O'oma Beach is a beautiful beach located on the west side of the Big Island of Hawaii close to the airport.

You can park in the paved parking lot and walk to the beach or you can drive the dirt road right to the beach.

Most of the beach is rocky, but there is a section in the middle that you can go in and snorkel.

This shows you where O'oma Beach is located on the Big Island of Hawaii.

As we turned in from the highway, there is a gate and sign that says the gate opens at 5:30am and closes at 9:00pm.

We followed the paved road down to the roundabout. This road has a lot of speed bumps.

Once you get to the roundabout, you'll turn right into the paved parking lot.

You have the choice of parking and walking to the beach or driving on a dirt road directly to the beach.

We decided to drive. You go through the parking lot and make a right hand turn onto the dirt road.

As we turned onto the dirt road, there was a sign showing that the close this gate at 7:30pm.

As we drove down the road we saw that they have porta-potties.

As we looked to our left, we could see that a lot of this coastline is rocky.

About the middle of the beach is the actual beach area that you can get in the water and snorkel.

We drove to this area, parked and explored the beach.

We parked up by the road and walked down to the beach. This is what it looked like.

The airport is really close by and it was fun to watch the airplanes fly overhead on their way into land at the airport.

We decided to do some snorkeling. The water is really shallow and you can't go out very far because of the rocks, but it was still a lot of fun.

After snorkeling, we got out and watched the sunset.

We loved this beach. It wasn't crowded and it felt more like a locals beach. We would definitely go back to watch the sunset again.

(Click on the map above to go to a Google Maps larger view.)

O'oma Beach has free parking. 

Total Cost: $0

These are the checklist items I recommend:

• Bring your own snorkel gear.
• Bring some drinks and snacks.
• Bring reef safe sunscreen.