Punalu'u Black Sand Beach is located on the southern end of the Big Island of Hawaii.

There are two parking lots, public bathrooms, picnic tables, and a store.

This beautiful beach has soft black sand and amazing palm trees.

This map shows where this beach is located on the southern end of the Big Island of Hawaii.

There are two roads from the highway that will take you to this beach.

If you're coming from the west side of the island, you'll take the first turn, which takes you down to the parking lot with picnic tables and public bathrooms.

If your coming from the east side of the island, you'll turn off the highway and come to a small parking lot first. If that parking lot is full, there is one right by it that you can use to park.

We found a parking spot and then started to explore the beach. This is what it looked like.

There's a small store when you first walk onto the beach from the small parking lot.

You can see that these grains of black sand are really small and smooth that makes it nice and soft to walk on.

We decided to walk and explore the entire beach.

We didn't go snorkeling here because it was getting late and it was overcast, but we talked to some people who had just gotten out from snorkeling and they said they saw some sea turtles. We will definitely need to come back to this beach on a sunny day to do some snorkeling.

Overall, we loved this black sand beach and would highly recommend it!

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

Punalu'u Black Sand Beach is free to visit.

Total Cost: $0

These are the checklist items I recommend:

• Have a full tank of gas as this location is very remote.
• Bring some drinks and snacks.
• Bring reef safe sunscreen.
• Bring your own snorkel gear