Know before you go
The wild south.
South of Hoʻokena the trail enters its least-managed miles: Miloliʻi, Honomalino, the Manukā shoreline and the Road to the Sea. Manukā State Wayside on Highway 11 (daylight hours, free) is the mauka anchor, with a two-mile nature loop through the Manukā Natural Area Reserve. The coast below is reached only by rough 4WD tracks or long, dry walks.
Access
- Manukā State Wayside, Highway 11 near mile 81: picnic area, restrooms, and the 2-mile Manukā Nature Trail loop through native dry forest and kīpuka (about 1.5 hours).
- Miloliʻi, at the end of Miloliʻi Road: a living Hawaiian fishing village with a county beach park. Park only where signed; the village is a community, not an attraction.
- Honomalino Bay: about a mile south of Miloliʻi on a traditional path across private land; keep to the trail.
- Road to the Sea, Highway 11 near mile 79: six miles of very rough 4WD track to the black and green sand beaches at Humuhumu Point. Not for rental cars, not for the unprepared.
Distance & terrain
No managed coastal section. Manukā Nature Trail two miles; Miloliʻi to Honomalino two miles round trip; anything further is a full, waterless day.
Water
Restrooms at the wayside; no drinking water anywhere on this stretch.
Hazards
- No water, no shade, no cell coverage below the highway.
- Lava tubes, cracks and collapse features under grass and vines.
- The NPS discourages hiking trails that are not actively managed, and this is where that advice matters most.
Respect
Private land and homesteads line the coast. The kīpuka hold rare native plants; take nothing. Miloliʻi has asked visitors, repeatedly, to be quiet guests.
Official: DLNR · Manukā State Wayside · USGS · Mauna Loa · The full planning guide →
Mauka · the rift
Mauna Loa's southwest rift zone meets the trail.
From Manukā the rift line of Mauna Loa runs down to the coast. The 1868 and 1950 eruptions both followed this rift; the flows are still visible as bands of younger, blacker basalt against the older surrounding terrain.
Mid · kīpuka
Forest islands surrounded by lava.
A kīpuka is a patch of older land — and older forest — that a lava flow went around rather than through. Manukā preserves several large kīpuka with intact native dryland forest: ʻōhiʻa, koa, and rarer endemics that have nearly vanished elsewhere on the leeward coast.
Open this section in the map (lava layer on) →Coast · wayside
Manukā State Wayside.
The state wayside at Manukā is one of the few publicly accessible trailheads on this stretch of coast. It's also a useful demarcation: north of Manukā is Kona; south is Kaʻū, the most volcanically active district on the island.
Stand here · 360°
Miloliʻi and the wayside.
Nothing is captured on the Road to the Sea or at Pōhue Bay, which is the honest picture of those miles. Tap a viewpoint to load it and look around.
Conditions at the shore · live
Reef · sparse
The Kaʻū coast doesn't reef.
South of Manukā the coast is lava cliff, not coral shelf. The bottom drops too fast for shallow-reef formation. Marine life here is offshore — open-ocean species, deep-water cetaceans, occasionally the green flash at sunset.
Ocean · the cliffs
The cliffs of Kaʻū.
From here the trail follows the most exposed coast on the island. Wind comes straight off the southern Pacific. The waves are big, the shoreline unforgiving, the beaches few — and the views uninterrupted.