.
The question of whether Manua Kea beach was superior to Hapuna beach got Erica and I thinking of what criteria is best to determine what makes a great beach just that. Fastidious readers on the blog may remember when I detailed my city rating system. Here’s the beach system:
Criterion 1: Sand
Is the sand white/light tan and finely ground? Or is it course and dark (and thus hot)? Is it wide enough to build sand castles without them being reclaimed by high tide? Is it too wide (like the beach at Wildwood, NJ), so you have to take special transportation from the boardwalk to the waterline?
Hapuna ranking: 7.5/10. A nice, wide beach. Pretty good sand quality here; light and fine, though not the ideal white white of the Caribbean.
Muana Kea ranking: 7.5/10. Ditto, though not quite as wide.
Greatest in my experience: Bay on St. John; Seven Mile Beach on Grand Cayman. Superfine, super white sand in abundance. Enough to make you want to make sand angels.
Worst in my experience: Butterfly Beach, Santa Barbara, CA. A supposedly lovely beach that is in reality comically narrow and covered with rotting, flea-covered sea detritus. Blech.
Criterion 2: Accessibility
Is it easy to get to? I don’t mean, is it in a foreign country or on a faraway island? (not the beach’s fault), but rather, can you park at it? Is it a long walk carrying all of your chairs and umbrellas and coolers? Is some greedy resort squatting on the beach trying to block public access to it?
Hapuna ranking: 8.5/10. Parking is up a steep hill, but it’s there a plenty.
Muana Kea ranking: 2/10. Manua Kea resort doing its best to deny you access to the beautiful beach.
Greatest in my experience: Stone Harbor, NJ. Plenty of parking to be had. Just drive on up, hop the dune with your gear, and you’re on a great, wide beach.
Criterion 3: Availability
How much of the year can you swim comfortably there? Are there seasons when high surf strips the sand right off the beach, making even the frolicking of landlubbers impossible?
Hapuna Ranking: 9/10, presumably. Water temp is great even around Christmastime. Winter waves might make swimming too hazardous, though.
Manua Kea: Same, since it’s just a mile up the coast.
Greatest in my experience: Rainbow Beach, St. Croix. Crystal blue, amniotic waters all year around, while open enough to avoid the overwarm “bathtub” effect of more sheltered tropical bays (I am really nitpicking here).
Worst in my experience: Hills Beach, Biddeford Pool, ME. A picturesque New England beach whose waters are never quite warm enough to abide, even in August. More of a tease than anything else, really.
Criterion 4: Swimability
This criterium encompasses several not-unrelated considerations: Is the surf consistently so puny or so rough that you don’t have any fun while in the water? Does it have a sandy bottom, or do you risk getting bashed around on dangerous rocks or reefs? Is it good for a particular water sport (surfing, bodysurfing, snorkeling) of your choosing? I like to adjudge my beaches from a primarily bodysurfing perspective; you might have an alternative criterium.
Hapuna ranking: 8/10 (waves if anything can be too big when the surf’s up; great snorkeling)
Muana Kea ranking: 6.5/10 (great snorkeling, good sized waves, some annoying rocks underfoot)
Greatest in my experience: Cocoa Beach, FL. Just miles of sandy bottoms and enough surf to make things interesting.
Worst in my experience: First Beach, Vancouver, BC. Yes, the Great White North has beaches, but not destination beaches. The stagnant water here is filled with bits of trash and pulp. Sand was coarse, to boooot.
Criterion 5: Amenities
This isn’t so much about where the beach is, as what is at the beach, if you take my meaning. For example, Atlantic City’s beach has miles of shops, restaurants, and casinos running alongside it, but they’re not really there as beach-related amenities. On the other hand, Coney Island or Brighton, England are old-timey seashore destinations built up in concert with beachgoing. Waikiki’s kind of like this, too. Anyway, my primary interest here is great beach bars, not kitsch. Also, bathrooms/showers/and changing rooms fit into this category, and are nice haves. You’re welcome to disagree.
Hapuna ranking: 4/10: there’s really only the Three Frogs grill, which is way overpriced and doesn’t serve booze. I recommend the “Killah Fish Tacos” for those who their small chunks of fish sticks lost in mounds of shredded cabbage.
Muana Kea ranking: 6.5/10. Better, because of the fancy Hau Tree bar, but you need plenty of sheckles to hang at that place all day.
Greatest in my experience: White Bay, Jost Van Dyke. It’s all here: the Soggy Dollar, Setty’s One Love Bar, and Ivan’s Stress Free Bar--that’s a murderer’s row. Sadly ravaged by hurricanes this past fall, it remains to be seen whether it recovers its former glory.
Worst in my experience: Lots of beaches don't have any amenities, but how about: Punta Vaca Beach, Vieques, PR. A tiny strip of beach with no amenities, it's showing up here because the poor water visibility ruined our expensive attempt to snorkel there one time. Sure it's not fair, but this ain't your blog.
Criterion 6: Ambiance
Finally, this nebulous criterion captures the overall feeling of being there. Highly subjective, probably, at the upper echelons of competition, but clearly some beaches outshine others in living up to that a special beachy, I’m-at-rest-from-my-labors ideal. Helpful if there’s shade palms and sea grape trees to string up a hammock or two. Aesthetics a major plus, too.
Hapuna ranking: 8.5/10. Feel the aloha.
Muana Kea ranking: 8/10. Lacks something of the community feel with the resort right there, but it does have some nice shade trees when the sun becomes a little too much to bear.
Greatest in my experience: White Bay, again. The backdrop of the BVI and USVI’s sticking up out of the clear blue water across the strait, free hammocks to use at the Soggy Dollar, raggae playing softly in all the bars. Man, just get me there.
Worst in my experience: This seems especially hurtful to rank any beach here, but I’m going to go with Galveston, TX. Tankers in the gulf, and oil welling up between your toes on the beach itself. No thanks, it’s only 6 more hours in the station wagon to South Padre Island.
So, to tab it all up, Hapuna takes the cake over Manua Kea. We did also spend Wednesday afternoon at Waikaloa Beach, just south of Hapuna. It was a pretty, albeit rocky beach with lots of trees growing at horizontal angles to the beach, which was cool. Swimming was made difficult due to the lava rocks lurking in the surf, and the vegetation on the beach meant little bits of organic dross floating atop the water. Glad we went, because we got to mix it up, and since it was a hot day, it was nice to have the shade available, but overall I’ll take my Hapuna.
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| Waikaloa beach. Still better than 99.9% of other places to be. |
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