Honolulu, HI

When my wife and I go to Hamauma Bay, we like to walk all the way down to the far end of it, where there are few—sometimes no—other people, even when the main beach is crowded (which is most days). Hanauma Bay is the well-known marine preserve on Oahu’s east end, popular with snorkelers. If you would like to know more about the main beach and getting into the preserve itself, then please see this post on Hanauma Bay in general, since I won’t duplicate that information here; I will just cover our experience with the far end of the bay.

Getting to the far end of the bay is easy, it just requires a little more walking. When you get to the bottom of the hill, instead of immediately heading for the first sand you see—keep on walking. Soon you will get to a grassy trail. Take this all the way past the main beach, where the restrooms and park information booths are. When you pass all that, you will see sand again. This is the beginning of the far end of the beach. It takes us about twenty minutes, I would say, to walk from the bottom of the hill where the trams let people off until we get all the way to the other end, but the walk is well worth it. When we get there, we pretty much have the beach to ourselves. Occasionally a couple will stroll down that way, beachcombing, but ours were the only two towels on the sand. This is in contrast to the hundreds of beachgoers occupying the main beach.
 

The snorkeling from this end is fine, too. We usually walk in until it gets about knee high, then start swimming toward the middle of the bay, where the rest of the snorkelers are. Then, we swim in to the middle of the main beach and walk back down to our end, or we just swim back the way we came, depending on the water conditions. We always see lots of tropical fish, corals, and other critters.
 

 
Then we usually take a nap on the beach, resting up for the longish trek back. The view of Koko Head from here is fantastic. Once we also saw a mongoose here in the high grasses behind the beach. Also, there is a rocky area with a gate that we like to walk out to just to get a good view of the entire bay, but make sure you don’t go past the gate. As the signs warn, it can be dangerous out on the rocks because of high surf that can wash you off the rocks.
 
We don’t usually wait for the tram to get back up the hill to the parking lot, either, so it’s a good workout. So the next time you want to experience Hanauma Bay, and you don’t mind walking a little bit—consider the far end.