Posts Tagged ‘Honaunau’

Question – Difficulty in Kayaking Kona

We received the following question by email: We are looking at doing the “Kayak the Sea Caves Near Honaunau” as that looks like loads of fun, and we will be doing the Captain Cook trip as well…based off your recommendation of that as well. Anyways we just want to make sure that a trip like this doesn’t warrant a large amount of “open water” type kayaking experience. We have kayaked in Florida, but not on the ocean, are pretty fit (our past-time is spent climbing mountains in land-locked Colorado) and we just want to make sure that we don’t head out and find ourselves in large, crashing waves and having a sphincter-puckering time. I figure that obviously conditions can change, but in general is this an overly difficult kayak trip requiring quite a bit of experience?

Read more...

Diving with the Turtles at Honaunau

I recently went SCUBA Diving with the Hawaiian Green Sea Turtles at Honaunau Bay (Place of Refuge), South Kona on the Big Island. This is one of my favorite places to dive on the Big Island and offers an expansive reef in relatively shallow water (that means a lot of bottom time!) The quality of the reef is excellent with a variety of different types and colors of mature coral that stretches out and around the bay. The visibility is usually typical Kona (excellent) – although on this particular stormy day it wasn’t its usual 100′ of clarity. Also, one added bonus – you are pretty much guaranteed to swim with some turtles!

This spot is popular with snorkelers too (if they can figure out the directions). The area closest to shore is shallow and offers exceptional snorkeling. The entry point is right off of a lava rock shelf. As popular a site as this is – if no one was in the water you would probably drive right by as it is a non-descript bend in the road.