Kewalo Basin Park

The other day, as I was driving toward Ala Moana Park and Magic Island, where the wife and I were going to take a morning constitutional, I turned right a little too soon and ended up on the Diamond Head (eastern) end of Honolulu’s Kewalo Basin boat harbor.

Since I hadn’t actually paid much attention to the area before, I decided to drive around the boat harbor and see what was there.

As it turns out, we discovered a nice little park there – Kewalo Basin Park, which features the same walkway/seawall/pavilion architecture as Waterfront Park, where we often do our walking. In fact, you could say it’s a continuation of Waterfront that’s interrupted by the Point Panic area where boats enter and leave the Kewalo Basin harbor.

At first glance, it looked much too short for a substantial walk, but after parking and surveying the walkway beside the water, I changed my mind about that. It wasn’t quite as long as the Waterfront Park or Magic Island walks, but it was fairly substantial.

The Ewa (western) end is landmarked by a statue called ‘Ano Lani; ‘Ano Honua (“A Heavenly Nature; An Earthly Nature”) erected in 1993. I’ll have to write about the statue and accompanying Hawaiian legend someday; it’s topped by a Pueo (Hawaiian owl) and flanked by upright surfboards.

The Diamond Head end connects up with Ala Moana Beach (there’s a sign warning against walking along the three-foot wide seawall, but it’s got a flat concrete top and nobody seems to heed the warning).

Kewalo Basin Park affords us a new look and different perspective of the ocean and the surfers we often see when we’re at Waterfront gazing toward Magic Island. It’s almost smack dab in the middle of the two. As a matter of fact, if we wanted to, we could park at Magic Island, circumnavigate it, then walk along Ala Moana Beach Park until we came to Kewalo Basin, and continue walking at Kewalo Park.

Unfortunately we can’t connect with Waterfront, but that’s okay, because the walk back to our car would be amazingly long as it is.

Nope, no long continuous walk for us … it’s Just going to be the usual smaller loops – Magic Island, Waterfront Park, and now, Kewalo Basin Park.