Our favorite places: Manini Beach

If I was a guest at our Inn, I would probably spend most of my days lazing about at Manini Beach.  Of course I’m biased and spoiled, because I live right up the street from it and have been there hundreds of times.  But it is stunningly beautiful and one of those special places that I always return to.

Manini Beach is a small beach just down the hill from the Inn.  It takes about fifteen minutes to walk down to it, and about two minutes to drive down.  I personally enjoy walking down, smelling all the lovely flowering trees and viewing all the wonderfully weird tropical plants on the way.  For visitors, taking a walk like this is an excellent way to get acquainted with the area.  If you follow our road to the water, then take a left, you’ll meander through the little shoreline neighborhood and eventually get to Manini Beach Road, which you follow along the water to the park.  Sometimes the water’s so clear you can see yellow tangs (a kind of reef fish) from the road.

Manini is a little community park with grass and cocoa palms.  There is no sand, it is a rocky shore with an easy – and obvious – entrance into the water.  The water is very cold at first, because there are freshwater springs right offshore.  But as you wade out you’ll feel the water get warmer.  One of the amazing things about Manini Beach is that the water is almost always clear and the reef is right offshore.  When I see places like Kahalu’u Beach in Keauhou, or Hanauma Bay on Oahu gushed over in tour guides as the “only” and “best” places to snorkel in Hawaii, I always feel a little sad.  These are nice places, but if these were the only places you snorkeled on a visit to the islands, you’d be missing out.

The other wonderful thing about little Manini, is that it’s small and local and often deserted.  There’s a neighborhood donkey, Lia, who wanders through looking for things to eat (she’ll eat grass mats and hats and any snacks so watch out), a friendly neighborhood Boston terrier, and some regulars who like to swim.  But that’s about it during the week (like all beaches it’s busier during the weekend).  I have been down there at all hours: at dawn when the dolphins are swimming just offshore, in the morning when the reef fish are just starting to get active as the sun creeps higher, midday when the sun is high and the water crystal-clear, mid-afternoon when the afternoon mist rolls in and the water softens, and dusk when the water cools and the sun begins to sink, at night when all you can see is the huge moon hanging languidly over the bay.  It’s always beautiful; it’s always a little different.

The other morning I took my boy out for a long, hot walk out Pu’uhonua Road and we stopped at the park to take a dip and cool off before returning home to work.  The sun was blazing and the sky was perfectly blue.  The water was calm and we waded into the entrance-area.  He sat in the wet sand and played with the rocks, and I lay in the water in front of him.  Little yellow leaves from a big old tree floated down through the air, and butterflies flitted passed.  The water was warm and soothing and the only sounds were of gentle waves, myna birds and doves, and the wind in the trees.  It was a perfect moment, like many I’ve had down there.

The same week we went down in the evening, again to cool off.  It had been a long, hot day and I craved an ocean-dip badly.  The surge was too rough at the entrance area for my taste, so we walked along the short trail at the back of the park to the little point facing away from the bay towards the open ocean.  I found a safe tide pool for my boy and I sat in it and washed my face while he threw rocks.  The sun began to set.  At this time of night things begin to get quiet.  The Kona winds die down, the birds start to settle in, and the ocean seems to still.  I looked up just as a humpback whale showed its black back in the sunlight.  I got my boy up and carried him to where he could see.  We watched multiple whales languidly swim in the sunlight as it set. 

You may need to go to Manini more than once.  Some days, it’s perfectly calm like a bath tub and you’ll see all the same beautiful coral and fish you’d see at Two Step or the Monument, without the crush of the crowds.  Other days, it’s choppy and surgy and it’s most fun to walk along the shore and watch the waves crash and roll through the jagged lava-rock formations at the point.  I always see something new, I always feel better after being there.