Ahalanui Park( Hot Ponds)

[csgray]

Based on my health care practitioners' advice, I would not recommend that anyone with a compromised immune system swim there, or healthy people with openings in their skin. I have the immune system of a shark (bugs that try to get a piece of me just die) and I still wouldn't swim there, The thermally heated fresh water is a breeding point for staph, and then it feeds into the swimming area. If the water is fairly cool then ocean water has flushed out most of the staph laden fresh water. I know people who swim there daily with no ill effect, but as the spouse of someone who has twice been hospitalized with life threatening staph infections, I can tell you that it is no picnic. Watching your delirious loved one's fevers spike at over 106, and having doctors asking about permission to amputate a limb that was perfectly healthy just days before, is a crash course in staph literacy. Hawaii is rife with staph, not just in the water, because our landscape is made up of ground up lava as opposed to bacterially balanced soil, in a few hundred thousand years the staph levels will drop off. In the mean time, keep your skin intact and beware places where staph has a good breeding environment. Unfortunately, geothermally heated water is heaven for bacteria. If your child has scratched open mosquito bites or scratches in the skin, don't send them with a bathing suit. It is still a nice park for a birthday party.

Carol