Punaluu, HI Hotels, Vacations, Tourism

Five miles beyond Pahala, at the point where the highway drops back down to sea level, PUNALU'U has been flattened by tsunamis so often that it's given up trying to be a town any more. A single road loops from the highway to the ocean and back, running briefly along what is now the largest black - sand beach on the island. Black sand is a finite resource, as it's only created by molten lava exploding on contact with the sea, and at any one spot that happens very rarely. Even those beaches not destroyed by new lava usually erode away within a few years. Each time the coastline of Punalu'u Bay gets redrawn, … more »