Enjoy the Art of Hula at the Merrie Monarch Festival
Visiting Hilo during the annual Merrie Monarch Festival is a wonderful opportunity to explore and enjoy traditional Hawaiian hula, arts and crafts, music, and fun local events.
Honolii Beach Overview
If you are enjoying downtown Hilo, yet looking for some beach time, just 2 miles north you will find Honolii Beach Park. The most popular surfing destination in the Hilo area, this beach is renowned for its year-round swells; with the summer months generating calmer waves good for intermediate surfers and body boarding, with the winter months, generating waves ripe for expert surfers challenging its infinite swell.
The beach itself is not a white sand beach but rather a blend of rock, broken coral, ocean glass and driftwood, strewn remnants of the ocean’s unrelenting fury. There is a dense grove of flora providing plenty of shaded areas. The road to Honolii is scenic, narrow, and generally filled with vehicles on a busy day. Facilities include restrooms, showers, roadside parking, and a paved path from the road to the beach. A short walk down the hillside and you will arrive at the entrance to the stairway overlooking Honolii Beach’s rugged panorama. After descending down several flights of concrete steps you will arrive at the base of Honolii Beach with a direct view of the rogue ocean waves. At the shore, there is a lifeguard post in addition to several benches allowing for prime spectator watching.
Although the ocean current is not ideal for swimming, it’s not only a great spectator location to watch surfers catch a wave but to enjoy a picnic in the Hawaiian sunshine. For those looking to swim or paddle board in less relenting undercurrents, at the base of Honolii Stream, under the fortress like-remnants of the Wainaku Sugar Mill, is a pond, which serves as a slight barrier between the colliding salt and freshwater currents. Be careful swimming here as river swells can suddenly increase and be dangerous.
Directions
Drive 2.2 miles north of Hilo until you reach the Alae subdivision. Just past mile marker 4, take a right on Nahala Street and then take a left on Kahoa Street.
Location
Kahoa St, Hilo HI 96720
