Writing on black lava with white stones
We ended up at Hapuna Beach by accident. We were heading for the beach at mile 69, which we thought was Wailea Bay, to snorkel. Along the way we stopped to look at all the white stones which people have used to spell names and messages against the dark black lava.
Turns out that the mile 69 beach is one we hadn’t visited before, and is actually the beach at Hapuna Beach State Park. It has the reputation as one of the nicest beaches on the Big Island, and it certainly is a beautiful beach for surf — but not for snorkeling.
Hapuna beach surf
We had carried our snorkel gear to the beach, but only Grant and I used our face masks since we both were wearing contacts. As it turned out, that was probably a wise idea. We went down to play in the surf (unfortunately we’d not brought the boogie board, as we didn’t think we were going to a beach where we could use it). The surf was breaking hard. I did a complete 360 in one wave. My mask started to come off, but I put my hand over it and held it on. Grant was not so lucky on a later wave as it knocked his mask right off, and he lost it. Another wave flipped his shirt right over his head.
For most of the day we sat in the shade and red. It was pretty hot, but we had a very nice large fig tree that we could sit under and stay cool.