Hawaii Vaca, Post 10 - Manini'owali Beach

Today was the magical day for me!  One of my main reasons to visit Hawai'i.  I wanted a Helicopter tour of one or more islands.  We were uncertain of how long it would take to drive up to the airport in the morning with all of the local folks going to work n' such so we left a bit early with the idea that we would time the drive to the airport, but then head on past as we wanted to scope out a beach for swimming after the heli-tour.

And that's precisely what we did!

The place is called Manini'owali Beach in Kua Bay.  The drive to get to it is quite interesting...

Someone saw fit to pave a road thru the lava field to get to this beach.  I'm glad they did because it was quite beautiful in the morning while we were there.  They're building houses in the lava field as you can see from the pic!  I suppose if you think on it long enough, they whole of the islands is lava field and they've built up quite the impressive cities and everything else that we have on the mainland...

That's just zoomed in a bit more where you can see the parking and the bathroom facilities near the beach.

There's my lovely little critters walking towards the beach.  Did I mention that it was beautiful?

The waves were barely...  uh, waving.  Unlike later in the day when we came back around supper time.  They were big mean, loud buggers to the point where there was no way on God's earth that I was getting in the water. And I didn't.  The problem was that there was no place to sit as I need back support.  I tried the lava flow but it hurt me bum!  I walked on the beach for a bit and then went back to the vehicle and read while the Fam swam.  They loved it and I got quite time.  Win-win.

Robby wanted to skip the helicopters and just stay here all day where we could simply come back and pick him up!  Hard to blame the fella who loves water and being in it.

Off to the helicopters!!!!