There are quite a few black sand beaches on the big island, but Punalu'u is the easiest one to get to, therefore making it the logical choice to take mom to. The only disadvantage to this is, because it's so easily accessed it's also where all the tour buses end up.
By the time we got here the weather was starting to turn, and it was getting cold and windy. Hard to believe that just a couple hours previous Aaron and I were body surfing on the Green Sands Beach!
Punalu'u is one of the only beaches that the sea turtles will actually come up and beach themselves on a regular basis. As luck would have it, there were two of them on the beach when we got there.
We were pretty irritated while looking at the turtles. There is a law in Hawaii that if a sea turtle is seen you must give it at least 20 feet of clearance and not disturb it. Remember I said the tour buses all stop here? Well, who is usually on those big tour buses? Yup - Japanese. Now, if you know me at all you know that I am not a predigest person at all. I love all people of all colors, races, genders, sizes, sexes and sexualities. However, there is one thing about the Japanese that is a cold hard fact: they love their pictures and will do anything to get a good picture of their vacation. This includes invading the space of a gentle sea turtle to snap a shot of them "with the sea turtle".
As we were standing there taking pictures (with the zoom lens of course, to keep our distance), along came a full tour bus. Once the turtles were discovered, it was all over. They did just about everything they could to get their pictures, short of climbing on the turtles backs. I finally just turned to mom and Aaron and said, "Let's get out of here. I don't even want to be associated with this in the tiniest manner". I was so irritated that I just had to leave: there was absolutely NO respect there. It gave me a little taste as to why the Hawaiians don't like tourists very much and it saddened me.
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