We recently moved to
Central Oahu from South Kohala on the Big Island. Though we are still in
Hawaii with its great weather and aloha spirit, the differences between the two
islands are dramatic. It is a lot like the difference between living
in one stop-light town in the Midwest versus an apartment overlooking Central Park
in Manhattan, NY.
Crowds
Oahu
is very crowded. On a recent Saturday night at Ala Moana Mall there were so
many people we struggled to walk through the mall. Less than half of them were speaking English.
It felt more like being in Hong Kong or Tokyo than the US or anywhere else in
Hawaii. Everywhere you look on Oahu there are houses, cars, and people which is
a major contrast from the miles of desolate lava fields, acres of pastures, and
empty beaches we are accustomed to on the Big Island. At our condo complex
in central Oahu, cars come and go at all hours of the day and night, a big change for us after years of living in a
mostly empty (except around Christmas) condo complex in South Kohala. All the people on Oahu keep things very
lively and there are endless activities and events, but unlike the Big Island it
is surprisingly more difficult to make friends.
Distances
and Traffic
Everything
on Oahu is only a short distance and if you are lucky and there is not much
traffic, you can get anywhere quickly. On the Big Island, everything was a long
drive. It was a long drive for us to get to COSTCO and potlucks with
friends in Kona from Kohala. On Oahu we can drive to three grocery
stores, Walmart, our bank, and 20 or more restaurants in our neighborhood in
less than 5 minutes. However, it recently
took us 30 minutes to drive a little over a mile on a Saturday
morning near Ala Moana mall when dropping someone off at the Convention Center. We
rarely ran into traffic on the Big Island.
Occasionally, the traffic from the airport into Kona would jam up a bit
and it was frustrating to get behind a slow moving truck, but Oahu has epic
traffic jams which we just have to surrender to sitting in the car for a very
long time.
Driving
Style
Folks drive slower on Oahu
than on the Big Island and the speed limits are lower. Honolulu police are
out in force giving tickets to speeders, a rare sight on the Big Island. In our
seven and half years on the Big Island we saw maybe a dozen people getting
tickets, whereas, we see one or more cars getting pulled over every day on Oahu.
Driving in Oahu requires threading your
car through tiny parking lots with tiny parking spaces. The freeways are
massive in Oahu compared to the two lane roads throughout most of the Big
Island, but the lanes are narrower and it feels like the cars are going to
scratch the paint off your car as they pass.
Freeway driving takes a great deal of concentration on Oahu. There is
just more room for cars and parking lots on the Big Island.
Shopping
Shopping
on Oahu is amazing. There are so many stores and malls it feels more like New
York or Paris than Hawaii. On Oahu every neighborhood has a wide selection of stores and there are numerous malls. The Big Island
is just not the place to be if you like shopping, whereas Oahu has an amazing
selection of things to buy and great prices.
Food
Food shopping on Oahu is easy compared
to the Big Island. There are numerous grocery stores with greater selection and lower
prices than the Big Island stores. But Oahu does not compare to the Big Island for
fruits and vegetables. There are fewer Farmer’s
markets on Oahu with limited selection compared to we had on the Big Island. On Oahu, there is no place like Suisan or the
Kona harbor with fresh fish and the amazing Big Island Beef is hard to find. Restaurants
are abundant, excellent ,and affordable on Oahu, a very unfortunate thing
for our waist lines. We never found a place on the Big Island that had consistently
excellent food and service at an affordable price whereas on Oahu we have
trouble deciding where to go among all the choices.
Weather and Vog
The weather on Oahu depends on where
you live, just like the Big Island. We live in central Oahu where it is very
rainy, similar to Hilo. When we drive to west Oahu the weather is usually hot,
dry and sunny, similar to Kohala. A bad Vog day on Oahu is like a no Vog day on the Big Island. We are happy to not have to deal with the Vog.
Rent and Jobs
Rents are substantially
higher on Oahu than the Big Island. We are paying $600 more a month in
rent for a much smaller condo than we had on the Big Island. The
same size and quality of rental on Oahu is about double the cost on the Big
Island. The driving factors for Oahu’s high rents seem to be the large
number of soldiers who get a substantial housing allowance and the job
market. Getting a job on Oahu is fairly
easy and although they pay better than Big Island jobs, the pay is still very
low compared to the cost of housing. The
competition for housing can make it a challenge to even find a rental.
Beaches and Parks
The gorgeous white sand and black
sand beaches on the Big Island are in a league of their own. The
famous North Shore beaches on Oahu are tiny with only a few places to park along the road. It is a big contrast to the Big Island’s long
stretches of beach with large parking lots near many of them. On Oahu, the
malls are more accessible than the parks and trails and beaches. We miss counting the turtles, talking to the
eels, and enjoying the gorgeous scenery on our daily beach walks in Kohala.
We are enjoying our new life in
central Oahu but we are missing the incredible outdoor lifestyle we had on the
Big Island.
