Related: Kealakekua Bay Snorkeling and the Captain Cook Monument, The Best Snorkeling Spots in Hawaiʻi, and Kona Coffee Farm Tours and Tastings.
Two Step is the snorkel spot everybody on the Kona side tells you about. Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau is the sacred ground standing right next to it, with the thatched temple and the carved kiʻi you have seen on every Big Island postcard.
They share one narrow road, one cramped parking situation, and a steady stream of visitors who assume they are the same place. They are two places with two different sets of rules, and the National Park Service has spent years politely asking guidebooks to say so.
So here is the whole morning laid out the way we would plan it for our own family. Where to leave the car, when to get in the water, what the $20 fee covers, and how to walk the Royal Grounds without a ranger’s stink eye.
Quick Reference
📍 Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau National Historical Park, State Highway 160, Hōnaunau, HI 96726, (808) 328-2326
Gates open 8:15 a.m. to sunset daily, weather permitting. Visitor center 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Entry is $20 per car, good for seven days, and the kiosk is cashless.
Official pages: fees and passes, current alerts, and the park’s own Two Step page.
📍 Hōnaunau Boat Ramp (“Two Step”), Hōnaunau Bay, off Highway 160 just before the park entrance
County of Hawaiʻi shoreline access. No gate, no fee, no lifeguard, and a portable toilet at best. Check Hawaiʻi Ocean Safety for conditions.
The nearest hospital is Kona Community Hospital in Kealakekua, about 8 miles (13 km) back up Highway 11.
Two Places, One Skinny Road
Start with the geography, because it explains every rule that follows.
Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau is a 420-acre (170-hectare) national historical park run by the National Park Service. You will also see it spelled Puuhonua o Honaunau, called the Place of Refuge, or labeled City of Refuge on an older map. Same place. The park went back to its Hawaiian name in 1978.
Hōnaunau Bay sits right in front of it. The boat ramp and the lava shelf people call Two Step are outside the park boundary, on County of Hawaiʻi shoreline access. They sit a few hundred feet (about 100 m) from the park’s entrance station.
One narrow, one-way public road serves both. That road is the whole story of this post.
Getting There From Kailua-Kona
Head south on Highway 11 for about 20 miles (32 km). Between mile markers 103 and 104, right at the Hōnaunau Post Office, turn toward the ocean onto Highway 160.
It is a real turn with a real sign, but the post office is small and Highway 11 traffic is impatient, so know it is coming.
Highway 160 drops 3.5 miles (5.6 km) downhill through coffee land and old stone walls to the brown park sign. You will pass the turnoff for St. Benedict’s Painted Church on the way, and we will come back to that.
Give yourself 45 minutes from Kailua-Kona. Give yourself more if you leave after 3:00 p.m., when Kainaliu and Kealakekua turn into one long brake light.
The park publishes its GPS coordinates, 19.422750 and -155.909873, and they work. Map apps like to declare victory a little early on this road. Keep rolling until you see the National Park Service sign and the entrance station behind it.
Parking, and the One Ask the Park Makes
The park has a small lot that fills by mid-morning most days. The rangers ask one thing, and it is fair: if you are only there to snorkel or lie on the rocks, do not park inside the park.
Those stalls, and the $20 you pay at the kiosk, are for people visiting the puʻuhonua.
Snorkelers use the public coastal access instead. Just before the park entrance, a one-way road with a shoreline access sign peels off toward the water.
Follow it down and you will find a free gravel lot and some roadside pullouts. Right at the water there is also a small private lot that visitors have reported charging about $5.
The gravel lot fills early, sometimes with pickups and boat trailers, because this is a working boat ramp. Roll in by 8:30 a.m. and you will have your pick.
Roll in at 11:00 a.m. and you will be circling with everyone else, so do not panic if you have to loop the one-way road once. It takes about three minutes.
Doing both, the reef and the park? Then the park lot is yours, because you are a park visitor. Walk out the gate to the bay afterward, or drive the few hundred feet.
Two more asks from the park while we are here. Do not use the park restrooms to change or rinse off snorkel gear. And do not enter the water from Keoneʻele Cove inside the park, no matter what an older guidebook told you.
More on that cove below, because it is where the turtles haul out.
Fees, Hours, and the Cashless Gate
Let’s talk money first, because the kiosk is cashless and that surprises somebody every single day. A private vehicle is $20, and that pass is good for seven days, so a return trip for sunset later in the week costs nothing extra.
