The Big Island is Our Choice: The Island of Hawai’i

Over the last couple of months, we’ve been doing as much research as we can on each of the islands of Hawai’i. There’s O’ahu, Maui, Hawaii (The Big Island), and Kaua’i.  You can’t drive from one island to the next like you can in the Florida Keys. So we have to research which island we’d like to live on the most because it won’t be cheap to move to one and then just up and move to another one.

For our move, we’ve been looking into everything we can so we are prepared for the move. We have to decide which island we want to live on and which part of the island. We need to figure out if we want to move everything with us or leave it all behind. Start completely fresh. What do we do about our vehicles? What about our cat? Then there is the subject of school for the boys.  I’ll be going into details about all of this over the next few months, but for now, we’ve at least narrowed down the island we want to live on.

The Big Island is Our Choice: The Island of Hawai’i

Each of the islands has their greatness, and this wasn’t a very easy decision to make. There are four main islands we decided to choose from: Kaua’i, O’ahu, Maui, and the Island of Hawai’i (The Big Island).  Each island has different income standards, housing prices, and even differences in the amount of tourists that visit.

O’ahu

We pretty much knew immediately that we did not want to live on O’ahu because it’s one of the biggest tourist places of Hawai’i and it has about two-thirds of Hawaii’s total population.  We didn’t want to be surrounded by people and always feeling crowded.  It seems to be a beautiful island and has a lot to offer, but it was at the bottom of our list.

Kaua’i

I wanted to move to Kaua’i after watching the show Hawai’i Life, but it is one of the most expensive of the four main islands to live on.  There are some beautiful beaches, hiking, surfing, and so much more you can do on Kaua’i. Just look at this image and tell me what there isn’t to love there?

But again, it was checked off our list because it is expensive to live there.

Maui

Then there was the island of Maui!  It was my top choice before watching Hawaii Life, and I’d still prefer to live there (or even Kaua’i), but due to the cost of housing, we decided against it.  It is just beautiful there, or at least it looks like it is. I’ve never been so I’m looking through the pictures I see of the island.

The Big Island of Hawai’i

Although the Island of Hawai’i is the largest of the islands, it doesn’t have as many people living on it as O’ahu because much of the island is a massive active volcano! Yes, we chose to live on an island with an active volcano. What more could you ask for in an island? You have beaches, volcanos, rain forests, mountains, and so much more. In fact, the beaches on the Big Island have red sand, green sand, and even black sand!

Now we are just trying to decide which part of the island we want to live on. We really like the Kailua-Kona side or the Hilo side. The Kailua-Kona side is the side we’ll be flying into and we’ll probably rent a place for 3-6 months before making our final decision. It’s the side with the better beaches. However, the Hilo side is very much on our radar because it has a very country like setting further into the island where you have the more tropic weather that is great for gardening and having fruit trees.

Which island of Hawai’i would you choose to live on?