Aloha Hawaii
Posted by Amber , Tuesday, November 4, 2008 Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Ben and I have moved back to Colorado! I know it seems incredibly short lived, but let me explain.
After 4 months of Island living... we realized that Hawaii is an amazing vacation spot! Now there was a lot that happened those first few weeks that really soured our opinion of Hawaii and because of that we main have judged Hawaii too quickly.
Here are those early unpleasant experiences... Hawaii does not have national banks. We had to open a new bank account with a Hawaiian bank, which normally wouldn't have been a big deal, but for some reason Hawaii made it difficult. Maybe we just chose the wrong bank? The problem was that we couldn't get our money into the account. Ben would get paid with Business Checks, and they wouldn't deposit them without a 6 day hold since it was a "mainland check" whatever that means? We also purchased a car we thought had working A/C and it didn't. The worst part was our living situation was... we thought that the most desirable area to live in Kona was right on the coast, so we rented a condo on the main drive along the coast. It was so HOT where we lived, I couldn't walk from the couch to the kitchen without breaking a sweat. I couldn't cook dinner without feeling like I was going to pass out from the heat. We had 4 ceiling fans, two window fans, and two floor fans going on high speed 24 hours a day! And it was still over 85 degrees in our condo almost the entire time. Our 'normal' utility bill was $350 every month... and that is just for electricity. It was also extremely expensive... with gas and groceries plus bills... pretty crazy. We wonder if we would have liked it more if we hadn't started out with so many negatives... like we lived where ihttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gift was a little cooler, or if we had a car with A/C. I am not sure, but I can say that I do NOT regret the move and the time we spent there.
The amazing things about Hawaii... the beauty! We were able to make it around the entire island before moving back and it is almost indescribable. Each part of the island is so unique. The northern part of the island has amazing blue skies, beautiful ocean views, lush rolling hills and cliffs that just fall into the ocean. The west side (Kona) has the amazing water! The most beautiful turquoise colored water and a pretty decent city. The east has all the rain so it is so overgrown with trees and plants and waterfalls. Parks and gardens galore. The southern part of the island has the volcano and lava fields all over the place. Please visit our flickr page to view all of our photos during our time in Hawaii.
Someday I would love to visit Oahu... I am more of a city girl, so I might enjoy that kind of island living more than the big island.
So I am excited to be back to Colorado, but I am glad to look back and remember the wonderful times we spent together as a family in beautiful Hawaii!