Motorcycles pay $15. Walking or biking in costs $10 a person at 16 and older, and keiki 15 and under get in free.
Bring a card. If the entrance station happens to be unstaffed when you pull up, there is a QR code to pay on your phone. Pay it right there, before the ocean distracts you.
Already carrying an America the Beautiful pass? You are covered. The $55 Hawaiʻi Tri-Park Annual Pass works too, and it also gets you into Hawaiʻi Volcanoes and Haleakalā for a year.
That one makes sense if you are hitting all three parks, or coming back to Volcanoes more than once.
The park also waives fees on national fee-free days. Two are left in 2026: October 27 and November 11. Expect company.
The gates open at 8:15 a.m. and close at sunset, every day, weather permitting. The visitor center runs 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and it has the water bottle filling station, the trail brochures, and the restrooms.
When the sun goes down, be walking toward your car. The gate closes behind you.
Snorkeling Two Step: The Entry, the Reef, and the Rules
Visitors call it Two Step Beach, which is generous, because there is no beach. There is a lava shelf, and the name is literal: two natural lava ledges make a staircase into the water beside the boat ramp.
Step down, sit, slide, and you are floating in about 10 feet (3 m) of clear water that deepens to 25 feet (7.6 m) as you head out.
Here is how to do it without leaving skin on the rock. Wait for a lull, sit down on the lower step, and slide in on the back of a small wave.
Keep your hands flat on the ledge, because sea urchins live in the pukas (holes). Carry your fins in and put them on once you are floating.
Coming out is the trickier half. Turn to face the rock, watch a couple of sets, and let a swell lift you onto the step. Then scoot off it fast so the next person can come in.
Watch how the regulars do it first. They make it look easy because they move in rhythm with the water instead of fighting it.
A gentler option sits a few yards south at the boat ramp itself, where the entry is shallow and sandy. Keiki and nervous first-timers like it.
Just remember the ramp exists for boats. Look both ways, stay out of the launch lane, and never linger behind a trailer that is backing down.
Once you are in, the reef runs along both sides of the bay. Expect yellow tang, parrotfish, butterflyfish, a moray or two, and green sea turtles working the coral.
Visibility on a calm morning often runs 100 feet (30 m), which is why the dive boats from Kona come here too.
Go early. The bay is glassy most mornings, gets chopped up by the afternoon wind, and loses its light once the clouds build over the slopes after lunch. Aim to be in the water by 8:30 a.m. and out by 10:30 a.m.
Dolphins, Turtles, and the 50-Yard Rule
Hōnaunau Bay is a resting bay for Hawaiian spinner dolphins. They feed offshore all night and come in to sleep in calm water during the day, which is exactly when you are swimming.
Federal law says stay at least 50 yards (46 m) away, and never swim toward them, cut them off, or float in their path. If a pod comes toward you, ease away.
The fine is real, and so is the reason. A dolphin that cannot rest cannot hunt. Watch them spin from the rocks with a cup of coffee and you will have the better morning anyway.
Green sea turtles are protected too. The park asks for 20 feet (6 m) of space, and the same courtesy applies in the bay. They are slow and curious, and one will sometimes drift right past you if you stay still. Let it.
Safety, Sun, and the Stuff Nobody Packs
There is no lifeguard at Hōnaunau Bay. If someone is in trouble, call 911 first, then flag down a boat or a ranger. Kona Community Hospital in Kealakekua is about 8 miles (13 km) back up Highway 11.
Check the surf before you drive down. When a west swell is running, the ledge turns into a washing machine and the bay browns up.
Hawaiʻi Ocean Safety posts current hazards, and the park’s alerts page will say if high surf has closed the shoreline.
Facilities at the bay are minimal: a portable toilet or two near the ramp, a few picnic tables, and trash cans. No showers, no freshwater rinse, no vendors, and no shade worth mentioning.
Bring water, bring a hat (a real hat, not the free visor from the rental car counter), and bring more water. Black lava at noon gets hot enough to make you dance.
Sunscreen deserves its own paragraph. Hawaiʻi County only allows mineral sunscreens (zinc oxide or titanium dioxide) to be sold on the island. The chemical stuff from your mainland pharmacy is legal to wear, but you will not find it on a shelf here, and it is hard on the coral.
Pick up a mineral stick in Kona, or better yet, wear a long-sleeve rash guard and skip the lotion at the reef altogether.
