Know before you go
Ka Lae and Papakōlea.
South Point Road leaves Highway 11 near mile 69 and runs twelve miles to Ka Lae, the southernmost point in the United States and, by tradition, the first Polynesian landfall. Kalalea Heiau stands at the point; the old canoe mooring holes are drilled into the cliff edge. Papakōlea, the green sand beach, is a 2.5-mile walk east along the coast from Kaulana Bay.
Access
- South Point Road: paved, narrow, single-lane in places; parking at the point and at the Kaulana boat ramp. The land is Hawaiian Home Lands, and a parking or access fee is sometimes collected.
- Papakōlea (Green Sand Beach): walk the 2.5-mile track from Kaulana Bay (five miles round trip, no shade, constant wind). Do not drive onto the beach, and do not pay for a ride in the unlicensed trucks that are eroding the coast.
- Whittington Beach Park (Honuʻapo) and Punaluʻu, east on Highway 11: the Kaʻū beach parks, with camping by permit at Whittington and honu basking at Punaluʻu.
Distance & terrain
Papakōlea five miles round trip, two to three hours. The point itself is a short walk from the parking area; the shoreline west toward Waiʻahukini is unsigned.
Water
None. Carry everything, and more than you think.
Hazards
- Unfenced cliff edges at the point; the boat-hoist ladder is not maintained.
- The current off Ka Lae runs seaward where two swells meet and does not turn around.
- Unrelenting wind, no water, no shade anywhere on this coast.
Respect
Kalalea Heiau is an active fishing shrine; do not enter it. The mooring holes and the salt pans are archaeological features. Papakōlea's green sand is olivine from a single cinder cone and takes nothing but feet.
Official: NPS · Ala Kahakai safety · Hawaiʻi County · active alerts · The full planning guide →
Mauka · the plain
The wind plain of Kaʻū.
Behind Ka Lae stretches the open plain of Kamāʻoa — wind-scoured, treeless, dotted with the remains of pre-contact agricultural mounds. This is some of the windiest land on Hawaiʻi Island; a small wind farm uses what could not, by 19th-century efforts, be coaxed into commercial-scale farming.
Mid · Kalalea Heiau
Kalalea Heiau and the fishing canoes.
Kalalea Heiau stands a short walk inland from the cliffs. It was a fisherman's heiau — small, low, oriented to the deep blue water just offshore. The land here was working land, not ceremonial; the heiau served the men who launched canoes into a current that runs straight to the open Pacific.
Open this section in the map →Coast · the cliffs of Ka Lae
Ka Lae — the southernmost point of the United States.
Drilled into the cliff are ancient koʻa — mooring holes carved into the rock, used to tie off canoes against the current. They are some of the oldest evidence of human occupation in Hawaiʻi: radiocarbon dating from nearby sites suggests Polynesian arrival here as early as 400–600 CE.
Stand here · 360°
The southernmost point.
Ka Lae, Kalalea Heiau, the green sand at Papakōlea, and the Kaʻū beach parks east toward Punaluʻu. Tap a viewpoint to load it and look around.
Conditions at the shore · live
Reef · Papakōlea
Papakōlea — the green sand beach.
Just east of Ka Lae sits one of only four green-sand beaches in the world. The green is olivine, eroded out of an ancient cinder cone whose seaward wall the ocean has spent millennia disassembling.
Ocean · the open sea
The current that runs to Antarctica.
The Hawaiʻi Current runs south past Ka Lae and joins the South Equatorial Current. From here the next land is Antarctica, some 7,500 miles further south. The first canoes to find Hawaiʻi caught this current in reverse, sailing north out of the Marquesas or Tahiti, looking for new land. Whoever they were, they made landfall here.