As eluded to in an earlier post, we visit a black sand beach, which is made of crushed lava.\u00a0 I think we experienced lava from beginning to end while on the Big Island.\u00a0 This beach was easily accessible (unlike the green sand beach…) and tour buses often made stops by while we were there.\u00a0 People would flow off the bus and take a few snap shots of the beach and the turtles and then be herded back on the bus.\u00a0 I am guessing they were on their way to Volcanoes National Park, so the beach was just a side trip.\u00a0 But for us it was the whole day!\u00a0<\/p>\n
We saw at least 6 sea turtles sun bathing and eating amongst the lava rocks on the shore.\u00a0 Four turtles were taking very long naps in the sun and the tourists did not bother them at all.\u00a0 On occasion one would open its eyes or move around a bit. The other two stayed in the shallow water eating away at the sea grass growing on the rocks. Dan has some video of one eating and he got some good stills of the turtles.\u00a0 I love sea turtles. Did you all see Nemo?\u00a0 I couldn’t help but say “Dude” every time I saw one!\u00a0 These turtles were not a big as the ones we saw in Kauai, but they were much more visible.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The black sand beach was wonderful. It was palm tree lined and the ocean was so blue and green.\u00a0 Very beautiful and nothing like we’ve ever seen before.\u00a0We picnicked at the beach and spent most of the day there, relaxing under the palm trees, keeping one eye on the ocean and one eye on the coconuts above our heads!\u00a0<\/p>\n
On our way back to Kona, we stopped at\u00a0Pu’uhonua O Honaunau National Historical Park, also known as the Place of Refuge.\u00a0\u00a0In ancient Hawaii, laws were referred to as Kapu.\u00a0 When there was a kapu on something, the penalty was death. If it was a serious enough offense, not only were you killed, but so was your family.\u00a0 Even today, you can still see remnants of kapu, as many no trespassing signs incorporated the word on the signage.\u00a0 So, basically death to those who do it.\u00a0 There was a way to escape death, however. If you could reach the Place of Refuge before your chasers, then all was forgiven.\u00a0 The\u00a0setting was peacefully and a felt like a refuge. We\u00a0saw and heard lots of birds here and saw schools of little silver fish racing\u00a0to shore, leaping in and out of the water all in unison! Shortly behind them?\u00a0\u00a0A big\u00a0sea bird!\u00a0 The sunset was beautiful from here as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As eluded to in an earlier post, we visit a black sand beach, which is made of crushed lava.\u00a0 I think we experienced lava from beginning to end while on the Big Island.\u00a0 This beach was easily accessible (unlike the green sand beach…) and tour buses often made stops by while we were there.\u00a0 People … Continue reading Black Sand Beach<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[21,12],"class_list":["post-379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hawaii2009","tag-big-island","tag-hawaii"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theferrells.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theferrells.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theferrells.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theferrells.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theferrells.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=379"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.theferrells.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":381,"href":"https:\/\/www.theferrells.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379\/revisions\/381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theferrells.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theferrells.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theferrells.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}