Footwear matters too. Slippers get you from the car to the rocks, but for the lava itself, water shoes or booties save your feet. Fins go on in the water, never on the ledge.
Prefer a Boat to the Rocks?
Plenty of folks would rather skip the ledge shuffle, and there is a good way to do that. A few small-boat operators run out of Keauhou Bay and snorkel Kealakekua Bay and Hōnaunau Bay on the same morning.
This two-reef raft trip that snorkels the Captain Cook Monument and then the deeper canyons off Two Step runs about four hours and leaves at 8:00 a.m. It drops you in the outer bay that shore snorkelers rarely reach.
You need to swim unassisted, be at least 6, and be under 285 pounds (129 kg) for the ladder.
If lunch and a shaded deck sound better than a zodiac, there is a cushier version. The small-group morning cruise with a sandwich lunch that snorkels both Kealakekua and Hōnaunau Bays runs four and a half hours from Keauhou Bay.
Either way, you are on the water while the shore crowd is still hunting for parking.
Inside the Park: The Royal Grounds and the Puʻuhonua
Now the part that makes this stop different from every other snorkel spot on the coast. Pay your $20, grab the brochure, and walk down the crushed coral path toward the water.
The self-guided loop is about half a mile (0.8 km) and flat. Give it 45 minutes to an hour if you read the signs and let the place slow you down.
The first thing you notice is the sand. Then the coconut palms, the fishponds, and the thatched hale near Keoneʻele Cove, the little sandy inlet where the aliʻi landed their canoes.
Commoners could not set foot here. Today the cove belongs to the honu, and you will often find a couple hauled out on the sand like they own the place, which they do.
The Royal Grounds were home to the ruling chiefs of Kona for generations. Look for the papamū, flat stones pocked with rows of small holes, where kōnane was played with black and white pebbles.
Rangers and cultural practitioners are often working under the trees, carving, weaving, or twisting cordage, and they will talk with you if you ask.
The Great Wall
Then the wall. Pā Puʻuhonua, the Great Wall, is an L-shaped stack of lava stone nearly 12 feet (3.7 m) tall and 18 feet (5.5 m) thick. It runs 965 feet (294 m), and it was built more than 400 years ago without a drop of mortar.
Stand next to it and put your hand on the cool stone. Every rock was fitted by hand and by eye.
Everything on the ocean side of that wall was the puʻuhonua, the place of refuge. Under the kapu system, breaking a sacred law could mean death, and the sentence was carried out fast.
Your one chance was to reach a puʻuhonua ahead of your pursuers. There a kahuna could perform a ceremony of absolution and send you home, forgiven. Defeated warriors and noncombatants in wartime found the same protection here.
Reaching it was the hard part. The wall blocked the land approach from the Royal Grounds, so refuge seekers often swam across the bay, the same water you just snorkeled. Think about that on your way back to the car.
Hale o Keawe and the Kiʻi
At the seaward end of the wall stands Hale o Keawe, the thatched temple ringed by carved wooden kiʻi and a palisade of coconut logs. It was built around 1700 as a royal mausoleum.
It once held the bones of 23 high chiefs, including Keawe, the great-grandfather of Kamehameha the Great. Their mana is what made the refuge sacred.
The structure you see is a reconstruction. Queen Kaʻahumanu had the bones removed and the temple taken down in 1829. Tsunamis in 1868 and 1877 scattered the platform, and by 1902 the site was described as a heap of stones.
The National Park Service rebuilt the platform, the hale, and the kiʻi in the late 1960s. Local carvers did the work, many of them park maintenance staff drawing on family knowledge, and their relatives recarved the kiʻi most recently in 2004.
This is still a functioning religious site. Native Hawaiian caretakers leave hoʻokupu (offerings) on the lele tower, and during the makahiki season the kiʻi are dressed in cloth.
So keep your voice down, stay off the platform and the walls, and take nothing but photos. The park will remind you that federal law protects every stone here. Manners should get there first.
Hōlua Slides and the Rest of the Grounds
The park also protects three hōlua slides, long stone courses where aliʻi raced narrow wooden sleds downhill at frightening speed. The sport was reserved for chiefs, and the courses are fragile, so admire them from the trail.
The whole loop asks the same thing of you: tread lightly, stay on the path, and leave every rock where you found it.
