The Hamakua Coast Drive Is Half the Reason to Come
Hilo to the falls road the slow way: the Onomea four-mile scenic route, Honomū's wooden storefronts, and the gulches of the old sugar coast.
By Kekoa Kalani, Akaka Falls tour guide and island nature specialist
There is a moment about ten minutes north of Hilo where Highway 19 crests a gulch, the trees open, and the Pacific appears below you looking less like scenery and more like a threat. Guests go quiet at that spot. I have driven this stretch more times than I could invoice, guiding people up to ʻAkaka Falls since 2015, and the coast still does that to me on the right morning.
The falls are the destination. Fine. But the Hamakua Coast is the part of the day that visitors bring up at dinner, and it deserves to be driven like it matters rather than crossed like a parking lot approach.
Leaving Hilo, and the turn most people miss
The drive proper starts where Highway 19 leaves Hilo's bayfront and climbs north. Almost immediately there is a decision, and it is the most important one of the morning: a signed turnoff just north of town for the Onomea Scenic Drive, a four-mile loop of old coastal road that the official Hamakua Heritage Corridor route treats as the opening act. It is narrow, mossy, and slow, which is the point. The state's own description mentions the moss-laden bridges, and they are exactly as advertised, one-lane crossings over streams that run loud after rain.
Along it sits Onomea Bay, and the Hawaiʻi Tropical Botanical Garden with its 2,000 or so plant species stacked down the hillside toward the water. You do not have to stop at the garden to be glad you took the detour. The road itself, tunneled over by mango and African tulip trees, is the closest thing the island has to a green hallway.
Here is how I budget the coast when guests give me a full unhurried morning.
| Stop, in order from Hilo | What it is | Honest time budget |
|---|---|---|
| Onomea Scenic Drive | Four miles of old coastal road, one-lane bridges, bay views | 20 to 30 minutes driven slow, no stops |
| Hawaiʻi Tropical Botanical Garden | 2,000 species down a hillside to Onomea Bay | 60 to 90 minutes if you go in |
| Honomū town | Two blocks of plantation-era wooden storefronts | 20 to 40 minutes, more if you eat |
| ʻAkaka Falls State Park | The 442-foot headliner, 0.4-mile paved loop | 45 to 60 minutes including the full loop |
| Laupāhoehoe Point | Sea cliffs, tide pools, the 1946 tsunami memorial ground | 30 minutes, it is a detour down a switchback |
| Honokaʻa | Old sugar town, shops, malasadas at Tex Drive Inn | 30 to 45 minutes |
| Waipiʻo Valley Lookout | Black sand beach and valley walls from above | 20 minutes at the rail |
That full list is a day, not a morning. Most people should pick: the scenic drive, Honomū and the falls as the core, then either Laupāhoehoe or the Waipiʻo run depending on appetite. I go deeper on the northern half in Waipiʻo Valley and the Hamakua Coast.
Honomū, the town the falls road runs through
Three and a half miles before the park, Highway 220 passes through Honomū, and I beg you not to treat it as an obstacle between you and the parking lot. It is a strip of weathered wooden storefronts with tin roofs and tall false fronts, the kind of town the sugar industry built a hundred of along this coast and time has taken most of. A few galleries, a bakery smell in the morning, chickens with strong opinions. Ten minutes of walking it changes how the falls land, because you arrive understanding the falls have a neighborhood.
From Honomū the falls road climbs 3.6 miles through cane-gone-wild and eucalyptus to the end of Highway 220, where the state park waits with its card-only fee machines, $5 a head and $10 for the car if you are not a resident. If the falls themselves are the part you are planning around, the morning-at-the-falls piece covers why 8:30 is the hour to aim for.
The sugar coast underneath all that green
Every gulch you cross, and you will cross a lot of them, is part of the story. The official tourism material puts it plainly: for most of the 19th and 20th centuries this coast was covered in sugar cane, and the towns, the rail cuts, the flumes and the bridges all existed to move it. The coast gets close to 84 inches of rain a year, which is why cane loved it and why everything the industry abandoned has vanished under vines.
| What you see today | What it was |
|---|---|
| Honomū's false-front main street | A plantation service town for the surrounding cane fields |
| Deep roadside gulches with waterfalls | The stream cuts that fed the flumes and watered the fields |
| The Laupāhoehoe Train Museum | A stop honoring the Hawaiʻi Consolidated Railway that hauled cane and people along this coast |
| Small farms of taro, fruit and hearts of palm | Cane land, replanted by the small growers who came after the mills closed |
| Honokaʻa's storefronts and Saturday market | One of the sugar towns that survived by becoming a real town |
I am giving you the short version; the Heritage Corridor route exists precisely to string these together, and it is the rare official driving itinerary I actually hand to guests unedited.
Where the vans stop, and where your own car can
I will be straight about the trade, since this site earns its keep recommending the driven versions of this day. A tour van runs the coast on a schedule. It will give you the falls, usually a photo stop or two, and a guide narrating the sugar story while somebody else handles the one-lane bridges. What it will not do is idle in Honomū for forty minutes because you found a gallery, or dive down the Laupāhoehoe switchback on a whim.
| Self-drive | Typical waterfall day tour | |
|---|---|---|
| Onomea Scenic Drive | Yours, as slow as you like | Sometimes driven through, listings vary, no lingering |
| Honomū browsing | Unlimited | Brief, if the routing allows a stop |
| Time at ʻAkaka Falls | Open-ended | About 35 to 40 minutes on the Kona days, a full hour on the Aloha Aina Hilo day, per the listings |
| Laupāhoehoe Point | Easy detour | Not on the standard routes I send people to |
| Who does the 90-minute Kona crossing | You, twice | The driver, while you look out the window |
| The sugar-coast story | Whatever you read up on | Narrated by a guide the whole way |
So the honest sorting is: staying in Hilo with a rental car, drive it yourself, full stop. Staying in Kona, be realistic about seven-plus hours of round-trip driving on top of the stops. That is the case where the driven day earns its price, and the Kona waterfall day is the version of this exact coastline I point people to, admission handled and Waipiʻo Lookout included; you can check price and availability for your date.
Either way, do not let the waterfall bully the coastline out of your day. The falls take your breath for ten minutes. The drive works on you for hours, and it is the part of the Big Island that still looks like the century before last, if the century before last had better pavement.
