Madness

Ok, so I went here. This place is totally insanely luxurious, I could hardly believe my eyes. But it's not like I was lying on the beach by the hotel, sipping a margarita and getting a back rub courtesy of the manager... no no. The resort by law is requiered to allow public access to its beaches, so in order to keep the public off the fancy tourist brochure beach they make the walking trail there about a mile long from the public parking lot. Most people simply couldn't be bothered and go to Hapuna or Mauna Kea instead.

The de facto public beach at Mauna Lani, in the Holoholokai Beach Park is actually not too bad either. It's not made of fine sand at all, but rather from coarse sand and gravel-sized bits of lava and coral. The coral grows on a submerged lava platform which is mostly pahoehoe-lava (flat, smooth lava with the occasional lava ropes on the surface, much like the lavas in Þingvellir). Swimming would be probably be rather painful at this beach, but it hosts a bunch of tidepools, and you can wade in the water and see all kinds of small critters such as sea urchins and whatnot. That's exactly what I did before giving in to lethargy on my beach towel, and I also walked a self-guided trail to see the petroglyphs I was talking about earlier. Those were interesting. I was the only fair-skinned person on the beach, the rest looked like locals on their weekend outing with the family (always nice to get away from the other tourists, innit??) At a picnic table next to me there was a bunch of rather stocky guys having a BBQ and practicing their a capella skills between the courses. An altogether nice afternoon.