Mauna Kea Beach Hotel opened in 1966. Mauna Lani followed in the 1980s. Waikoloa's two big resort hotels went up around the same decade, under different owners, with different architects, different golf course designers, different everything. On a map, the four properties that make up this stretch of the Kohala Coast look like four separate five-star addresses with a highway stitching them together. None of the four developers built the thing that actually connects them. That path was already there.
The Ala Kahakai National Historic Trail runs roughly 15 miles of unbroken coastline between Anaeho'omalu Bay in Waikoloa and Spencer Beach near Kawaihae, threading through Puako, along the edge of Mauna Lani's fishponds, and past the front lawn of the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel without a single gate or day-pass desk standing in the way. Congress designated it a National Historic Trail in 2000, but the route itself is the old ala loa, the coastal footpath Hawaiians used to move between fishing villages long before any of these bays had a hotel's name attached to them. If you live along this coast, you're not walking through four resorts that happen to share a beach. You're walking one shoreline that four resorts happened to get built next to.
What the 15 miles actually passes
The trail isn't a single manicured boardwalk. It changes character every mile or so, and knowing which stretch you're on saves you from showing up in the wrong shoes.
| Where you are | What's there | Footing |
|---|---|---|
| Spencer Beach Park, near Kawaihae | Calm, protected swimming beach, the trail's northern anchor | Sand, easy |
| Spencer to Kaunaoa Bay, via Mau'umae Beach | A quiet, mostly hidden cove leading to the crescent bay in front of Mauna Kea Beach Hotel | Rock and packed sand, under three miles total |
| Kaunaoa Bay to Hapuna | Open coastline connecting two of the coast's best-known beaches | Sun-exposed lava shelf, under a mile |
| Holoholokai Beach Park to the Fairmont Orchid | Trailhead for the Kalāhuipua'a loop, plus the Puako Petroglyph Archaeological Park just inland | Flat, partly shaded |
| Kalāhuipua'a fishponds, inside Mauna Lani | A short loop past ancient aquaculture ponds, a lava tube shelter, and more petroglyph fields | Mostly flat, boardwalk in places |
| Anaeho'omalu Bay (A-Bay), Waikoloa | The trail's southern anchor, fronting the Marriott and Hilton properties | Flat, mixed shade |
The petroglyphs at Puako are carved into volcanic rock and generally dated somewhere between 200 and 1,000 years old, which means whoever put them there was working long before the ala loa became a National Historic Trail. The Kalāhuipua'a loop inside Mauna Lani passes fishponds that archaeologists have traced back centuries, along with a lava tube dwelling and a fishing village site that predates Western contact by hundreds of years. Walk that loop after breakfast and you've covered more continuous Hawaiian history than most museum visits manage in an afternoon.
The parking spot that isn't for you
There's a small pullout near Honoka'ope Bay, between Mauna Lani's golf course and the shoreline, that looks like an obvious place to leave your car if you want the shortest walk down to the water. Longtime residents don't park there. It's understood along this stretch that spaces near Honoka'ope are for people hauling gear down to fish, not for anyone looking for a shortcut to the trail. If you're walking this section regularly, the accepted move is to park at the public access points in Puako, at A-Bay, or at Pauoa Bay near the Fairmont, and walk in from there. It's not posted anywhere. It's just what people who actually live here already do.
The ponds that aren't fishponds
Between the Waikoloa Beach Marriott and the Hilton Waikoloa Village, a gravel path leads inland to a set of pools that look like ocean tide pools but aren't connected to the sea by anything visible. These are anchialine ponds, a Hawaiian term drawn from Greek meaning "near the sea," and they're fed by a mix of freshwater seeping down from upland rain and saltwater moving through porous lava rock underground. The water level rises and falls with the tide even though there's no channel connecting them to the ocean. The Waikoloa Anchialine Pond Preservation Area was set aside in 1985 and is still used for research and education, home to a native shrimp species you won't find in the open water a hundred yards away. A short walk south, the Ku'ualiʻi and Kahapapa fishponds behind A-Bay tell a different story: those were built and stocked by hand, part of an aquaculture system that once fed entire villages along this coast.
Both sets of ponds sit within a ten-minute walk of each other, and most people who drive past on Waikoloa Beach Drive have no idea either one is there.
The free tour most residents skip
The Waikoloa Petroglyph Preserve runs guided walks Thursday through Sunday at 10:30 a.m., starting from the central stage at Kings' Shops on Waikoloa Beach Drive. It's free, it's a short walk from the parking lot most people already use for coffee or groceries, and it covers ground that's easy to miss if you're only passing through on your way to the beach. If you've lived here a year and haven't done it, it's worth the half hour.
Getting back on the trail after August
Hurricane Lala passed close enough to the Big Island in mid-August to knock out power across South Kohala and bring down trees at Mauna Lani, though the storm's center never technically made landfall here. By late August, the state's official update on conditions confirmed that weather advisories across the islands had been lifted and that visitor operations, including most parks and trails, had largely returned to normal, with only isolated spots still working through cleanup. If you haven't walked this stretch since the storm passed, the ordinary rhythm of the coast, the turtles in the coves south of Puako Beach Drive, the quiet mornings at Kaunaoa Bay, is basically back where it was.
One coast, not four compounds
It's easy to think of this part of the island as a string of private resorts you'd need a room key to enjoy. The trail says otherwise. It was moving people between these same bays a thousand years before Laurence Rockefeller built the first hotel at Kaunaoa, and it's still doing exactly that job today, mostly on foot, mostly for people who already live within a few minutes of it. The four resorts didn't create this coastline. They were built along something that was already working.
If you're already calling one of these bays home and want a longtime local's read on how the neighborhood is changing, or you're weighing a move to this stretch of coast, Lovette Llantos has spent years walking the same ground she works in. Get Your Free Home Valuation and start the conversation whenever you're ready.
