ok, please help..ive been reading alot about the distances to the green beach, but could someone clarify it for me?
first, is the hiking 5 miles roundtrip? or one way?
next, if i have a 4x4 truck, not atv, can i get closer than the 5 mile hike? thank you, bill

If you are speaking of the green sand beach on the big island see this web site. http://www.konabeachhouse.com/things...andbeach2.html

Bill: The distance depends on where you start. Many (most?) people make the mistake of taking South Point Rd all the way to where it ends, and then start hiking east to the green sand beach. By doing this they're adding another 2 miles to the hike, which from there is over six miles round trip.

About 3/8 mi. *before* South Point Rd ends there's a wide dirt trail heading east. If you take this trail the distance to the beach is shorter, just under 5 mi. round trip.

Any 4WD vehicle is sufficient. It's nothing extreme, just rolling grassy knolls and red lava dirt, but it *is* a little too much for 2WD vehicles to handle.

thank you for your help in clearing this up....bill

hi all...again...i know i need to stop reading travel books cuz i just keep getting more confused....but...heres another thing to clear up...i was reading the Hawaii revealed book and it mentioned The Road To The Sea beach..which looked to me to be green AND grey???? is that correct? and it iss in the area of the green beach but off a different mile marker..if it is also green is this one nicer, and easier to see? thanks bill

One of the two small beaches at Road to the Sea is salt and pepper (a mixture of lava and white coral), and the other is black sand with trace amounts of olivine (green) in it. From even a short distance it looks altogether black. Nothing special, at least for the Big Island. IMO neither beach is worth the time or effort.

For incredible black sand check out either Punaluu or Kehana Beach, and for green sand nothing else on the island compares to Mahana. The setting at Mahana is as other-worldly as the beach itself -- it sits on a huge, half-submerged cinder cone.