Kailua-Kona · US

La'aloa Beach Park (aka Magic Sands)

On Ali'i Drive, a few miles south of downtown Kailua-Kona, a small crescent of white sand framed by jutting black lava rock keeps pulling off one of the Big Island's best natural tricks. La'aloa Beach Park—known to almost everyone as Magic Sands, and sometimes as White Sands or Disappearing Sands—is a neighbourhood beach with city-convenience amenities yet a genuinely wild relationship with the ocean. The fine white sand here can be dragged out to sea overnight by a heavy swell, leaving a jagged shore of exposed rock, then blow back in a day or two later to reveal a postcard-perfect bay. You never quite know which version you'll find until you arrive. What makes the place special is the surf. Magic Sands is regularly ranked among the very best beaches on the entire island for bodyboarding and bodysurfing, with waves that peel and dump close to shore over sand—great for skimming, belly-flopping and riding foam on a boogie board, and a former host of the Magic Sands Body Surfing Championship, the only event of its kind on the Big Island. Pair that with shaded picnic lawns, an ocean-view grill, sunset skies over the west coast and an ancient Hawaiian temple at the south end, and you get a beach that rewards a lazy afternoon as much as an energetic morning in the water.