Hawaii - Part II: Things no one tells you about Hawaii

 Things no one tells you about Hawaii:

1) The traffic is horrendous. There is not a good public transportation system, so you really need a car to get around.  Because everyone is driving a single-family car and the roads are mostly 2-lane, there are traffic back-ups everywhere.  Instead of it taking you 30 minutes to drive 30 miles, figure on doubling that time. 

2) The roads are not graded well.  Meaning: they built the roads on the natural curvature of the land instead of smoothing them out.  There were many times that I thought I was going to be car sick because the roads jump you around so much it's like you're riding a wooden roller coaster.

3) The wild pigs.  There are wild pigs on every island I believe.  We saw them even at the airport.  Not sure how they became wild because I am pretty sure they are not native to the Hawaii islands, but they are everywhere and they are very destructive.  We talked with a girl at the coffee farm we toured and she said that if they didn't have their dogs patrolling the property at night, the pigs would destroy their farm in one day.  Also, it seems like you can pretty much hunt them when ever and where ever to help curb the population.

4) The wild chickens, rats and some kind of mongoose/ferret.  The story we were told is this:  Rats came over on ships.  Nothing eats the rats, so the rat population exploded.  Then the humans decided to bring over this ferret to eat the rats. Apparently, the rats and the ferrets live on opposite schedules, so the ferrets didn't eat the rats.  Nothing eats the ferrets, so the ferret population explodes.  Then someone decided to bring over chickens to eat the rats.  But no one bothered to figure out that chickens don't eat rats.  Now there's a chicken population explosion.  So now, all three populations are running rampant throughout the islands.

5) The salt air destroys everything.  We stayed in a condo on a resort when we were in Lihue, Kauai.  The condo was great, but we could see rust on everything.  The water heater that was tucked in a closet inside the condo had rust all over it.  The screen door to the deck was all rusted and could hardly be moved.  The key box on the door had disintegrated from rust.  One of the condo employees told us that the rust will destroy everything in about a year's time.  That means your fridge, dishwasher, TV, air conditioner, car, etc.  When we were out on the beach, you could see the salt in the air.  To combat the salt, we saw that some units had air conditioners inside, with an exhaust hose running out the window.  Also, most people do not have a garage, so their cars sit outside all of the time.  We noticed a lot of people would put blue tarps over their cars to try and save the paint.

6) The volume of tourists in Honolulu is unimaginable.  And I want to make sure that I note that we were there when the tourists were still not at their peak levels because of Covid and it was summer.  And I STILL thought the number of tourists was incredible.  You thought getting in to a restaurant was hard in Michigan, try getting into a restaurant in Honolulu.  3 hour wait easy.  And we put our names in at multiple places.  I know that places were struggling to get workers, just like around here.  However, when you add no workers + insane volume of tourists, that equals long long looooong lines.

7) The native Hawaiians do not like 'colonists'.  We did never saw any violence or encountered anyone that was rude to us.  In fact, everyone was overly friendly and helpful.  However, we were told that there are some areas of O'ahu that you should not go if you are a tourist and are white.  A friend of mine from high school is in the military and lives there right now.  He is Hispanic and his children took Hispanic.  He said that having darker skin does help him 'pass' in public, but the second he speaks and they hear his accent they know he's not local.  

8) Outside of the city areas, there are not as many street lights as you need to see so it is pitch black and hard to navigate while driving.

9) Since Hawaii is pretty much on the equator, sunrise and sunset do not change much over the course of the year.  Almost always 6am sunrise and 6pm sunset.  This was odd because we traveled to Hawaii in June when the sun does not set in West Michigan until 9-10pm.  We went from that, to having sunsets at 6pm in Hawaii in June.

10) The abandoned, burned up cars along the roads:  We saw these EVERYWHERE.  Some where flipped over in ditches.  You could tell by the rust that a lot of them had sat there for a long time.  When I asked my friend what was the deal with all the burned out, abandoned cars, he explained that a) if your car breaks down, it's crazy expensive to tow it and dispose of it. 2) some locals will steal cars from tourists, go on a joy ride around the island, then torch and abandon the car.

11) The cost of everything.  Everything was crazy expensive.  I would compare Hawaii to New York City, San Fran or Switzerland expensive.  And I think NY, SF, and Switzerland were much nicer.

Don't get me wrong, there were a LOT of things I thought were really cool about Hawaii.  However, it just wasn't for me.  I would say that if you like to lay on the beach and stare at the ocean, then Hawaii is for you.  I feel like I can do that here in Michigan and I would rather go somewhere more adventurous.  I did love the chocolate farm, the coffee farm, hiking around the volcano, the hiking trails, the volcano tubes, and the helicopter ride.  But be prepared for the things that no one ever mentions!