Sorry Jaunted, This Is The Real Kauai Glass Beach
Jaunted got it all wrong on their post this week about Kauai’s Glass Beach.
First they used this photo (at left) taken almost 8 years ago giving the impression that the beach was covered in glass. There was never any mention that the photo was that old. I found the date by following the photo attribution link at the bottom of their post.
Is it important to know when the photo was taken? Yes.
The reality of Glass Beach is this: There’s very little glass left.
You will find a very small amount of not too attractive brown glass, and some days are better than others. Through a combination of no replenishment, erosion and collection, the glass has all but disappeared. It isn’t worth visiting, if that’s why you’re going.
Still, just to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating, I got in my car and drove down to Glass Beach and took these photos.
Jaunted also erred in saying the beach was so remote you’d need GPS to find it. Wrong. It’s close to Port Allen and just below the oil refinery. While easy to find (directions below), it makes for a less than ideal beach environment.
The Question raised.
This is a further reminder that you can’t always believe what you read in print. In this case we should have been advised that the photo was not recent and their quote, “the beach is made up bajillions of sea glass particles,” is completely false. Where did this information come from and why? There was no author mentioned.
How Glass Beach looked before.
Up until 5-10 years ago, the glass was plentiful, beautifully multi-colored and thick. We’d scoop it up, rinse it off and use it on top of garden planters and in all forms of art. Here are examples of blues and greens which I collected years ago and have saved. Red was always my favorite, and the most rare. Blue was second, and green third.
Directions: If you’d like to visit Kauai’s Glass Beach just drive down to Port Allen and take the last left at the harbor. Glass Beach is the first one you’ll come to and is just below the oil refinery.
Top photo credit: SuperFantastic. All other photos by Beat of Hawaii.
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“We’d scoop it up, rinse it off and use it on top of garden planters and in all forms of art. Here are examples of blues and greens which I collected years ago and have saved. Red was always my favorite, and the most rare. Blue was second, and green third.”
And now there is surprise there is no glass left?
Think how many years it took for the glass to accumulate. Then came cheap airfares, more visitors, it can’t keep up.
And the inaccuracies don’t stop in Hawaii… The last sentence, “If Hawaii is a bit far, you could also have some luck on our own west coast at the Glass Beach in Fort Bragg, just up from San Francisco” is wrong, too, unless you consider “171 miles and 3-4+ hrs of drive time to be “just up from San Francisco”.
Hi Oliver, and North Kohala.
Oliver, I didn’t even notice that in the Jaunted article, but that’s so true.
North Kohala, at that time the glass was being replenished via the nearby dump/recycling. That hasn’t been true though for years.
Thanks and aloha.
Rob
Hi Rob,
Thank You for dropping by the beach and taking new pictures and updating us on the situation. We’ve updated the Jaunted post. Also, for visitors to Hawaii I would still recommend GPS. In a rental car and faced with an oil refinery, a tourist could doubt the location.
I didn’t even know about the Kauai Glass Beach but always loved to go for ‘ocean treasure’ hunt on coral beach at Mauna Kea. That’s where you find ocean glass or nice shells with the kiddos. Just make sure that the shells don’t have any little creatures still living inside. Ocean glass became much less during the recent years. Hope it’s due to people throwing less glass into the ocean.
Anyhow, there are still many secrets in Hawaii not even residents are always aware of. I posted recently a youtube video about a blowhole diver on South Point of the Big Island http://kohalacoastweb.blogspot.com/2009/07/secrets-of-hawaii-hawaii-blow-hole.html You have to see that! Awesome!
Aloha Pua
Best Hawaii Vacation Blog
Next we’ll be taking tourists out to see the giant glob of plastic gobbly gook out in the death zone of the pacific, aka The Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
Not quite as quiant and unharmful as the glass though
also impossible to clean up!
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/19/SS6JS8RH0.DTL
@JetSetCD — I see you’ve updated the Fort Bragg part, too. Just wondering, though — have you ever driven from San Francisco to Fort Bragg in “about two hours”? I did the trip once and it took me significantly longer. And Google Maps seems to agree with me.
I was at Glass Beach in May and I found it was not as impressive as it had been when I last saw it, in 2004. Even with less glass, though, it was a cool thing to see — worth a stop if one is passing through the area, I thought.
Here are two photos I took in the more recent visit:
http://coachclassblog.com/photos?g2_itemId=62
http://coachclassblog.com/photos?g2_itemId=113
Hi Jeanne,
Sorry we didn’t get to see you when you were here. You must have hit the beach on an especially good day, as our photos and experiences are very current. We’ll trek back over there again in a day or two and see if anything has changed.
Aloha, Rob
Hi Rob,
It was a much smaller patch of glass than five years earlier, and the glass didn’t seem as thickly layered over the sand. I’m just thinking it’s still worth a look if you’ve never seen something like that before. I wouldn’t make a long trip just to see it, though.
Still loving the blog. Keep it up!
Jeanne
P.S. I’ll be back in Hawaii in January, though I don’t know if we’ll make it to Kauai again.
We were in Kauai in 2005 or 2006 and stopped at Glass Beach on the advice of our guidebook. We got there, scratched our heads, looked around, shrugged our shoulders and proceeded on to Salt Pond park for some warm water floating. There was very little glass there 3-4 years ago, so I’d doubt there’d be much today. Disappointing that Jaunted ran an article that is so clearly bunk.