Kauai or Big Island more rural?

[hotzcatz]

No worries, J.vick, us'ens that live here frequently forget that some folks pay thousands to come visit here and want to look at all sorts of what is to us everyday things. Living here is a totally different mindset than visiting here. Which can be really surreal sometimes if you hang with tourists much.

Last bizarre thing someone got all excited about was the louver window on the front porch. It's a very small front porch, just barely enough room for a really small table and a pair of chairs (which is why it's a "porch" and not a "lanai"). There's a couple of louver windows on the ocean side to cut down on wind. You'd think they'd have been interested in the ocean view. Nope. They were fascinated by the louver windows. You know, plain glass louvers with the aluminium frame? The ones that are hard to clean? There's no figuring folks from other places.

[J.vick]

I have louver windows on my screened in lanai. It's nice no bugs a a cool ocean breeze!
No ocean view but a nice ocean breeze.
I'm a recent (in the last few weeks) resident of the big island.
After coming here for 9 times in the last 10 years I just had to live here and I'm happy.
Nice inexpensive furniture is hard to find. Oooops I'm off topic better shut up.

Yea when you spend big bucks you want to get your monies worth.
It's still hard to see everything.

[davephan]

Originally Posted by Sunaimer

I've been to the islands many times, but not the BI. We are visiting in a few weeks. We've been to Kauai and Maui numerous times. How much more rural is the BI? Is Kona similar to Lahaina or Hanalei? Examples please. Thanks. Mahalo

How long do you have to visit? A week is just too short, but long enough to see many things. We put a lot of miles on the car. On one visit, we stayed in Waikoloa Village at about 1,000 feet and another visit we stayed north of Honokaa. Waikoloa Village was a little more centrally located, if that is possible on the Big Island, but it's a long distance to the south, and takes many hours to get down there and back.

The new Saddle road extension is a beautiful road. We drove it many times to get to the east side and the south. It takes just a bit over an hour to drive from Waikoloa Village to Hilo. We explored many areas on the Big Island on two separate visits, each a week long, since we also visited other islands on those trips. I think if I spent a month on the Big Island, I still wouldn't see it all and I would want to stay longer.

The Big Island is much more 'raw' than the other islands, since it is the youngest island. When you drive around you can see vast difference in the terrain and vegetation from the lush tropical settings to the raw beauty of lava fields. When you drive around, have shorts and a T-shirt, a wind breaker with a hood and long pants. You can easily go from a warm beach to a nasty cold windy area in the higher elevations, within an hour or two from each other. Always keep an umbrella or two in the car with you, just in case you need it. GPS devices do work in many areas, but not everywhere. Cellphones work in most areas, but not all areas. Kona is touristy compared to Hilo, but I found Lahaina was like being touristy on steroids!

There are areas that don't get much rain and are only green because of all the irrigation. In some respects, this might be the best so you can get outside more often with less rain, but you have to fork over the money for the irrigation. Since the Big Island is 'Big', you'll end up driving a lot. It might be better to stay in different areas and split up your visit that way.

In general, we found the roads were much better condition on the Big Island than on Maui. There's some exceptions in the Puna area where you can only drive at a very slow pace. You could walk faster than you could drive on those roads. I don't know why they don't just spend the money on improving the roads in Puna instead of putting up with all those potholes on some of the roads with sparse populated areas. It's probably because people don't have the money to spend on the roads and may be living a hand to mouth existence, living near or below the poverty line. You can't drive totally around Maui because the roads get way to scary and dangerous at both ends of the island, unless you have nerves of steel and don't value your life too highly. You can't drive totally around Kauai even if you had nerves of steel, since there are no roads on the east side of the island.

I recommend staying in a VRBO or equivalent home or condo, rather than staying at a hotel. It feels much like you are living there, if only for a short time.