The 1871 Trail to Kiʻilae Village
Have another hour and a full water bottle? Take the stairs to the left of the visitor center and pick up the 1871 Trail. It is a 2-mile (3.2 km) round trip along the coastal cliffs to Kiʻilae, an abandoned fishing and farming village at the park boundary.
The trail is one small piece of the 175-mile (282 km) Ala Kahakai National Historic Trail that once linked villages along this entire coast.
Highlights are the Keanaeʻe cliffs, the Alahaka Ramp, and the quiet. The ramp is a stone incline built so horse-drawn carriages could climb the pali in the 1800s. Almost nobody walks out here.
It is hot, exposed, and rough underfoot, so this is a closed-toe-shoes hike, not a slippers hike. Stay on the marked trail and out of the lava tubes and caves, some of which are burial sites.
Grab the lettered-stop brochure from the visitor center or print it ahead of time.
The Picnic Area at Sunset
At the back of the park, down a gravel road past the visitor center, a picnic area sits under coconut palms right on the lava shoreline. There are tables and barbecue grills.
Since your pass is good for seven days, the smart move is to snorkel one morning and come back another evening. Bring poke from the KTA supermarket in Keauhou and watch the sun drop into the Pacific.
Just remember the gate closes at sunset, and the ranger means it. Pack up while the sky is still orange.
The Annual Cultural Festival
Every year in late June the park hosts its Hawaiian Cultural Festival, a fee-free day of hula, crafts, and cultural practitioners from all over Hawaiʻi Island. The 2026 edition landed on June 27 and marked the park’s 65th anniversary.
Watch the park calendar for the 2027 date if your trip falls in early summer.
Make a Day of It: Painted Church, Coffee, and Lau Lau
On your way back up Highway 160, turn onto Painted Church Road for St. Benedict’s Painted Church. A Belgian priest painted the little chapel’s interior floor to ceiling around 1900 to teach Bible stories to parishioners who could not read.
The murals are still vivid. Entry is by donation, and $5 to $10 keeps the paint on the walls.
📍 St. Benedict’s Painted Church, 84-5140 Painted Church Road, Captain Cook, HI 96704, (808) 328-2227
Hungry? The nearest food is at least 3 miles (5 km) away up on Highway 11, and two spots are worth the climb.
Kaʻaloa’s Super J’s in Captain Cook turns out pork lau lau steamed for hours, kalua pig, and lomi salmon from a tiny family kitchen. It sells out some days, so call ahead.
📍 Kaʻaloa’s Super J’s, 83-5409 Māmalahoa Highway, Captain Cook, HI 96704, (808) 328-9566
The Manago Hotel Restaurant, a Captain Cook institution since 1917, does the pork chops everyone talks about. Cash only.
📍 Manago Hotel Restaurant, 82-6155 Māmalahoa Highway, Captain Cook, HI 96704, (808) 323-2642
Both keep short, small-town hours with at least one dark weekday, so check before you make the climb. For more options between here and Kona, our where to eat on the Big Island guide has you covered.
Kona coffee country starts the moment you climb back to Highway 11, and a farm tour pairs naturally with a Hōnaunau morning. We laid out the farms, tastings, and prices in our Kona coffee farms guide.
Rather have someone else drive? This small-group South Kona day tour that spends an hour at Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau with admission included is the easy button. It also stops at a coffee farm, Kealakekua Bay, and a honey farm.
It picks up in Kona and on the Kohala Coast. It skips the snorkeling, so pair it with a Two Step morning on another day.
How We Would Plan the Morning
Leave Kailua-Kona by 7:15 a.m. with coffee, water, mineral sunscreen, and a rash guard already on. Park in the free gravel lot near the boat ramp by 8:15 a.m.
Be sliding off the ledge by 8:30 a.m., when the bay is glass and the dolphins are still lazing offshore.
Out by 10:30 a.m., salty and happy, drive the few hundred feet up to the park gate and pay your $20. Walk the Royal Grounds slowly, sit a while by Hale o Keawe, and give the turtles at Keoneʻele Cove their space.
Add the 1871 Trail if you have the legs and the water for it.
Then climb back up to Highway 11 for lau lau or pork chops, a coffee farm stop, and the Painted Church on the way. You will be back in Kona for a nap before the afternoon wind even shows up. Early wins here, every time.
Looking for more reef time on this side of the island? Our guide to the best beaches on the Big Island covers the sandy ones. The manta ray night snorkel is the other Kona water experience worth building a day around.
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