Wawaloli Beach

Sick views, great beach to chill and eat with your Ohana at.
Don’t mess with the hermit crabs.
Mahalo.

Great find! Found on Google Maps, had very few reviews, but all positive. Not really a swimming beach, although it seemed like maybe there was a sandy part a walk south of the parking lot. Rather, there is a lot of volcanic rock and tide pools. One big area had not water, but tons of tiny shells. It was like a graveyard of tiny sea snails. Many crabs, some large some small. Some small fish in the mossy tide pools, and it sounded like some holes in the ground might turn to water spouts at higher tide. An interesting little spot.

Posting an updated review just to let people know that even after 2010 (date of last review), this place is still awesome. If you have time to spare before your flight (next to kona airport), this is the best way to «kill time». Especialy if you didn’t get a chance to snorkel around the island, this is your chance to see a variety of small fish, sea urchins, crabs and best of all –lava formations! I would highly recommend coming here even for a few minutes. This place is just beautiful, in its own special way. :)

This beach had an amazing set of tide pools. As the previous reviewer mentioned, the larger pool is sometimes dry (it was when we came), but there are all kinds of smaller pools that are up in the lava rock at the shoreline. Great fun to explore, and lots of wildlife to discover, mostly fishes and anemones and scuttling crabs.
Very cool area in about the center of the park, where the tide rushing out of a semi-​circle rim makes it look like a miniature waterfall. Then, the tide comes back in, and the water bubbles up and spills over into the tide pools nearby.
Restrooms, benches, trees, and a lot of area to spread out made this another super beach for us.

This is another awesome «keiki» (kiddie) beach. The beach is cut-​off from the ocean by tide pools. The sand-​lined pool is quite large and only a few feet deep at most. The swimming/​wading here does depend upon the tide (as we found when we came a few days later and it was dry! Awesome tide pools and plenty of fish to be seen.
To get here turn down the road for the Natural Energy lab and park as the road veers to the right along the shore. Hardly a walk to get to the pool. Reef shoes aren’t need in the big pool, but if you want to go exploring in the tide pools they’d be a good idea. The beach is fairly close to the airport so you’ll probably see some planes flying overhead.