[terracore]

Since you've been to Kauai and Maui you already realize how different they are. Likewise, Kona and Hilo are just as different from each other but you can drive between them. The same can be said for locations all over the Big Island. The Big Island is 4,000 square miles, and larger than all the other islands combined. Expect a lot of diversity whether it is weather, geological, or cultural. If you choose to visit, enjoy it, just plan your trip well so you spend more time enjoying things and less time driving to things. No reason to come to the best island in the state and spend it all in a car.

On every other major island most people stay in one hotel/resort and do their excursions from there. Makes no sense on the Big Island. Stay on the west side and see things on the west side. Likewise on the east side. Don't waste valuable time on a 5 hour RT commute. You'll get frustrated and spend all your time paying Hilton $12 for a hot dog.

[67Cam]

Originally Posted by terracore

Since you've been to Kauai and Maui you already realize how different they are. Likewise, Kona and Hilo are just as different from each other but you can drive between them. The same can be said for locations all over the Big Island. The Big Island is 4,000 square miles, and larger than all the other islands combined. Expect a lot of diversity whether it is weather, geological, or cultural. If you choose to visit, enjoy it, just plan your trip well so you spend more time enjoying things and less time driving to things. No reason to come to the best island in the state and spend it all in a car.

On every other major island most people stay in one hotel/resort and do their excursions from there. Makes no sense on the Big Island. Stay on the west side and see things on the west side. Likewise on the east side. Don't waste valuable time on a 5 hour RT commute. You'll get frustrated and spend all your time paying Hilton $12 for a hot dog.

Good advice! I can't give you any more rep points so....

[davephan]

Originally Posted by terracore

Since you've been to Kauai and Maui you already realize how different they are. Likewise, Kona and Hilo are just as different from each other but you can drive between them. The same can be said for locations all over the Big Island. The Big Island is 4,000 square miles, and larger than all the other islands combined. Expect a lot of diversity whether it is weather, geological, or cultural. If you choose to visit, enjoy it, just plan your trip well so you spend more time enjoying things and less time driving to things. No reason to come to the best island in the state and spend it all in a car.

On every other major island most people stay in one hotel/resort and do their excursions from there. Makes no sense on the Big Island. Stay on the west side and see things on the west side. Likewise on the east side. Don't waste valuable time on a 5 hour RT commute. You'll get frustrated and spend all your time paying Hilton $12 for a hot dog.

We thought about staying in two different areas. It might have been easier to see more of the south when we were visiting the Big Island. Each time we stayed in the north. We could easily drive around and see places in the north. It was pretty quick on the new Saddle road extension to get to Hilo. However whenever we drove across the south, it always got very late by the time we drove back up north to our VRBO condo or house. There was one advantage to staying in Waikoloa Village at about 1,000 feet. We heard some people called in Waiblowa because it can be windy there. We really liked the cool breeze at night and it was quiet at night. North of Honokaa, it was pretty noisy at night, since thousands of birds were making a lot of noise all night, except for around 1:00 AM to about 3:00 AM. If you stayed in the south overnight, you might not be able to sleep very well with all the noise from the frogs. It might be worth the extra driving to stay up north for that reason.

You have to drive around a lot to see the Big Island. If you stay only on the east side and west side, and hunker down by the beech, you'll miss out and won't see much of the Big Island at all. I recommend getting a decent full sized car, not a junky micro compact car. We ended up renting a junker on Maui. That was a huge mistake, saving only a hundred or two dollars over the course of a week. It was embarrassing to be driving a cheech and chong junker that was beat up on the front, back, left, right, and inside the car. We should have rented a better car on Kauai. We rented a car that must have been 20 years old and was probably an old retired police car. The car we rented on the Big Island was nice. Don't go with the cheapest priced rental company. They are the cheapest for a good reason!

[goldenday]

BI is more rural as other have said.
Kauai has most beaches and only navigable river in the state. There's the Napali coast and trail, Waimea
Canyon, etc. I'd say Kauai is a prime island for hikers.