Honaunau-Napoopoo

The City of Refuge as locals call it, or more correctly Honaunau Bay, is my favorite snorkeling beach on the Big Island! Actually, not just my favorite. The Travel Channel named Honaunau Bay one of “America’s Best Beaches 2004”.

The direction the bay faces hides it's inner shoreline from the predominant coastal swells. That's a fancy way of saying that City of Refuge snorkeling is calm and has exceptional visibilty most of the year.

Honaunau Bay is overlooked by Puuhonua O Honaunau National Historic Park. This 182 acre Federal park preserves the historic site where ancient defeated warriors, non-combatants, and sacred law breakers found sanctuary. Hence the park's and bay's common name, The City of Refuge. The grounds around the bay were home to powerful ali’i, or chiefs, of old.

Beautiful Honaunau Bay is fronted by large, smooth, lava rock flats. Talk about ease of entry! These rock flats are just about the same height as the water line which makes for a perfect shelf to sit on as you don your snorkel gear.

Near shore the average depth is only about 10 feet. Great for you because the abundance of sunlight reaching the bottom grows healthy gardens of coral. In case you didn’t know… fish LOVE coral. Parrot fish, tang, surgeon fish, moray eels, jacks, turtles… you name it, they’re here. Almost every Hawaiian fish you’ve seen in an aquarium and many more you won’t. Out in the center of the bay the depth drops dramatically to well over 100 feet. If you’re an expert skin diver you’ll love the challenge. You may even see one of the local skin diving clubs practicing their breath holding skills in the deeper water.

Honaunau is also a famed scuba diving location for beginners and experts alike. On any given day you're likely to see at least one of the local dive shops certifying new divers. If you scuba, be sure to set aside one day for Honaunau, you can't go wrong.

Easy entry, protected from swells, great for the beginner to the expert, teaming with fish and marine life…

What more could you ask for?

Once the site of a ruling chief's palace, Honaunau Bay offers visitors something other than the white sandy beaches and rolling surf characteristic of Hawaii. Honaunau is home to a true underwater paradise, the Place of Refuge, which attracts scuba divers from all around. Over time, eruptions of the Kilueau volcano poured lava into the ocean, hardening into large, smooth formations now home to an expansive reef of colorful coral heads and formations. The bay satisfies all levels of divers, from beginners to experts, and boasts a large number of fish native to Hawaii, roughly 40 percent of which can be found only in Honaunau. Divers can swim with the likes of long-nosed butterfly fish, surgeon fish, yellow tang and kala and kole — even the endangered green sea turtle.