The Big Island hotels collection

At Hōnaunau, a great wall of lava stacked without mortar encloses the pu'uhonua, a place of refuge where anyone who had broken a kapu came to be absolved; carved wooden figures still stand guard over it. Above, Kona coffee grows on the mountainside, in volcanic soil, shaded by the clouds that gather every afternoon. At the tip of the island, the beach at Papakōlea owes its green to olivine, released grain by grain from an old cinder cone. Mauna Kea turns white in winter. At Kīlauea, lava sometimes reaches the sea, and the island grows by a strip of black shore.